ABSTRACT
The small literature which addresses the significance of siblings to children has largely viewed the issue through the paradigm of developmentalism (see Kosonen 1994 for a review). Psychological studies have focused for example on children’s like and dislike for their siblings and the implications of sibling relations for peer relations and later psychological adjustment (Dunn and McGuire 1992). Much less attention has been paid to the ways in which children themselves perceive sibling relations and the importance they place on them during the course of their childhoods. More recently, sociologists have begun to extend their interest in this direction, suggesting that children (in middle childhood) perceive their siblings to be an important source of support, albeit children also report sibling relations to be punctuated by rivalry and conflict (Kosonen 1996; Morrow 1998). Moreover, as we discuss in this chapter, living apart from, as well as living with, siblings may render siblings important to children.
