From Cain and Abel and the Brothers Karamazov to Cinderella, the warmth and support provided by siblings has hardly been taken for granted.
Now, researchers have found that children who moan about their brothers and sisters may have good reason to complain: the more siblings teenagers have, the more it hits their happiness, they claim.
A study of secondary schoolchildren in the US and China found that those from larger families had slightly poorer mental health than those from smaller families. The greatest impact was seen in families with multiple children born less than a year apart.
Photo: AP
Doug Downey, a professor of sociology at Ohio State University, said previous work in the field had revealed a mixed picture of positives and negatives for children with more siblings, adding that the latest results “were not a given.”
The researchers asked 9,100 eighth graders in the US and 9,400 in China, with an average age of 14, a range of questions about their mental health, though the specific questions varied between the countries. In China, the teenagers with no siblings fared best for mental health. In the US, children who had no siblings or only one were found to have similar mental health.
Overall, mental health was worse the more siblings the teenagers had, with greater impacts seen for teenagers with older siblings, and when brothers and sisters were closely spaced in age.
Writing in the Journal of Family Issues, Downey and his colleagues argue that the findings are in line with the “resource dilution” explanation, the driving force behind the unwritten formula that states that the number of balls dropped rises, sometimes dramatically, with the number of siblings born.
“If you think of parental resources like a pie, one child means that they get all the pie,” Downey said. “But when you add more siblings, each child gets fewer resources and attention from the parents, and that may have an impact on their mental health.”
That teenagers fared worse when their siblings were a similar age backs up the thinking, the researchers believe.
But there are other potential explanations. For example, the teenagers with the best mental health came from families with the highest socioeconomic advantages. In the US, these were often families with only one or two children. In China, it was the families with one child. In line with China’s one child policy, about a third of Chinese children were only children, compared with 12.6 percent of US children.
With the rise of “one and done” families, researchers are increasingly keen to tease out the impact of brothers and sisters on mental health and other factors. Previous studies suggest a slew of positive impacts linked to siblings, suggesting a complex picture of pros and cons.
Earlier work by Downey showed that children with more siblings got along better with others at nursery, and were less likely to divorce in later life — perhaps because they already had some experience at navigating close relationships. Meanwhile, a 2016 study of more than 100,000 Norwegian children found better mental health across the ages in larger families.
That US assistance was a model for Taiwan’s spectacular development success was early recognized by policymakers and analysts. In a report to the US Congress for the fiscal year 1962, former President John F. Kennedy noted Taiwan’s “rapid economic growth,” was “producing a substantial net gain in living.” Kennedy had a stake in Taiwan’s achievements and the US’ official development assistance (ODA) in general: In September 1961, his entreaty to make the 1960s a “decade of development,” and an accompanying proposal for dedicated legislation to this end, had been formalized by congressional passage of the Foreign Assistance Act. Two
March 31 to April 6 On May 13, 1950, National Taiwan University Hospital otolaryngologist Su You-peng (蘇友鵬) was summoned to the director’s office. He thought someone had complained about him practicing the violin at night, but when he entered the room, he knew something was terribly wrong. He saw several burly men who appeared to be government secret agents, and three other resident doctors: internist Hsu Chiang (許強), dermatologist Hu Pao-chen (胡寶珍) and ophthalmologist Hu Hsin-lin (胡鑫麟). They were handcuffed, herded onto two jeeps and taken to the Secrecy Bureau (保密局) for questioning. Su was still in his doctor’s robes at
Last week the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said that the budget cuts voted for by the China-aligned parties in the legislature, are intended to force the DPP to hike electricity rates. The public would then blame it for the rate hike. It’s fairly clear that the first part of that is correct. Slashing the budget of state-run Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) is a move intended to cause discontent with the DPP when electricity rates go up. Taipower’s debt, NT$422.9 billion (US$12.78 billion), is one of the numerous permanent crises created by the nation’s construction-industrial state and the developmentalist mentality it
Experts say that the devastating earthquake in Myanmar on Friday was likely the strongest to hit the country in decades, with disaster modeling suggesting thousands could be dead. Automatic assessments from the US Geological Survey (USGS) said the shallow 7.7-magnitude quake northwest of the central Myanmar city of Sagaing triggered a red alert for shaking-related fatalities and economic losses. “High casualties and extensive damage are probable and the disaster is likely widespread,” it said, locating the epicentre near the central Myanmar city of Mandalay, home to more than a million people. Myanmar’s ruling junta said on Saturday morning that the number killed had