A recent study published in the Journal of Family Issues suggests having multiple siblings may come with a potential downside for young teens. Research based on data collected from eighth graders found that kids with a large number of siblings appear to have worse mental health traits than their peers in smaller families.
“Parents who have more children may have fewer resources to reduce stress in the home relative to parents who have fewer children,” according to the study’s authors.
What’s more, researchers found that having older siblings close in age or any siblings within one year of each other had the strongest association with poor mental health.
“Closely spaced siblings compete more for the kinds of resources the target child needs from parents,” the authors wrote. “In addition, siblings born within one year and older are the only ones associated with lower mental health while younger siblings have no association with mental health.”
The researchers gathered data from almost 19,000 children in the United States and China with an average age of 14. They found that kids who had no siblings in China appeared to have the best mental health across the country, while single children and those with one sibling in the United States had better mental health than subjects with multiple siblings.
How does the number of siblings affect mental health?
To put it simply, parents with more than one kid obviously have to split their attention.
“This assertion of slightly poor mental health is most likely based on resource dilution,” explained