Sibling Relationship Development and Sharing Behaviors in Early Childhood

Abstract

The focus of this dissertation is on early sibling relationships, an oft neglected topic in child development research. The first study focuses on early sibling sharing behavior and its relationship with children’s moral development. Next, the focus widens to incorporate a broader family ecology, specifically parenting and marital quality. Finally, Study 3 addresses the very beginnings of sibling relationships by focusing on mothers having their second child and their concerns. Study 1 examined sharing behaviors between toddlers and their older siblings, and relations between sharing and conscience development from 18 to 36 months of age. There was no stability of individual differences in older and younger siblings’ sharing behaviors across all three timepoints, suggesting that young children’s individual sibling sharing behaviors may not follow a linear developmental trajectory in early childhood. Instead of bidirectional relations between older and young siblings’ sharing behaviors over time, older siblings’ sharing at 18 months predicted younger siblings’ sharing at 24 months, suggesting that older siblings tend to play a more dominant role in dyadic interactions. Both older and younger siblings’ moral regulation directly predicted older and younger siblings’ sharing at 24 months, respectively, indicating that sibling sharing behaviors may be consequences of their internalization of moral regulation. Study 2 investigated the associations among interparental relationship quality, parenting discipline strategies, and sharing behaviors in both older and younger siblings during early childhood. Inductive discipline as reported by both fathers and mothers at 24 months did not predict older and younger sibling sharing one year later. Relations between study variables, however, did indicate relationship spillover instead of compensation, between positive interparental relationship quality and parental inductive discipline strategies. Fathers’ discipline strategies were neither more vulnerable to negative interparental relationship quality, nor were they uniquely supported by positive interparental relationship quality. Instead, mothers appeared to be most supported in their parenting strategies by positive interparental relationship quality. Study 3 isolated predominant topics expressed on the BabyCenter internet website during the transition to the second child (both pre- and post-birth), using Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) and qualitative analysis. The findings suggest that topics discussed by second-time mothers in the BabyCenter groups coincide with topics expressed by mothers isolated in the previous qualitative literature decades earlier. Further, topics expressed online during the transition to the second child (both pre- and post-birth) indicate that, similar to previous research from decades earlier, second-time mothers in the current sample were still concerned about many of the same topics, such as if they could love their second child as much as their first or whether they would receive the support they desired from friends and family. This research suggests that second-time motherhood is a transition that requires unique suggestions and interventions. Findings from these three studies indicate that overall children are distinctly influenced by their sibling relationships and that their prosocial and moral development occurs in a broader context beyond that of the mother-child dyad.