The Effect of Being the Only Child on Friendship Nominations

• Autorzy: Guilherme Kenji Chihaya
• Języki publikacji: EN

Abstrakty

EN

The literature on sociability stresses that contact with siblings may endow children with the competences needed for interacting with peers. In this paper I examine the effect of the number of siblings at home on friendship nominations at school. I use data for three countries (Germany, Netherlands, and Sweden) from the first wave of the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Survey in Four European Countries, which targeted 18,716 pupils aged 15 years old in 480 secondary schools over England, Sweden, Germany, and the Netherlands. I employ the exponential random graph model to explore the effect of having siblings on being nominated as a friend, aggregating the estimates from individual classroom networks using meta-analysis. The estimated average effect of being the only child on forming a network tie is negative, albeit small, suggesting that some children benefit from having siblings when it comes to sociability. However, our models show that there is significant variability in the effect size across classrooms, an indication that this effect may be context dependent and that the average effect size is not a good representation the effect for all networks studied. Moreover, this effect is only marginally significant once other covariates are controlled for. I conclude that there is only weak support for social learning theory, and that there is a need to study the contextual factors mediating the effect of having siblings on sociability. (original abstract)

Słowa kluczowe

EN

Interpersonal relationship; Youth; Large family; Social learning theory

PL

Stosunki międzyludzkie; Młodzież; Rodzina wielodzietna; Teorie społecznego uczenia się

