Mother, Sara, and the Baby

Drawing

By: Mary Cassatt

Date: 1901

Source: Corbis Corporation

About the Author: Mary Cassatt (1844–1926) was an American artist, printmaker, and painter. An Impressionist, she was strongly influenced by the French painters Edgar Degas and Gustave Courbet. In addition to the production of her own art, she supported other Impressionists, offering many young artists financial assistance as well as practical and promotional support. Among her more frequent artistic subjects were children and family scenes. She spent most of her life in France, living and working in Paris from the age of thirty until her death.

INTRODUCTION

Developmental psychologists and social science researchers know that sibling interactions affect a child's ability to form healthy and lasting relationships later in life. They are the first important social partnerships, involving shared parents, homes, play spaces, family members, and homes (sometimes sleeping areas as well). Children develop internal belief systems and layers of understanding about themselves and their place in the world based on the ways in which parents and other family members treat them. Siblings who are relatively close in age often form each other's first peer relationships, providing experience in conflict negotiation, property sharing, rule creation, and the natural consequences of behaviors.

Research indicates that there may be a significant relationship between the degree of affection and perceived cohesiveness of sibling relationships and later perceptions of personal adjustment and satisfaction with peer and partner relationships. There is also a positive correlation between very young children's perceptions of sibling bonds and parental and family dynamics: the greater the discord or unhappiness in parental or familial interactions reported by the parents or primary caregivers, the greater the stress between the siblings. Conversely, the greater the reported marital satisfaction, family social functioning, familial cohesiveness, and perceived closeness, the closer the sibling bonds. Developmental and social psychology research literature also suggests a correlation between self-assessments of sibling interactions and degree of bonding, and family assessments of within-family and extra-family social functioning.

The ways in which children create and develop their relationships with brothers and sisters of all types (biological, adopted, foster, other first-or second-degree live-in relatives, step- and extended family members), greatly influences their creation of future interactions, intimate (sexual and nonsexual) and otherwise. Research indicates that children use the degree of harmony (or disharmony) as a yardstick with which to assess their place in the family, as well as their general approach to interactions with the outside world. They use their experiences with conflict resolution and problem-solving with siblings to judge their place in the world: younger children subjected to physical or verbal aggression by older siblings are more likely to report anxiety and fearfulness, as well as submissive-ness, in their interactions with other children than are those whose interactions involved either negotiation or lack of perceived significant conflicts.

PRIMARY SOURCE

MOTHER, SARA, AND THE BABY

See primary source image.

SIGNIFICANCE

Simply put, siblings experience their interactions from very different perspectives—colored somewhat by their age differences, places within the family, and individual temperaments and personalities. Extensive sibling group research conducted in many different countries shows that affection, support, friendship, and degree of interpersonal cooperation between sibling pairs and the outside world bears no significant relationship to the degree of argument or conflict between them. Among the most salient variables affected by age differences or birth order are degree of control or dominance, perceived power, degree of affection, and desire to be in the presence or to share time with the other. Others often mediated by birth order are jealousy, irritation, antagonism, competition, usually experienced by the elder in relation to the younger, and admiration, and keen interest in spending time together typically displayed by the younger. There is usually a degree of waxing and waning as the siblings mature: early closeness may give way to some distance and awkwardness in later childhood, only to be rekindled during the late adolescent and adult years.

In siblings of different ages (not twins) in which there are no major disparities caused by chronic or acute illness, physical, cognitive, or emotional disabilities, there are generally hierarchies of leadership, influence, ability to control the decision making process of the group, degree of dominance, and mentoring abilities across the sibling continuum—often, but not necessarily, mediated by chronological age, physical size, and birth order. Frequently, elder children take on the role, generally unasked, of teaching younger siblings essential life skills: letters and numbers, colors, facts about the world such as the names of the planets, days or the week, months of the year, and the like, simply as a rite of passage. In some households, the notion of family loyalty is emphasized until ingrained; in such families the siblings often champion one another and refuse to tolerate any negative behavior or bullying of younger—and sometimes older—siblings by "outsiders." They are supportive and kind to one another in public settings, such as school, places of worship, and other similar locales. That loyalty may or may not extend to household behavior.

In other families, sibling rivalry is keen, and kindness minimal. There may be considerable judgment and criticism, and frequent disagreements that may escalate into physical altercations, particularly when there are considerable differences in temperament, or one sibling is much more dominant and controlling than another. In such situations, there may be long-lasting rancor and eventual estrangement, or the siblings may eventually either settle or agree to let go of their differences and forge a healthy relationship after growing up.

The ways in which people experience themselves and others is affected considerably by the nature of sibling relationships. Not only is the nature of the everyday interactions important in each child's growing awareness of the workings of the world, but the self-comparison that goes on as a child watches the ways in which the outside world responds differently to each child in a family is pivotal in the development of each sibling's self-concept and sense of self-esteem. This may be especially so when there are clear-cut differences in abilities or talents, such as when one child is more artistic than another, or more academically or athletically skilled—the child whose talents are less obvious may acquire a feeling of being "less than" or may choose to strive to excel in other areas, depending on innate level of self-esteem.

Sibling relationships also set the stage for self-perceptions, developing coping skills, learning how to assert one's rights and defend those of another, in creating bonds of love and loyalty that will last for a lifetime, and aid in the healthy development and maintenance of future relationships with the outside world, as well as with significant others.

FURTHER RESOURCES

Books

Bank, Stephen P., and Michael D. Kahn. The Sibling Bond. New York, NY: Basic Books, 2003.

Barter, Judith, ed. Mary Cassatt: Modern Woman. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1998.

Kelsh, Nick, and Anna Quindlen. Siblings. New York: Penguin Books, 1998.

Linn-Gust, Michelle. Do They Have Bad Days in Heaven? Surviving the Suicide Loss of a Sibling. Albuquerque, NM: Chellehead Works, 2001.

Sanders, Robert. Sibling Relationships: Theory and Issues for Practice. Hampshire, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.

Twerski, Abraham S., and Charles M. Schulz. I Didn't Ask to Be in This Family: Sibling Relationships and How They Shape Adult Behavior and Relationships. New York, NY : Henry Holt & Co., 1996.

Periodicals

Brody, G. H., Z. Stoneman, and M. Burke. "Child Temperaments, Maternal Differential Behavior, and Sibling Relationships." Developmental Psychology. 23, no. 3 (1987): 354-362.

Dunn, J. C. Stocker, and R. Plomin. "Assessing the Relationship between Young Siblings: A Research Note." Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. 31 (September 1990): 983-991.

Martin, J. L., and H. S. Ross. "The Development of Aggression within Sibling Conflict." Journal of Early Education and Development. 6 (1995): 335-358.

Stocker, C. "Children's Perceptions of Relationships with Siblings, Friends, and Mothers: Compensatory Processes and Links with Adjustment." Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. 35 (November 1994): 1447-1459.