PARIS, Jan 17 — Being an only child may have more advantages than you might think, especially when it comes to health. A large-scale study carried out in both China and the USA reveals that teenagers from larger families have poorer mental health than those who live alone with their parents, or have just one sibling.
This surprising finding could be explained by the “dilution” of parental resources, but that might not be all that’s going on...
What parent hasn’t heard their child asking for a little brother or sister? It’s an opportunity for the child to gain a playmate, but also a life-long companion, with whom to share their joys and sorrows.
However, there are not only advantages to sharing parents, as reported in a new study by researchers at Ohio State University (USA). The researchers investigated the impact of siblings on teenagers’ mental health, and their findings are surprising, to say the least.
Unusually, this research was carried out in two distinct countries — China and the USA — whose family and demographic policies differ considerably. Both analyses were based on eighth-graders, aged 14 on average.
The first, conducted in China, included over 9,400 adolescents from the China Education Panel Study, while the second, conducted in the USA, involved over 9,100 adolescents from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study.
All were asked to complete a questionnaire about their mental health, but the questions differed from country to country.
Published in the Journal of Family Issues, the studies reveal that Chinese teenagers have an average of 0.89 siblings, far fewer than American teenagers (1.6).
According to the figures shared by the researchers, over a third of Chinese participants are only children, compared with just 12.6 per cent of American teenagers, which is hardly surprising, in light of China’s one-child policy.
Effects on well-being
The findings are far more surprising, however, as they reveal that only children have the best mental health in China. And, contrary to what might be expected, the results are identical — or almost identical — in the USA: only children were found to have similar mental health to teenagers with just one sibling, but levels of well-being decline as the family grows. In this respect, the study highlights that siblings — or half-siblings — are associated with poorer mental health in the USA.
“Our results couldn’t have been easily predicted before we did the study. Other studies have shown that having more siblings is associated with some positive effects, so our results were not a given,” says Doug Downey, lead author of the study and professor of sociology at Ohio State University, quoted in a news release. He goes on to say that “the fact that the overall pattern was found in both countries is striking.”
Another finding of the American study is that the impact on teenagers’ well-being is worse when they have older siblings, or when siblings are close in age. The impact is even greater when siblings are born less than a year apart.
This can be explained — in part — by the “dilution” of parental resources brought about by living in a large family.
A partner or a rival?
“If you think of parental resources like a pie, one child means that they get all the pie — all the attention and resources of the parents.
But when you add more siblings, each child gets fewer resources and attention from the parents, and that may have an impact on their mental health,” suggests Doug Downey. But this is not the only hypothesis put forward by the researchers.
“Another possibility, though, is that the families that have many versus few children are different in other ways that may reduce mental health for their kids — the so-called selectivity explanation.
The differences between China and the US do provide some support for the selectivity explanation. In each country, children from families associated with the most socioeconomic advantage had the best mental health,” reads the news release.
However, the researchers did not focus on the quality of relationships between siblings, which could considerably change the situation and even transform this negative impact into a positive one.
This is a factor to be taken into account in further research. — ETX Studio