• Czasopismo: ISiD Working Papers
• Rocznik: 2015
• Numer: nr 47
• Strony: 15

Twórcy

autor

Guilherme Kenji Chihaya

• Umeå University

Bibliografia

• Black, S. E., Devereux, P. J., & Salvanes, K. G. (2005). The more the merrier? The effect of family size and birth order on children's education. "Quarterly Journal of Economics", 669-700.
• Blake, J. (1981). Family size and the quality of children. "Demography", 18(4), 421-442.
• Blake, J. (1989). Family size and achievement (Studies in Demography, vol. 3): University of California Press.
• Bobbitt-Zeher, D., & Downey, D. B. (2013). Number of Siblings and Friendship Nominations Among Adolescents. "Journal of Family Issues", 34(9), 1175-1193.
• Bramoullé, Y., & Saint-Paul, G. (2010). Social networks and labor market transitions. "Labour Economics", 17(1), 188-195.
• Brody, G. H. (1998). Sibling relationship quality: Its causes and consequences. "Annual Review of Psychology", 49(1), 1-24.
• Bryant B.K., DeMorris K.A. (1992). Beyond parent-child relationships: Potential links between family environments and peer relations, s.159-189, w: eds.: Parke R.D., Ladd G.W., Family-peer relationships: Modes of linkage, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, Hillsdale, NJ 1992.
• Carbonaro, W., & Workman, J. (2013). Dropping out of high school: Effects of close and distant friendships. "Social Science Research", 42(5), 1254-1268.
• CILS4EU (2014). Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Survey in Four European Countries. Technical Report. Wave 1 - 2010/2011, v1.1.0. Mannheim: Mannheim University.
• Davis, J.A., Leinhardt, S., (1972). "The Structure of Positive Interpersonal Relations in Small Groups." In: J. Berger (ed.), Sociological Theories in Progress, 218-251. Boston:Houghton Mifflin.
• Downey, D. B. (1995). When bigger is not better: Family size, parental resources, and children's educational performance. "American Sociological Review", 746-761.
• Downey, D. B. (2001). Number of siblings and intellectual development: The resource dilution explanation. "American Psychologist", 56(6-7), 497.
• Downey, D. B., & Condron, D. J. (2004). Playing well with others in kindergarten: The benefit of siblings at home. "Journal of Marriage and Family", 66(2), 333-350.
• Downey, D. B., Condron, D. J., & Yucel, D. (2013). Number of Siblings and Social Skills Revisited Among American Fifth Graders. "Journal of Family Issues", 0192513X13507569.
• Ganzeboom, H. B. G., de Graaf, P. M., Treiman, D. J., & de Leeuw, J. (1992). A Standard International Socio-Economic Index of Occupational Status. "Social Science Research", 21(1), 1-56.
• Graham, J. W., Olchowski, A. E., & Gilreath, T. D. (2007). How Many Imputations are Really Needed? Some Practical Clarifications of Multiple Imputation Theory. "Prevention Science", 8(3), 206-213.
• Hunter, D. R., Handcock, M. S., Butts, C. T., Goodreau, S. M., & Morris, M. (2008). ergm: A package to fit, simulate and diagnose exponential-family models for networks. "Journal of Statistical Software", 24(3), 1-29.
• Kitzmann, K. M., Cohen, R., & Lockwood, R. L. (2002). Are only children missing out? Comparison of the peer-related social competence of only children and siblings. "Journal of Social and Personal Relationships", 19(3), 299-316.
• Lubbers, M. J. (2003). Group composition and network structure in school classes: a multilevel application of the p∗ model. "Social Networks", 25(4), 309-332.
• Morris, M., Handcock, M. S., & Hunter, D. R. (2008). Specification of exponential-family random graph models: terms and computational aspects. "Journal of Statistical Software", 24(4),1548.
• Mucci, L. A., Hsieh, C.-c., Williams, P. L., Dickman, P. W., Björkman, L., & Pedersen, N. L. (2004). Birth order, sibship size, and housing density in relation to tooth loss and periodontal disease: a cohort study among Swedish twins. "American journal of epidemiology", 159(5),499-506.
• Parke, R. D., & Buriel, R. (1998). Socialization in the family: Ethnic and ecological perspectives. Handbook of child psychology.
• Polit, D. F., & Falbo, T. (1987). Only children and personality development: A quantitative review. "Journal of Marriage and the Family", 309-325.
• Raghunathan, T. E., Lepkowski, J. M., & Van Hoewyk, J. (2001). A multivariate technique for multiply imputing missing values using a sequence of regression models. "Survey Methodology", 27(1), 85-89.
• Risi, S., Gerhardstein, R., & Kistner, J. (2010). Children's Classroom Peer Relationships and Subsequent Educational Outcomes. "Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology", 32(3), 351-361.
• Robins, G., Pattison, P., Kalish, Y., & Lusher, D. (2007). An introduction to exponential random graph (p*) models for social networks. "Social Networks", 29(2), 173-191.
• Rubin, D. B. (2004). Multiple imputation for nonresponse in surveys. Hoboken, N.J.; Wiley-Interscience.
• Smith, S., Maas, I., & van Tubergen, F. (2014). Ethnic ingroup friendships in schools: Testing the by-product hypothesis in England, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden. "Social Networks", 39, 33-45.
• Solari, C. D., & Mare, R. D. (2012). Housing crowding effects on children's wellbeing. "Social science research", 41(2), 464-476.
• Staff, J., & Kreager, D. A. (2008). Too Cool for School? Violence, Peer Status and High School Dropout. "Social Forces", 87(1), 445-471.
• Steelman, L. C., Powell, B., Werum, R., & Carter, S. (2002). Reconsidering the effects of sibling configuration: Recent advances and challenges. "Annual Review of Sociology", 243-269.
• Su, Y.-S., Gelman, A., Hill, J., & Yajima, M. (2011). Multiple Imputation with Diagnostics (mi) in: R: Opening Windows into the Black Box. "Journal of Statistical Software", 45(2), 1-31.
• Tholen, G., Brown, P., Power, S., Allouch, A. (2013). The role of networks and connections in educational elites' labour market entrance. "Research in Social Stratification and Mobility", 34, 142-154.
• Trent, K., & Spitze, G. (2011). Growing up without siblings and adult sociability behaviors. "Journal of Family Issues", 32(9), 1178-1204.
• van Duijn, M. A. J., Snijders, T. A. B., & Zijlstra, B. (2004). P2: a random effects model with covariates for directed graphs. "Statistica Neerlandica", 58(2), 234-254.
• Viechtbauer, W. (2010). Conducting Meta-Analyses in R with the metafor Package. "Journal of Statistical Software", 36(3), 1-48.
• Weiss, R.H. (2006) CFT-20R. Grundintelligenzskala 2 - Revision. Göttingen: Hogrefe.
• Whiteman, S. D., McHale, S. M., & Soli, A. (2011). Theoretical perspectives on sibling relationships. "Journal of family theory & review", 3(2), 124-139.
• Zijlstra, B., van Duijn, M. A. J., & Snijders, T. A. B. (2006). The multilevel p2 model. "Methodology: European Journal of Research Methods for the Behavioral and Social Sciences", 2(1), 42-47.