Birth Of Sibling Research Articles

Parental death as a vital conjuncture? Intergenerational care and responsibility following bereavement in Senegal

This article explores the ways that parental death represents a ‘vital conjuncture’ for Serer young people that reconfigures and potentially transforms intergenerational caring responsibilities in different spatial and temporal contexts. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with young people (aged 15–27 years), family members, religious and community leaders and professionals in rural and urban Senegal, I explore young people's responses to parental death. ‘Continuing bonds’ with the deceased were expressed through memories evoked in homespace, shared family practices and gendered responsibilities to ‘take care of’ bereaved family members, to cultivate inherited farmland and to fulfil the wishes of the deceased. Parental death could reconfigure intergenerational care and lead to shifts in power dynamics, as eldest sons asserted their position of authority. While care-giving roles were associated with agency, the low social status accorded to young women's paid and unpaid domestic work undermined their efforts. The research contributes to understandings of gendered nuances in the experience of bereavement and continuing bonds and provides insight into intra-household decision-making processes, ownership and control of assets. Analysis of the culturally specific meanings of relationships and a young person's social location within hierarchies of gender, age, sibling birth order and wider socio-cultural norms and practices is needed.

Placentophagia in weanling female laboratory rats

Placentophagia is common in parturient mammals and offers physiological and behavioral advantages for mothers. In natural environments, weanlings are often present during the birth of younger siblings, but it is unknown if weanling rats are placentophagic or prefer placenta over other substances. To examine this, primiparous rats were remated during the postpartum estrus and their weanling daughters remained in the natal nest during their mother's next parturition. Continuous observation revealed that 58% of weanlings were placentophagic. To determine if this placentophagia occurs away from parturient mothers, weanling females still living in their natal nest were offered placenta, liver, or cake frosting in a novel chamber. They ingested more placenta and liver than frosting. Thus, many weanling female laboratory rats are placentophagic during the birth of younger siblings but do not selectively prefer placenta when tested outside their natal nest. Consequences of placentophagia by weanling female rats are unknown, but it may promote their alloparenting or later postpartum mothering.

Post‐adoption reunion sibling relationships: factors facilitating and hindering the development of sensitive relationships following reunion in adulthood

AbstractThis paper explores findings from an exploratory study on sibling relationships following adoption reunion in adulthood. The qualitative data was gathered through in‐depth interviews with 33 adopted adults who were reunited with their birth sibling(s) through an adoption agency in the Republic of Ireland. The findings throw light upon the development of the emotional, often complex, relationships which may emerge when siblings meet for the first time in adult life. Factors influential in facilitating or hindering these post‐reunion relationships are discussed. The important insights are then considered in the context of the wider international literature on adoption, search and reunion.

Children's responses to mother-infant and father-infant interaction with a baby sibling: jealousy or joy?

Firstborn children's reactions to mother-infant and father-infant interaction after a sibling's birth were examined in an investigation of 224 families. Triadic observations of parent-infant-sibling interaction were conducted at 1 month after the birth. Parents reported on children's problem behaviors at 1 and 4 months after the birth and completed the Attachment Q-sort before the birth. Latent profile analysis (LPA) identified 4 latent classes (behavioral profiles) for mother-infant and father-infant interactions: regulated-exploration, disruptive-dysregulated, approach-avoidant, and anxious-clingy. A fifth class, attention-seeking, was found with fathers. The regulated-exploration class was the normative pattern (60%), with few children in the disruptive class (2.7%). Approach-avoidant children had more behavior problems at 4 months than any other class, with the exception of the disruptive children, who were higher on aggression and attention problems. Before the birth, anxious-clingy children had less secure attachments to their fathers than approach avoidant children but more secure attachments to their mothers. Results underscore individual differences in firstborns' behavioral responses to parent-infant interaction and the importance of a person-centered approach for understanding children's jealousy.

Prenatal Smoking Cessation and Infant Health: Evidence from Sibling Births

This article uses a large data set of sibling births to examine when mothers must quit smoking in pregnancy to deliver healthy babies. It applies sibling fixed effects models to provide robust evidence that smoking cessation in the first trimester has a negligible effect on infant health, but cessation as late as second trimester or smoking throughout pregnancy is associated with substantially lower birth weights and higher risks of delivering low birth weight babies. In particular, about two thirds of the total detrimental smoking impact on birth outcomes occurs in the second trimester. Therefore, reallocating resources on prenatal smoking cessation towards the first trimester can lead to a significant efficiency gain. This study also shows when the timing information of prenatal smoking cessation is improperly used, it will introduce a new nontrivial downward bias in estimating the causality between the conventionally used group measure “prenatal smoker” and infant health.

