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A lot of people in America get divorced, so it's no surprise that there are a lot of "complex families" in this country. According to a new study, roughly one in six children live with a step- or half-sibling before kindergarten. While pop culture likes to portray or even stigmatize step-kids as bullies (see Sixteen Candles, Cruel Intentions, etc.), recent research may suggest that the silver screen isn't just perpetuating stereotypes.
In an article published in the February edition of journal Demography, sociologists found that children who live with step- or half-siblings are more likely to behave aggressively than kids who don't. Led by sociologist Paula Fomby from the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research and supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation, the study utilized data from a large project called the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, including observational research conducted on approximately 6,500 kids at multiple stages before entering primary school. Fomby and her team took the information with the aim of analyzing whether living with complex siblings at age four could predict behavior at age five. And they found that, on average, they are more aggressive, with step- or half-siblings scoring ten percent higher than their counterparts in personality tests measuring aggressive behavior.
Whereas past studies on complex families have focused on children in relation to their biological or step parents, this research shifted the lens to focus on sibling relationships. But while Fomby and the other sociologist noticed a clear correlation, the reasons as to why young kids with complex siblings behave more aggressively remained elusive. We spoke with the sociologist to discuss her findings and ask if living with step-siblings at a pivotal age can actually predict how kids will act in the future.
For more on families, watch our doc on America's lucrative divorce industry:
VICE: What was your original intention with this study?
Paula Fomby: My colleagues and I have spent a lot of time looking at how family structure is associated with children's behavior, and particularly changes in family structure. We spent many years looking at how parents' divorce or remarriage affects children. We weren't able to explain a lot about the effects we observed, so I thought, Let's look at this from another angle. I want to think about other kids in a child's family and how the composition changes in terms of siblings as children go through family structure shifts. It's bringing the lens of thinking about sibling relationships to this persistent question about why family structure change is associated with children's behavior.
So what were you looking for by studying sibling relations instead of the parent-child relations?
We wanted to get a sense of whether there was an independent effect of living with half- and step-siblings, apart from the effect of your parents' relationship status. That was the really striking thing that came out of this paper: there was this very independent effect, sort of consistent in its magnitude, regardless of whether they lived with their own two delinquent behavior in adolescents. There is evidence that at different life stages there is a consistent association with this kind of family complexity, as well as risk taking behavior and aggressive behavior.
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