Life course studies of siblings of individuals with developmental disabilities.

Abstract

The sibling relationship constitutes the longestlasting family tie, beginning with the birth of theyounger sibling and ending with the death of onemember of the sibling pair. Siblings share a com-mon family heritage, both genetically and experi-entially, and perhaps for this reason, the sibling re-lationship is normatively characterized as egalitari-an, reciprocal, and mutual. How is the sibling re-lationship distinct when one member of the siblingpair has a developmental disability? Aspects of thesibling tie might be atypical in this context, in sev-eral respects. For example, the duration of the re-lationship might be shorter, as some individualswith developmental disabilities have a more limitedlife-span. In addition, there may be less genetic andexperiential similarity between members of the sibpair and less egalitarianism and reciprocal exchangedue to unequal abilities and patterns of life courseoutcomes. However, there may also be greater con-tinuity in contact across the life course when thesibling has a developmental disability.Most past researchers of siblings of individualswith developmental disabilities have focused on thesibling pair during childhood (Stoneman, 1998;Stoneman & Berman, 1993). However, individualswith developmental disabilities tend to live wellinto adulthood and now commonly reach old age.Therefore, there is a need to extend our investiga-tion of the sibling relationship when one has a de-velopmental disability across the life course to bet-ter elucidate whether and how this relationshipchanges when the siblings grow up. Among thegeneral population, the sibling relationship has sig-nificant life course variation, as the intense involve-ment that characterizes sibling interactions duringchildhood give way to more disengaged relation-ships during the young adult years, followed by areintensification of the sibling bond during midlifeand older age (Cicirelli, 1982; Goetting, 1986).How these life course patterns are manifested whenone sibling has a developmental disability is the fo-cus of this review.