Siblings and Development

Abstract

The great majority of children? around 80% in the United States and Europe?grow up with siblings. Yet the developmental impact of the ex perience of growing up in close? often uncomfortably close?contact with another child within the family has until recently been little studied. The attention of investigators con cerned with early developmental in fluences has been focused instead chiefly on parents (usually mothers) or family, often characterized in terms of structure (e.g., single-parent versus two-parent) or background variables (e.g., socioeconomic sta tus), or in broad descriptive terms, such as enmeshed or disorga nized. In the last few years, however, studies of siblings within their fami lies have greatly increased in num ber,1 and have challenged our as sumptions concerning two quite different issues in developmental science. First, such studies have raised serious questions about how families influence individual devel opment?and suggested some in triguing answers. Second, they have also shed light on the development of social understanding in young children. Here, research on siblings observed at home shows that formal assessments of very young children's abilities in experimental settings may have seriously underestimated the nature of young children's social understanding.