1 With smaller families all the rage these days, some parents may worry over the consequences of having just one child.
2 New research suggests that, as teenagers, only children fare no better or worse in social skills than adolescents with siblings.
3 "I don't think anyone has to be concerned that if you don't have siblings, you won't learn the social skills you need to get along with other students in high school," said study researcher Donna Bobbitt-Zeher, assistant professor of sociology at Ohio State University's Marion campus.
4 Bobbitt-Zeher and Ohio State professor of sociology Douglas Downey are scheduled to present their research Monday at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association in Atlanta.
5 Downing found in past research that, for kindergarteners, having at least one sibling seemed to benefit how teachers rated the kids’ social skills. Bobbitt-Zeher and Downing wanted to see whether this benefit persisted into adolescence.
6 They examined data of more than 13,000 middle and high school students who each had to list up to five male friends and five female friends.
7 Overall, students were nominated by an average of five other students as a friend. Results showed no significant differences in popularity between those who had siblings and those who had none.
8 “What it suggested is by the time students are in adolescence, if there was a benefit to having siblings when you were younger, having time to have other interactions – boy scouts, sports, youth groups – those things might compensate for not having a sibling so that by the time they reach adolescence the negative effect was not there,” Bobbitt-Zeher told LiveScience.
9 Whether a teen had brothers or sisters, step- or full siblings, didn’t make any difference in the results.