Coparenting moderates the association between firstborn children's temperament and problem behavior across the transition to siblinghood.

The contribution of individual (i.e., negative reactivity) and environmental (i.e., coparenting) characteristics in predicting firstborns' adjustment after a sibling's birth were examined. Mothers, fathers, and firstborn children from 241 families participated in a family freeplay to assess coparenting interactions before the birth of the second child and parents completed questionnaires on children's temperamental characteristics and behavior problems. Children's externalizing problems significantly increased from pre- to postbirth. Children, on average, did not display more internalizing problems after the infant sibling's birth; however, children high in negative reactivity were more sensitive to undermining coparenting behavior and displayed greater internalizing behaviors across the transition to siblinghood. Negatively reactive children also displayed increases in externalizing behavior across the transition to siblinghood when parents showed high levels of undermining coparenting and low levels of supportive coparenting. Supportive coparenting appeared to be a protective factor in the face of this transition for negatively reactive children in families where parents engaged in high levels of undermining coparenting. Findings suggest that both individual and environmental factors play an important role in firstborns' adjustment to an infant sibling's birth. Parents of temperamentally sensitive children may benefit from participating in workshops geared toward improving coparenting partnerships prior to the birth of the second child.

Constrained adoptive parenthood and family transition: adopters' experience of unplanned birth family contact in adolescence

AbstractAdoption policy in the UK emphasizes its role in providing secure, permanent relationships to children in care who are unable to live with their birth families. Adoptive parents are crucial in providing this life‐long, stable experience of family for these vulnerable children. This paper explores the experience of adoptive parenthood in the context of changes to adoptive kinship relationships brought about by new, unplanned contact with birth family during their child's middle adolescence. This contact was initiated via informal social networks and/or social media, with older birth siblings instrumental in negotiating renewed relationships. The contact precipitated a transition in adoptive family life resulting in emotional challenges and changes in parent/child relationships, which were experienced as additional to the normative transitions expected during adolescence. Parental concern as a dominant theme was founded in the child and birth sibling's stage of adolescence, coupled with constraints on adoptive parenthood imposed by the use of social media, by perceived professional attitudes and by parental social cognitions about the importance of birth ties. Adoptive parents' accounts are interpreted with reference to family life‐cycle theory and implications are suggested for professional support of adoptive kinship relationships.

Making sense of siblings: connections and severances in post‐adoption contact

AbstractSociological and anthropological studies of kinship have examined adoption as a test case for understanding the complex combinations of biological and social ties that constitute kinship. Adoption sets up an ‘adoption kinship network’ between birth family and adoptive family members. Contact after adoption poses challenges for adoptive families and birth relatives in negotiating changing kinship ties. This paper examines the experience of post‐adoption direct sibling contact from the perspectives of adoptive parents and birth relatives, including adult siblings. Interviews were carried out with 51 adoptive parents, four long‐term foster carers and with 39 birth relatives. The analysis revealed the complex multiple family networks that exist between adoptive families and the families of the adopted child's birth siblings. These networks connect some siblings, but sever connections with others. Where direct contact occurs, infrequent meetings mean that regular, repeated interactions normally considered to constitute ‘family practices’ are absent, in some cases creating barriers to feelings of kinship. Implications for adoption and contact support services are discussed.

Rural to urban migration is an unforeseen impact of development intervention in Ethiopia.

