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Differential Parental Treatment, Sibling Relationships and Delinquency in Adolescence

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Abstract

The present study examined the moderating effect of the quality of the sibling relationship on the longitudinal association of parental treatment with theft, vandalism, and violence in adolescence. Participants were 416 sibling pairs which were studied over a one-year period. The younger siblings were aged 13 to 15, the older siblings 14 to 17 at Time 1. No significant effects were found for mixed-sex dyads. For same-sex dyads, the results suggested that when the relationship was of poor quality, younger boys who felt treated less favorably by their mothers were most likely to show high levels of vandalism and violence, while younger girls who felt treated less favorably were most likely to show high levels of theft. No such effects were found for older siblings. These findings indicate that differential parental treatment and the quality of the sibling relationship have gender-specific effects on adolescents’ delinquency and have a different meaning for younger than for older siblings.

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Notes

  1. Because some of the delinquency scales were positively skewed, we used a transformation (RANK) for all the scales to obtain a normal distribution and reran the analyses on these transformed scales. Although the proportions of explained variance were slightly lower and the beta’s had different values because of the different scaling, the results of the analyses on the transformed scales were similar to the results of the analyses on the initial scales.

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Correspondence to Ron. H. J. Scholte.

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Ron H. J. Scholte received his PhD in 1998. His research interests focus on two areas of adolescent adjustment. The first area concerns the association between parent-child and peer relationships and well-being, with a specific focus on bullying and victimization. The second area concerns adolescent substance use and the role that parents, siblings, and peers play. Primary attention is given here to the gene by environment interactions that may predict alcohol use and smoking.

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Scholte, R.H.J., Engels, R.C.M.E., de Kemp, R.A.T. et al. Differential Parental Treatment, Sibling Relationships and Delinquency in Adolescence. J Youth Adolescence 36, 661–671 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-006-9155-1

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