Peer-reviewed article
Trajectories and correlates of Latino/a children's sibling relationships.
Duran JG, Updegraff KA, Son D, Gallagher A, Umaña-Taylor AJ et al. ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This study tracked how sibling relationships change in Latino children aged 6 to 12 years, examining whether parent-child interactions affect how siblings relate to each other. Researchers followed 285 Latino sibling pairs over 18 months and found that sibling closeness peaks at certain ages and varies by child sex, while sibling conflict follows a steady pattern influenced by mother's country of origin. The quality of a child's relationship with their mother was linked to how close they felt to their siblings, and conflict between parents and children was associated with more conflict between siblings.
Key points
- Sibling intimacy showed a quadratic (curved) trajectory with age, moderated by child sex
- Sibling conflict increased linearly with age, moderated by mother nativity
- Higher mother-child warmth was associated with greater sibling intimacy across time
- Higher father-child conflict was linked to higher sibling conflict over time
- When mothers reported more conflict with their children than usual, children reported more sibling conflict
Limitations
This study is observational and cannot establish causal relationships between parent-child dynamics and sibling relationships. The findings apply specifically to Latino families in a clinical trial context and may not generalize to other ethnic groups or family structures.
Abstract
This study contributes to research on the patterns of change in, and parent-child relationship correlates of, sibling relationships in Latino/a children in middle childhood and early adolescence. Specifically, the study goals were to (a) chart age-related trajectories of sibling intimacy and conflict between 6 and 12 years of age using a cohort-sequential accelerated longitudinal design and (b) examine between-person and within-person associations with parent-child warmth and conflict. Data were collected from a three-cohort study of 285 Latino sibling pairs and their caregivers, who participated at three time points over an 18-month period in a randomized clinical trial. Results of multilevel longitudinal growth models revealed a quadratic effect of sibling intimacy, with moderation by child sex, and a linear effect of sibling conflict, moderated by mother nativity. Findings of multilevel models further revealed that mother-child (but not father-child) warmth was linked to sibling intimacy, suggesting that higher maternal warmth was related to greater sibling intimacy, on average, across time (between-person effect). Regarding conflict, there was a significant between-person effect of father-child conflict on sibling conflict, with higher average father-child conflict associated with higher sibling conflict over time. A within-person effect of mother-child conflict on sibling conflict revealed that on occasions when mothers reported greater conflict with their children than usual, children reported more sibling conflict. The discussion considers age-related changes in sibling relationships and the interplay of family dynamics in Latino families during middle childhood and the transition to adolescence. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).