Shared Versus Nonshared Effects: Parenting and Children's Adjustment

Abstract

Including more than one child per family in research enables the identification of nonshared family effects (resulting in sibling differentiation) as well as shared family effects (resulting in sib- ling similarity). is paper describes a model used to disentangle shared from nonshared proc- esses in links between parenting and children’s behavior. e sample consisted of 172 families with two children aged four to eight years. Children and parents provided reports of parenting, and parents also reported on the children’s behavior problems. According to mothers, parenting of children within families was largely similar, however the children’s reports (via puppet inter- views) indicated substantial differential treatment. In addition, links between parenting and be- havior problems were largely nonshared—reinforcing the message from behavioral geneticists that parenting functions on a child-by-child rather than family-by-family basis. at is, rather than serving to make their children similar to one another, these findings support the idea that parent-child interactions lead to unique developmental trajectories for children.