ABSTRACT
The publication of Alexander Thomas and Stella Chess's work on temperament played a key role in changing the way in which clinicians and developmental researchers viewed parent-child relationships—their development and their nature. The work on temperament has been of central importance in the shift toward a real recognition of the contribution of individual differences in children to the quality of their relationships with their parents. And the lessons to be learned from the work on temperament are relevant to all the relationships children form, including those with siblings, close friends, teachers, peers—relationships that are increasingly recognized as having potential influence on children's development (e.g., Berndt & Ladd, 1989; Boer & Dunn, 1992; Hartup, 1983). In this chapter some of these implications concerning broad developmental principles are discussed in the context of research on children's relationships with their siblings.
