Citation

Pickering JA, Sanders MR. Fam. Process 2015; 56(1): 105-125.

Affiliation

Parenting and Family Support Centre, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Qld, Australia.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2015, Family Process Institute, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/famp.12173

PMID

26333041

Abstract

Parents play a crucial role in the development of their children's relationships with their siblings. Despite this, relatively few evidence-based parenting programs exist that specifically offer parents the strategies and techniques they desire and require for managing their children's sibling relationships. One way of bridging this gap is to design a tailored parenting intervention for sibling relationships that incorporates the parent voice in various aspects of program design. The current study recruited a convenience sample of 409 Australian parents to complete an online survey relating to their views on difficult sibling behaviors and what, if any, help they desire in dealing with the issue. The majority of respondents were Caucasian, middle- to upper-class mothers. Respondents predominantly attributed the causes of sibling conflict to their child's internal traits, but expressed strong desire for assistance with managing behavioral problems, especially when sibling relationships were marked by physical aggression. Respondents reported high levels of acceptability for positive, rather than punitive, parenting strategies and showed a clear preference for parenting interventions delivered in easy-to-access formats. The findings are interpreted in the context of guiding the development of a tailored parenting intervention for enhancing sibling relationships and reducing conflict.

Language: en