ARTICLES
Association Between Early Childhood Aggression and Internalizing Behavior for Sibling Pairs

https://doi.org/10.1097/01.CHI.0000070240.24125.EAGet rights and content

ABSTRACT

Objective

This article investigates sibling similarity in early childhood problem behavior.

Method

Analyses are based on an Australian longitudinal study of health and development that included sister, brother, and mixed-sex sibling pairs. Pregnant women were recruited into the study in 1981 to 1983 and provided information regarding family characteristics and child behavior from birth through the age of 5 years. The relationship between older and younger siblings' aggression and internalizing behavior at the age of 5 years is examined, based upon maternal reports on a shortened version of the Child Behavior Checklist for 414 sibling pairs (60% of the initial sibling sample).

Results

The results demonstrate a moderately strong association between sibling's aggression and internalizing behavior, for mixed- and same-sex siblings, with correlation coefficients of 0.26 to 0.39. The association between older and younger sibling's behavior remains significant, controlling for family characteristics such as mother's age, mental health, marital status, affection toward children, and family size and income.

Conclusions

The findings highlight the importance of including siblings in family-based intervention programs aimed at reducing child behavior problems.

Section snippets

Sibling Influences on Early Childhood Behavior

Developmental research demonstrates that sibling relationships are important in shaping children's outcomes (Dunn, 1983, Dunn, 1992). Recent studies suggest that positive sibling interactions may enhance children's prosocial behaviors, including empathy, conflict management, and cooperation (Dunn, 1983, Dunn, 1992;Dunn and Munn, 1986;Garcia et al., 2000;Widmer and Weiss, 2000). Likewise, strong sibling relationships may protect against the negative impact of adverse family circumstances, such

Sample

This study explores the association between early childhood aggression and internalizing behavior for sibling pairs participating in the Mater-University Study of Pregnancy. Pregnant women attending their first prenatal hospital visit in Brisbane, Australia were recruited into the study during 1981 to 1983. Of the 8,556 women (99%) who agreed to participate in prenatal assessments, 7,661 gave birth to a live, singleton child and completed postnatal interviews 3 to 5 days after giving birth.

RESULTS

Table 2 presents Pearson correlation coefficients between older and younger siblings' scores on the aggression and internalizing indices. All associations are statistically significant, and the size of the correlation coefficients indicates a moderately strong sibling concordance in problem behavior, across sibling types. As shown, the correlation between internalizing behaviors of both siblings does not generally vary as a function of the sex composition: all sibling types have a correlation

DISCUSSION

This investigation confirms and extends prior research regarding sibling resemblance in problem behavior. Whereas most prior research has assessed the effects of negative sibling interactions on childhood aggression or the similarity of sibling delinquency during adolescence, this study examined sibling resemblance in early childhood aggression and internalizing behavior. In addition, most early childhood research has been conducted with male-only or clinical samples, whereas the current study

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  • Cited by (0)

    Supported by the National Health and Medical Research Council.

    The authors acknowledge the assistance of Denise A. Durrington in constructing the dataset and the Mater-University Study of Pregnancy research team members for their ongoing work and support for the study.

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