Study says having a sister is actually healthy for a child's mental and emotional health
Gender reveals expose a parent’s bias on what child they want to have.
But before we go on a litany of controversial conversations, there’s one study that can give us a better perspective.
Case in point, it’s good for a child to have a sister. The age gap or the sequence is not an issue. Whether they’re younger or older, they give off the same effect.
A study of families revealed several intriguing findings.
According to Laura Padilla-Walker, a professor from Brigham Young University, siblings matter in a lot of ways. She even went as far as saying that siblings give something even parents can’t.
The study included 395 families with more than one child. They then made a follow-up study a year after.
Their study showed that having a sister made adolescents feel less lonely, unloved, guilty, self-conscious, and fearful.
But what about sibling rivalry or the usual sibling squabble?
Padilla-Walker said that yes, there will be siblings who will fight and bicker, but that doesn’t mean they’re not getting along or that it’s promoting hostility.
“Even if there is a little bit of fighting, as long as they have affection, the positive will win out,” said Padilla-Walker to ABC. “If siblings get in a fight, they have to regulate emotions. That’s an important skill to learn for later in life.”
Padilla-Walker even admitted that her kids, a boy and a girl, fight every 15 minutes but they eventually always make up with one another. She said that learning how to de-escalate and be diplomatic will be first learned with a sibling and this skill will be very important when they grow up.
She also explained the enduring importance of having a sibling.
Padilla-Walker explained that sibling relationships are much more constant and will constitute the entirety of one’s life since parents will eventually die and one will only meet their spouse later in life. Through all those times, siblings will always be there.
This study can affect a lot of people in the world as more than 80% of people in the developed world have at least one sibling.
But this dynamic also has its limitations.
The study explained that the advantages of sibling relationships dwindle when families only have one parent.
This is largely because there’s a shift in the relationship between siblings. An older sibling might take on a more parental role, which is a vertical and often hierarchical relationship, than a confidant and a friend, which is a horizontal relationship.
Girls’ talkativeness is also an important factor.
Padilla-Walker mentioned a previous research stating that girls talk more than boys. In a sibling relationship, this means that a child can have constant conversations with someone which will give them a chance to confide things they’re otherwise uncomfortable sharing with others.
So when it comes to wishing if you’ll have a boy or a girl, consider that it’s not about the gender because just having someone to grow up with your first kid will make a really large difference in their lives, even if it means shouting and fighting every now and then.
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