Our Research
More Fun With Sisters and Brothers Program
A common concern raised by parents is how to help their children get along, citing sibling conflict among their chief complaint. The More Fun with Sisters and Brothers Program (MFWSB), was developed to address families’ need for an evidence-based and tested preventive intervention to strengthen young children’s sibling relationships.
In its original format, children aged 4- to 8-years were taught, in five in-person sessions led by professional educators, a set of social and emotional competencies identified in previous research as fundamental for building prosocial sibling interactions. The lessons focused on bolstering children’s abilities to engage in prosocial behaviors, emotional understanding and emotion regulation, collaborative problem solving to resolve disputes, as well as inhibit impulsive negative behaviors and practice self-control. Our results showed that participation in MFWSB led to increased sibling relationship quality along with gains in children’s and parents’ emotion regulation.
As reflected in the name of the program, learning how to have fun with one’s siblings is a key aim of the program.
Building on the success of the original program, we now offer an online program (MFWSB-P) that places parents in the role of educator, enabling them to teach their children the targeted competencies listed above. The online program has allowed us to meet unmet needs and reach broader audiences, including English-speaking families across the globe.
Our research now centers on evaluating the effectiveness of this program, as well as new instruments that assess parental emotion regulation and the coparenting of siblings.
Maintaining positive relationships with siblings is essential as they can be a major source of strength and unwavering support during life’s inevitable challenges. We hope that our work will help greater number of families to reap the benefits of harmonious sibling relationships.
Twins’ and Siblings’ College Decisions
The psychological process of sibling deidentification, advanced by Frances Fuchs Schacter, states that we craft our own identities, in part, in reaction to how we perceive our siblings’ identities. In this study, we are examining the degree to which sibling deidentification plays a role in young adults’ transition to college. We are interested in identifying the factors that underlie siblings’ decisions to attend the same or different undergraduate institution and pursue similar or different career pathways. We aim to better understand how siblings influence one another during “emerging” adulthood, especially as siblings make decisions to attend the same or different college, set career aspirations, and forge their own identities. We aim to contribute to this body of research to help understand the factors that promote healthy development and sibling relationships among students with college-aged siblings.
Siblings and Mental Health
Just like the quality of parent-child relationships can predict variations in individual’s mental health, our siblings, who know us so well, may also influence our mental health. This study brings together the evidence from previous research to demonstrate the ways in which sibling relationship quality, across the life course, may be linked with mental health outcomes. We hypothesize that the absence of warmth, support, and acceptance in sibling relationships is a more significant driver of mental health symptoms than the presence of conflict and animosity.
Becoming a Sibling as a College Student from China
With the lifting of the One-Child policy in China in 2016, many young adults are becoming siblings for the very first time. This time frame is very different from the transition to becoming a sibling in many western countries, where children are typically 2 to 5 years of age when their first sibling is born. We are studying this unique transition by interviewing undergraduates from China (who are studying in the US) and who had a new sibling enter their family in the last 6 years. We aim to better understand how sibling relationships develop in the context of Chinese culture with a focus on the cultural value of “Qianrang” which, under particular circumstances, may call for the preferential treatment of siblings in accordance with birth order. We’re interested in learning how college-aged individuals form a relationship with a younger sibling as well as their perceptions of shifts in their relationships with their parents following the introduction of a new sister or brother. We hope to formulate recommendations for enabling siblings in this cultural group to develop positive sibling relationships
Becoming a Sibling Follow-up Study
The children in Laurie Kramer’s classic longitudinal study of families who were welcoming a second (Kramer & Gottman, 1992) are now adults in their 30’s. Some have children of their own. This follow-up study examines how these sibling relationships have developed since they were last visited in 2004. This information will help us identify the factors that best predict more positive sibling relationships in early adulthood. We’ll also examine intergenerational patterns in sibling relationships—do individuals who had a positive relationship with a sibling growing up, also have children who enjoy a positive relationship? Or not?