ABSTRACT
To discuss parenting in the context of sibling relationships situates the sometimes abstract notion of parenting within a family context rich with intersecting relationships, alliances, and rivalries. As any parent of more than one child recognizes, parenting becomes substantially more complex and sometimes fraught in the sibling context. Ironically, given the general neglect of the salience of sibling relationships, the founding moral document in Western civilization—the Bible—over and over again depicted sibling rivalry as the driving force behind the course of individual lives and even nations. The critical building block of attachment security in early childhood develops through direct experience with reliable parental figures. Although the attachment security construct was largely developed and studied in the context of parent–child relationships, scholars have theorized that siblings may serve as secondary attachment figures for each other—across the life course. A social psychological framework for understanding the effects of parenting on sibling relationships is social comparison theory, generated by Festinger in the 1950s.