Rural development initiatives across the developing world are designed to improve community well-being and livelihoods. However they may also have unforeseen consequences, in some cases placing further demands on stretched public services. In this paper we use data from a longitudinal study of five Ethiopian villages to investigate the impact of a recent rural development initiative, installing village-level water taps, on rural to urban migration of young adults. Our previous research has identified that tap stands dramatically reduced child mortality, but were also associated with increased fertility. We demonstrate that the installation of taps is associated with increased rural-urban migration of young adults (15–30 years) over a 15 year period (15.5% migrate out, n = 1912 from 1280 rural households). Young adults with access to this rural development intervention had three times the relative risk of migrating to urban centres compared to those without the development. We also identify that family dynamics, specifically sibling competition for limited household resources (e.g. food, heritable land and marriage opportunities), are key to understanding the timing of out-migration. Birth of a younger sibling doubled the odds of out-migration and starting married life reduced it. Rural out-migration appears to be a response to increasing rural resource scarcity, principally competition for agricultural land. Strategies for livelihood diversification include education and off-farm casual wage-labour. However, jobs and services are limited in urban centres, few migrants send large cash remittances back to their families, and most return to their villages within one year without advanced qualifications. One benefit for returning migrants may be through enhanced social prestige and mate-acquisition on return to rural areas. These findings have wide implications for current understanding of the processes which initiate rural-to-urban migration and transitions to low fertility, as well as for the design and implementation of development intervention across the rural and urban developing world.

Do children recall the birth of a younger sibling? Implications for the study of childhood amnesia

To establish the parameters of childhood amnesia, researchers often ask adults to recall events for which the exact date is known. One event of this kind is the birth of a sibling, but is this an event that children are likely to understand and encode at the time that it occurs? Here, we report the first examination of age-related changes in the content and accuracy of 2- to 5-year-old children's accounts of the recent birth of a sibling. The interview procedure we used was identical to that used in a prior study with adults, so we had the opportunity to compare children's recall with that of adults who were matched on age at the time of the birth. For both children and adults, the amount of information reported and the number of questions answered increased as a function of age at the time of the birth. Relative to children, adults reported more information and answered more questions. These findings suggest that the failure of adults to recall the birth of a younger sibling that occurred when they were very young may be due primarily to a failure to effectively encode the event in the first place.

BIRTH SPACING AND CHILD MORTALITY: AN ANALYSIS OF PROSPECTIVE DATA FROM THE NAIROBI URBAN HEALTH AND DEMOGRAPHIC SURVEILLANCE SYSTEM

The majority of studies of the birth spacing-child survival relationship rely on retrospective data, which are vulnerable to errors that might bias results. The relationship is re-assessed using prospective data on 13,502 children born in two Nairobi slums between 2003 and 2009. Nearly 48% were first births. Among the remainder, short preceding intervals are common: 20% of second and higher order births were delivered within 24 months of an elder sibling, including 9% with a very short preceding interval of less than 18 months. After adjustment for potential confounders, the length of the preceding birth interval is a major determinant of infant and early childhood mortality. In infancy, a preceding birth interval of less than 18 months is associated with a two-fold increase in mortality risks (compared with lengthened intervals of 36 months or longer), while an interval of 18-23 months is associated with an increase of 18%. During the early childhood period, children born within 18 months of an elder sibling are more than twice as likely to die as those born after an interval of 36 months or more. Only 592 children experienced the birth of a younger sibling within 20 months; their second-year mortality was about twice as high as that of other children. These results support the findings based on retrospective data.

Early Childhood Exposure to Anesthesia and Risk of Developmental and Behavioral Disorders in a Sibling Birth Cohort

Early Childhood Exposure to Anesthesia and Risk of Developmental and Behavioral Disorders in a Sibling Birth Cohort

A case series of Bardet-Biedl Syndrome in a large Turkish family and review of the literature

Bardet-Biedl syndrome (BBS) is a rare autosomal recessive genetic disorder. We aimed to report a case series of Bardet-Biedl syndrome in a Turkish family and review the literature. This family had 3 females and 4 males, totally 7 alive; 2 children (1 female and 1 male) had died. Parents were consanguineous. The first was a birth of twins and female sibling of these twins had congenital anal atresia and died when she was three-month old. Third (30 yr), 4th (28 yr) and 9th (19 yr) alive siblings were obese, blind and diabetic. We detected truncal obesity, postaxial polydactyly, cognitive impairment and hypogonadism. Rod-cone dystrophy was detected in ophthalmic examination. With these typical clinical findings, BBS was diagnosed. There was also a male member of the family which shared the same features of his affected brothers but he had died while he was eight months old. Marked glycosuria was determined and urine density was 1021 g/cm3. There was not any further endocrinological abnormality. Fasting blood glucose levels were changing between 290 and 452 mg/dl and the last glycated hemoglobine levels (A1c) were 9.3%, 11.2% and 12.8%, respectively. Diabetes mellitus and obesity were treated with diet, exercise, multiple daily insulin injections and metformine at the dose of 2000 mg/d. Although it is an infrequent condition due to autosomal recessive transmission, consanguineous marriage may increase the risk of emergence of BBS. Genetic counseling is a very important issue in the family of patients with BBS, in order to prevent new cases.

