Parent-child and Sibling Relationships in Families with Many Children

The third presentation addresses the formation of meaningful relationships within big families. Children build the first and longest-lasting relationships within their family. Most developmental relationship theories, e.g. attachment theory, focus on the formation of an exclusive dyadic bond between mother and child. Data mostly comes from WEIRD populations and is then generalized. However, cross-cultural research suggests, that when sampling in other contexts, a more comprehensive patterning of relationships can be found.

This study includes perspectives of all family members old enough to communicate, and investigates mother-father, parent-child and sibling relationships within the relational networks of ten large families (i.e. with more than five children) in two cultural contexts: Christian Arab families and Ultra-Orthodox Jewish families living in Israel. The methodology comprised of semi-structured interviews, family drawings, and questionnaires.

Preliminary results show that children form endurable alliances with specific siblings, while the eldest child often fulfills a parent-like role. Families report about one ‘challenging’ child, who is developing behaviors or values which are not congruent with the family’s belief system. Parents highlight the parent entity and talk about specific challenges, e.g. preferring one child over the others while trying to treat all equally. In their drawings, participants either deliberately emphasis similarity, or organize their drawings according to age and gender and the family’s entities of the parents and children.

The data unravels underlying dimensions of relational patterns within families that are not yet reflected in classical developmental theories. We consider this study a starting point for further research and scientific discussion.