Companionship Patterns and Emotional States During Social Interactions for Adolescents With and Without Siblings

Abstract

For decades, researchers and the general public have debated whether children without siblings differ from children with siblings in ways that are meaningful for development. One area that is underexplored in the literature on only children versus children with siblings concerns time use and emotional states in alone time and in social interactions. Resource dilution theory and the prior literature suggests that adolescent only children and adolescents with siblings may differ in some social interactions, such as in time with parents, but not in others, such as in time alone, due to offsetting effects or the universality of certain experiences among adolescents. This study tested these arguments by comparing companionship patterns and four emotional states (happiness, sadness, stress, and meaningfulness) among adolescents (ages 15-18) without siblings (N = 465) and adolescents with siblings (N = 2513) in the nationally representative American Time Use Survey (2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010)(2011)(2012)(2013)(2014)(2015)(2016)(2017). Relative to adolescents with siblings, adolescents without siblings spent more time alone, similar amounts of time with peers, and more time exclusively with parents. Only children were not as happy when spending time alone and with peers as adolescents with siblings, but their emotions in these settings were not more negative or less meaningful. In most other social interactions, emotional states were similar between adolescents with and without siblings. These findings show that adolescents with and without siblings differed mainly in their companionship patterns within the household and in their levels of happiness when alone and with peers.

Connections during crisis: Adolescents’ social dynamics and mental health during COVID-19.

“…Consistently, previous studies have shown that siblings can have a beneficial influence on youth's mental health (McHale et al, 2012), this may even be intensified by COVID-19. Pre-COVID research showed that adolescents without siblings experience greater levels of solitude than adolescents with siblings, and that those without siblings also derive lower levels of satisfaction from both time with friends and solitude (Wikle et al, 2019). Given the social isolation induced by the pandemic, it is likely that the impact of being an only child may exacerbate the experience of loneliness in youths.…”

Familism among Latino/a adolescents: Evidence from time‐use data

“…The four main dependent variables were time with household parents, time with household siblings, time with household adult relatives, and time with household child relatives. We chose to focus on nuclear and extended household family members because the concept of familism encompasses both nuclear and extended family ties (Cauce & Domenech‐Rodriguez, 2002) and because the prior time‐use literature has focused on interactions between children and parents, siblings, and extended family (Cha & Park, 2020; Dunifon et al, 2018; Hsin & Felfe, 2014; Lam et al, 2012; Wikle et al, 2019; Wikle & Hoagland, 2020). We disaggregated extended family into child and adult relative components, given that they represent vertical versus horizontal relationships in the household (Van Hook & Glick, 2007).…”

“…Family context also shapes patterns of adolescent contact with family members (Wikle et al, 2019; Wikle & Hoagland, 2020). We included several controls for family and household structure and characteristics.…”

“…The time children and youth spend with family is also shaped by socio‐structural factors such as family size and structure (Wikle et al, 2019; Wikle & Hoagland, 2020), maternal education (Cha & Park, 2020), and maternal employment (Hsin & Felfe, 2014). Differences in time with family between Latino/a, White, and Black youth may be due to compositional differences between these groups in socio‐structural factors that predict time use, which may also be shaped by familism norms and values.…”

Adolescent interactions with family and emotions during interactions: Variation by family structure.

“…Additionally, family structure remains a crucial dimension of heterogeneity in adolescent life, considering that the family context constitutes a youth's nearest social environment. Family systems theory has emphasized the role that family life and family-level contexts play in adolescent emotional functioning (Elliott, Shuey, & Leventhal, 2016;Wikle, Ackert, & Jensen, 2019) and in how adolescents process social interactions and develop social skills (Engels, Finkenauer, Meeus, & Dekovic ´, 2001;Hillaker, Brophy-Herb, Villarruel, & Haas, 2008). However, less work has evaluated heterogeneity in social interactions with family members stemming from variation in home context.…”