Family transitions following the birth of a sibling: an empirical review of changes in the firstborn's adjustment.

Nearly 80% of children in the United States have at least 1 sibling, indicating that the birth of a baby sibling is a normative ecological transition for most children. Many clinicians and theoreticians believe the transition is stressful, constituting a developmental crisis for most children. Yet, a comprehensive review of the empirical literature on children's adjustment over the transition to siblinghood (TTS) has not been done for several decades. The current review summarizes research examining change in first borns' adjustment to determine whether there is evidence that the TTS is disruptive for most children. Thirty studies addressing the TTS were found, and of those studies, the evidence did not support a crisis model of developmental transitions, nor was there overwhelming evidence of consistent changes in firstborn adjustment. Although there were decreases in children's affection and responsiveness toward mothers, the results were more equivocal for many other behaviors (e.g., sleep problems, anxiety, aggression, regression). An inspection of the scientific literature indicated there are large individual differences in children's adjustment and that the TTS can be a time of disruption, an occasion for developmental advances, or a period of quiescence with no noticeable changes. The TTS may be a developmental turning point for some children that portends future psychopathology or growth depending on the transactions between children and the changes in the ecological context over time. A developmental ecological systems framework guided the discussion of how child, parent, and contextual factors may contribute to the prediction of firstborn children's successful adaptation to the birth of a sibling.

Early Childhood Exposure to Anesthesia and Risk of Developmental and Behavioral Disorders in a Sibling Birth Cohort

Early Childhood Exposure to Anesthesia and Risk of Developmental and Behavioral Disorders in a Sibling Birth Cohort

Lethal Junctional Epidermolysis Bullosa with Pyloric Atresia due to Compound Heterozygosity for Two Novel Mutations in the Integrin β4 Gene

Junctional epidermolysis bullosa with pyloric atresia (JEB-PA) is a rare autosomal recessive disease with blister formation within the lamina lucida due to mutations in the integrin β4 (ITGB4) and α6 (ITGA6) genes. A female preterm infant, first child of healthy non-consanguineous parents, was born at 26 + 4 weeks of gestation by caesarean section, following polyhydramnion and abruption of placenta. She presented with extensive areas of denuded skin on both lateral sides of the head, neck and extremities. Auricles were hypoplastic. Abdominal ultrasound and X-ray were suggestive of pyloric atresia which was revised surgically on the 4th day of life. Further course was complicated by progressive skin detachment, sepsis, and renal insufficiency with fatal outcome at 18 days of age. Immunofluorescence mapping of cryopreserved skin showed junctional cleft formation with negative staining for integrin α6 and integrin β4. Mutational analysis disclosed compound heterozygosity for two novel nonsense mutations in the ITGB4 gene: c.600dupC/p.F201fsX14 and c.2533C>T/p.Q845X. 2 subsequent pregnancies were terminated following prenatal diagnosis disclosing the same ITGB4 mutations, a 4th pregnancy was unaffected. We describe a case of lethal JEB-PA with negative immunoreactivity to integrin α6 and integrin β4 predicting a poor outcome. Identification of compound heterozygosity for two novel ITGB4 mutations in the affected preterm infant permitted prenatal diagnosis and finally birth of a healthy sibling.

