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4 - A Dynamic Ecological Systems Perspective on Emotion Regulation Development within the Sibling Relationship Context
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- By Victoria Hilkevitch Bedford, Department of Psychology, Indiana University, 1701 Circle Drive, Rawles Hall, Bloomington, IN 47401, Brenda L. Volling, Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, 525 East University, East Hall, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1109
- Frieder R. Lang, Martin Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenburg, Germany, Karen L. Fingerman, Purdue University, Indiana
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- Book:
- Growing Together
- Published online:
- 02 September 2009
- Print publication:
- 10 November 2003, pp 76-102
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Summary
This chapter presents a dynamic ecological systems model of emotion regulation. We focus on the course of the sibling relationship across the life span, making note of the connections between individuals' developing capacity to regulate their own emotions and the interpersonal nature of the sibling relationship. We introduce the concept of emotion other-regulation and note how siblings attempt to regulate their own emotions through attempts to influence others. We lay out a developmental timeline showing how parents regulate the relationship between their children during early childhood and how this parental control is slowly relinquished over time such that older children, adolescents, and adults become more responsible for the interpersonal regulation in their sibling relationship and, in turn, their own emotion self-regulation.
An ecological perspective on human development underscores the importance of examining child and adult development within multiple contexts and the necessity of examining intraindividual change along with change in the family, community, and cultural contexts in which individuals live. This volume is devoted to understanding change in personal relationships over time from the early years of childhood through the later years of adulthood. In the current chapter, we use a dynamic ecological systems perspective to examine the sibling relationship as a context for the development of emotion regulation in both childhood and adulthood. Development is defined according to the principles of the life-span perspective. Thus, development is lifelong, multidimensional, multidirectional, and contextual (Baltes, 1987).
6 - Relationships between adult siblings
- Edited by Ann Elisabeth Auhagen, Freie Universität Berlin, Maria von Salisch, Freie Universität Berlin
- Translated by Ann Robertson
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- Book:
- The Diversity of Human Relationships
- Published online:
- 20 May 2010
- Print publication:
- 13 October 1996, pp 120-140
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Summary
Introduction
An invisible relationship
Despite the fact that nearly everyone has a literal sibling, and those without have probably “adopted” a surrogate (Cumming & Schneider, 1961), adult sibling relationships have been one of the more invisible categories of personal relationships in social science research. Even sibling relationships in childhood have received modest attention compared to the parent–child bond (Irish, 1964; Johnson, 1982). This vertico-centric bias was interrupted briefly in the adult literature with the discovery that solidarity with siblings was perceived by older adults (age 50–80) to be “stronger than that which they perceive between themselves and their parents” (Cumming & Schneider, 1961, p. 502). This unexpected finding was credited to the egalitarian character of sibling relationships, a characteristic that is more in tune with the values of American society than the hierarchical structure of parent–child ties. Preference for sibling ties was also credited to the nonobligatory structure of the sibling relationship, which provides a flexibility more suited to the mobility needed by modern nuclear families to follow economic opportunity (Rosenberg & Anspach, 1973).
Subsequent empirical studies, however, did not support these claims. Compared to those of parents and their adult children, geographical availability of siblings, contact frequency (Leigh, 1982), and help exchanges (Scott, 1983; Myers & Dickerson, 1990; Coward, Horn & Dwyer, 1991; Wellman, 1990) were less. Also, the sibling relationship's vitality seemed to depend upon parental kinkeeping (Rosenberg & Anspach, 1973), because, when parents died, sibling interaction was often attenuated (Allan, 1977; Berardo, 1967; Townsend, 1957; Young & Willmott, 1957; Johnson, 1982).