Growing up with siblings is a theme that weaves its way into movies, shows, and anything else that would make you laugh or cry! There is something unique about growing up with siblings that other people just don’t understand.

A study at Brigham Young University showed that siblings can positively impact your mental health.

Whether fighting or hugging, you always know your siblings will be around to love you or mess with you. It turns out that a study conducted at Brigham Young University found that siblings impact behavior even more than parents!

The study is a part of the Flourishing Families Project, which is an in-depth look at the life of families with adolescent kids. The study is multi-cultural and has included almost 700 unique families.

Having a sister can help make you happier.

Growing up with two sisters myself, this wasn’t always the case for me! However, BYU’s research claims:

“Something about having a sister – even a little sister – makes 10- to 14-year-olds a bit less likely to feel down in the dumps.”

From this research, it apparently doesn’t matter if your sister is younger or older than you! This was particularly shown to be the case with 10-14-year-old siblings, male or female.

In some situations, siblings play a more significant role in behavioral influence than parents do.

For the research on sisters, specifically, the data was gathered from 395 families with siblings present, one of those siblings always being between 10-14 years old. After testing and gathering data, the scientists followed up one year later and concluded something crazy!

Sisters can help combat loneliness, guilt, and not feeling loved!

Professor Laura Padilla-Walker is the head of research for the project. Part of the research claimed that:

“Statistical analyses showed that having a sister protected adolescents from feeling lonely, unloved, guilty, self-conscious and fearful. It didn’t matter whether the sister was younger or older, or how far apart the siblings were agewise.”

Brothers are still important, too!

As a brother myself, this was good to read in the research! The study also showed that a loving sibling of either gender “promoted good deeds”! These deeds included anything from helping a neighbor to watching out for others at school. The study also stated:

“The relationship between sibling affection and good deeds was twice as strong as that between parenting and good deeds.”

Affection is more important than a lack of conflict when it comes to the benefits and long-term relationships with siblings.

Most parents don’t like their kids to fight. From the BYU study, however, it seems like conflict is not itself a bad thing. The more important factor is sibling affection.

“An absence of affection seems to be a bigger problem than high levels of conflict,” Padilla-Walker said.

Padilla-Walker even goes to say that sibling conflict may be an opportunity to learn how to have healthy emotions and deal with situations that come up later in life.

It’s better to fight than to not love each other.

From the research, the good things that come with having a sister (protection from feeling lonely, guilty, or unloved) come from fostering a sense of love and affection. Fighting seems just to be a part of the classic sibling rivalry!

As far as siblings go, send this to them to let them know that all the fighting as kids really was just you showing them that you cared!

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Source: BYU, Shareably