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Quality of Sibling Relationship and Age Spacing in Single-Parent Households Versus Two-Parent Households

Sibling relationship quality is affected by several variables, such as gender, age spacing, marital conflicts, parenting, and parent-child relationship, which simultaneously influence personality and developmental outcomes. Furthermore, sibling relationships can significantly influence the social climate of the family and vice versa. The objective of this study was to examine the effects of household composition (1-parent home vs. 2-parent home) and the number of years between siblings ages on sibling relationship quality, and to determine whether parental conflict response management strategies differ between single-parent and 2-parent homes. The participants were 124 adult mothers with at least 2 children. Participants provided demographic information and completed the Parental Expectations and Perceptions of Children's Sibling Relationships Questionnaire to measure sibling relationship quality and the Parental Conflict Management Strategies to measure parental responses to sibling conflict. The 4 research questions were assessed using a quantitative design that used 2-factor multivariate analysis of variance and a chi-square test of independence. The result revealed that household type affected sibling rivalry such that 1-parent households reported less sibling rivalry than 2-parent households. The results also showed that there is no preference for any specific conflict management strategy for sibling conflict among single-parent and two-parent households. Social change implications may result from this study based on a better understanding of how sibling relationship quality has been affected by different family dynamics, such as changes in household composition.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:waldenu.edu/oai:scholarworks.waldenu.edu:dissertations-4606
Date01 January 2017
CreatorsOverlock, Mari Varga
PublisherScholarWorks
Source SetsWalden University
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
SourceWalden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

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