Its good for your children to have siblings and even better if they have sisters according to a new study by psychologists.
The study showed that young adolescents who had sisters either younger or older were less likely to experience negative feelings such as loneliness guilt and fear.
Having a loving sibling of either gender encourages a sense of generosity such as helping a neighbor or watching out for other kids at school, and reduces the chance of depression but it was particularly true of sisters. promoted good deeds,
In fact, loving siblings fostered charitable attitudes more than loving parents did. The relationship between sibling affection and good deeds was twice as strong as that between parenting and good deeds.
“Even after you account for parents’ influence, siblings do matter in unique ways,” said study researcher Laura Padilla-Walker, of Brigham Young University in Utah. “They give kids something that parents don’t.”
“For parents of younger kids, the message is to encourage sibling affection. Once they get to adolescence, it’s going to be a big protective factor.”
Who did they study?
The study was conducted by psychologists at Brigham Young University in Utah. It was part of BYU’s Flourishing Families Project and included 395 families with more than one child, at least one of whom was an adolescent between the ages of 10 and 14. The researchers gathered a wealth of information about each family’s dynamic at the study’s start and then followed up one year later.