Risk factors for Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection among children in Greenland

To examine the risk factors for Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection (MTI) among Greenlandic children for the purpose of identifying those at highest risk of infection. Between 2005 and 2007, 1797 Greenlandic schoolchildren in five different areas were tested for MTI with an interferon gamma release assay (IGRA) and a tuberculin skin test (TST). Parents or guardians were surveyed using a standardized self-administered questionnaire to obtain data on crowding in the household, parents' educational level and the child's health status. Demographic data for each child--i.e. parents' place of birth, number of siblings, distance between siblings (next younger and next older), birth order and mother's age when the child was born--were also extracted from a public registry. Logistic regression was used to check for associations between these variables and MTI, and all results were expressed as odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs). Children were considered to have MTI if they tested positive on both the IGRA assay and the TST. The overall prevalence of MTI was 8.5% (152/1797). MTI was diagnosed in 26.7% of the children with a known TB contact, as opposed to 6.4% of the children without such contact. Overall, the MTI rate was higher among Inuit children (OR: 4.22; 95% CI: 1.55-11.5) and among children born less than one year after the birth of the next older sibling (OR: 2.48; 95% CI: 1.33-4.63). Self-reported TB contact modified the profile to include household crowding and low mother's education. Children who had an older MTI-positive sibling were much more likely to test positive for MTI themselves (OR: 14.2; 95% CI: 5.75-35.0) than children without an infected older sibling. Ethnicity, sibling relations, number of household residents and maternal level of education are factors associated with the risk of TB infection among children in Greenland. The strong household clustering of MTI suggests that family sources of exposure are important.

Auditory Remediation for Patients With Landau-Kleffner Syndrome

Auditory Remediation for Patients With Landau-Kleffner Syndrome

Early Childhood Exposure to Anesthesia and Risk of Developmental and Behavioral Disorders in a Sibling Birth Cohort

In vitro and in vivo studies of anesthetics have demonstrated serious neurotoxic effects on the developing brain. However, the clinical relevance of these findings to children undergoing anesthesia remains unclear. Using data from a sibling birth cohort, we assessed the association between exposure to anesthesia in the setting of surgery in patients younger than 3 years and the risk of developmental and behavioral disorders. We constructed a retrospective cohort of 10,450 siblings who were born between 1999 and 2005 and who were enrolled in the New York State Medicaid program. The exposed group was 304 children without a history of developmental or behavioral disorders who underwent surgery when they were younger than 3 years. The unexposed group was 10,146 children who did not receive any surgical procedures when they were younger than 3 years. Exposed children were entered into analysis at the date of surgery. Unexposed children were entered into analysis at age 10 months (the mean age at which exposed children underwent surgery). Both exposed and unexposed children were followed until diagnosis with a developmental or behavioral disorder, loss to follow-up, or the end of 2005. The association of exposure to anesthesia with subsequent developmental and behavioral disorders was assessed with both proportional hazards modeling, and pair-matched analysis. The incidence of developmental and behavioral disorders was 128.2 diagnoses per 1000 person-years for the exposed cohort and 56.3 diagnoses per 1000 person-years for the unexposed cohort. With adjustment for sex and history of birth-related medical complications, and clustering by sibling status, the estimated hazard ratio of developmental or behavioral disorders associated with any exposure to anesthesia when they were younger than 3 years was 1.6 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.4, 1.8). The risk increased from 1.1 (95% CI: 0.8, 1.4) for 1 operation to 2.9 (94% CI: 2.5, 3.1) for 2 operations and 4.0 (95% CI: 3.5, 4.5) for ≥3 operations. The relative risk in a matched analysis of 138 sibling pairs was 0.9 (95% CI: 0.6, 1.4). The risk of being subsequently diagnosed with developmental and behavioral disorders in children who were enrolled in a state Medicaid program and who had surgery when they were younger than 3 years was 60% greater than that of a similar group of siblings who did not undergo surgery. More tightly matched pairwise analyses indicate that the extent to which the excess risk is causally attributable to anesthesia or mediated by unmeasured factors remains to be determined.

Children's experiences after the unintended birth of a sibling.

This study examines whether children with a younger sibling whose birth was unintended experience larger declines in the quality of their home environment and larger increases in behavioral problems than children whose younger sibling's birth was intended. We use data from the NLSY79 to estimate cross-lag regression models that assess changes in the home environment and children's behavioral problems after the birth of a sibling (intended or unintended). Results are consistent with our hypotheses, finding that, indeed, unintended births have negative spillover effects. Compared with children whose sibling's birth was intended, both boys and girls whose sibling's birth was unintended experienced larger declines in the quality of their home environment, and boys had larger increases in behavioral problems. We also find some unexpected evidence that mistimed births may have larger negative effects than unwanted births. This deserves further research, and we offer some possible explanations that could guide those investigations.