Having a sister 'is good for you'
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Independent Minds
Being brought up with a sister makes people more balanced, ambitious and optimistic, research suggests.
A study of 571 families comprising brothers, sisters, a mixture of both and single children found that having a sister in the home led to siblings of either sex scoring more highly on a range of standard tests for good mental health.
They were found to be better at coping with setbacks and more highly motivated than those who grew up with just brothers. They also had more friends and a better social life.
The research, to be presented today at the British Psychological Society's annual conference in Brighton, was conducted by psychologists at De Montfort University in Leicester and the University of Ulster.
Liz Wright, a research fellow at De Montfort, said that the study began after previous research showed that girls with sisters appeared to experience less distress when they encountered trouble in their lives.
"We wanted to see if the positive impact of sisters went farther than just girls and found that it did," she said.
"One of the most interesting findings was the impact of female siblings when parents split up. It seems their natural inclination was to express themselves and encourage other family members to do so as well. There was less distress in broken homes with a sister."
Psychologists have long believed that "emotional expression" at times of upheaval is fundamental to good psychological health.
"Sisters appear to encourage that," Ms Wright said. "However, brothers seemed to have the opposite effect, perhaps discouraging others to talk."
The tests covered how much social support and control over their lives people felt they had, optimism, achievement motivation and ability to cope with setbacks.
This article is from The Belfast Telegraph
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Comments
Based on what!.
The entire Belfast Telegraph article is Utter rubbish, having a older sibling, of any gender only brings out a jealousness in them.
Having their noses taken out of joint when the younger sibling arrives is something they NEVER get over, something they never forgive you for.
[Like it is your fault!]
All the time whilst the younger offspring hold their older siblings up with the idea that "the sun shines..."
And they, deep down, hate the sights of you.
You learn this later on in life.
Something usually the older sibling hardly ever admits to, or even thinks is of relavence or has much consequence.
Mind you, this hatred usually softens and turns into guilt and a bit of compassion, and that's when you may get some benevolance and help throughout the rest of your life.
The younger sibling of the elder sister being also the closest thing they may have to having a child of their own, in some ways, that younger child has a 'mothering' practised upon them.
Hence these silly findings.
What a convoluted mish mash of human emotions we are bathed and brought up in!!.
No wonder so many people are so disfunctional.
These reserchers and experts collate their findings based on the limited understanding THEY and their 'erstwhile' peers over the times and at present have 'brought into'.
Offering up some morsel of conjecture to the wider psychologist community, as if it is some 'great find', for them to 'gas on about for a while, using their pin head intellects, like Jilly Goolden does over some overpriced bottle of wine for the common snobbish masses.
A limited understanding the lot of them.
Without an original idea in their entire mindless lifetime.
Do the thinking for yourself.
Political experts.
Financial experts.
Psychologist experts.
The common man in the street knows just as much, if not better!.
http://theunpeople.blogspot.com/
All that time and effort, tens of thousands of tax payers pounds spent on this research, bothering all those people, and I bet they haven't even found out the underlying reason for it all.
That being the Sister-Mothering effect.
Whereby the sister not only practices her mothering skills on the rest of her siblings, especially on the younger ones, but not confined to them: practices these skills for the benefit of her own possible future brood.
But due to the lightlyhood of premature maternal demise, [Remember, only recently out of hundreds of thousands of years, has life expectancy been what it is now]
this female sibling it there in an ongoing shadow capacity to raise all her siblings herself.
It's all it is.
These great benefits listed in this article.
All the differing role playing, sister mother, sister wife, sister daughter it's all it is.
No great discovery at all.
In real terms, These 'tax payers black holes' have spent all that time and effort in their quest, and have found a pimple on their bottom.
Mothers would die in childbirth, it was very common.
Mothers wouldn't even make it past the age of 32 in some cases, and that was in the 1920's.
Therefore, the female sibling even when they were not into double digits themselves, even though they were not phyically able to have offspring of their own, were endowered by nature to raise her siblings around the household herself.
It is how we have evolved, nature enpowers us in remarkable ways, to ensure the continuation of the species.
Having a Sister 'is good for you'.
To be honest, I found having a Sister was a physical handicap.
The above reads nearly as if done by a pychiatrist. Looking at a family 'close to myself' could well dispute the well paid researcher; too late now he/she has been paid, Im sure.
Have a nice day in dear old Brighton.
Don't be away too long, there will another split family.
they care. The writing is vague and sloppy and there is a tendency to make free assertions like, "psychologists have long believed...". I don't find this report persuasive in the least.
Whether "emotional expression" is fundamental to good psychlogic health at times of upheavel or not is a matter of perspective. Professional prejudice taints many studies. In the real world professional self-interest often prevents publication of adverse observations.
Our personal experience indicates that there's less distress in a broken home with 4 equally beloved sisters and 1 brother. All of them quickly graduated from college. 2 doctarates and master's degrees prove that Cynthia and I did jointly as well as separately something right. Predictably that encouraged proud parents belated reconciliation.
The British Psychological Society, The Belfast Telegraph and concerned readers may google the Imhof Hypothesis and practice what I preach, Inschallah!