Individual and Sibling Characteristics: Parental Differential Treatment and Adolescent Externalizing Behaviors

• Main Authors: Marceau, K. (Author), Rolan, E. (Author)
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Springer New York LLC 2018
• Subjects: adolescence; adolescent; Adolescent; adolescent behavior; Adolescent Behavior; article; child; Child; child parent relation; Externalizing behaviors; female; Female; gender; human; Humans; juvenile; male; Male; Parental differential treatment; Parent-Child Relations; Parenting; Parents; perception; psychology; risk factor; Risk Factors; self concept; Self Concept; self esteem; sibling; sibling relation; Sibling Relations; Sibling relationship quality; Siblings
• Online Access: View Fulltext in Publisher

 Adolescents’ reports of parental differential treatment have been linked to increased externalizing behaviors. The current study investigated whether adolescent self-esteem and sibling relationship characteristics (age-spacing and sibling relationship quality) moderated associations between parental differential treatment and later externalizing behavior. Data was gathered at two assessments from 708 sibling pairs (94% White; 51% male; same-gender pairs <4 years apart in age). Older/younger siblings were aged M Assessment1 = 13.5/12.1 and M Assessment2 = 16.2/14.7 years. We found that higher levels of maternal differential treatment predicted greater residualized gains in externalizing behavior among older siblings who were (a) the same age as their sibling or near-to and had low self-esteem or (b) three years older than their sibling and had higher self-esteem. Higher levels of paternal differential treatment predicted greater residual gains in externalizing for older siblings with wider age ranges (regardless of self-esteem), and among older siblings with high levels of self-esteem (regardless of age difference). Surprisingly, maternal differential treatment was protective in one case: for adolescents with low self-esteem who were at least three years older than their siblings, maternal differential treatment predicted reduced externalizing behaviors. Paternal differential treatment was protective for more youth than maternal differential treatment: older siblings with low self-esteem who experienced paternal differential treatment exhibited decreased externalizing behaviors across adolescence, regardless of age difference. The findings highlight the importance of self-esteem and sibling age-spacing as particularly salient contextual influences in older siblings’ perceptions of maternal and paternal differential treatment, and that maternal and especially paternal differential treatment does not always serve as a risk factor for externalizing problems. © 2018, Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.