Sibling Relationships with Developmentally Disabled People.

In this exploratory study, 46 sisters of moderately to profoundly developmentally disabled individuals, 12-69 years of age, completed questionnaires that included measures of their sibling relationships with disabled and non-disabled siblings, their family experiences within the family of origin, and their opinions concerning service delivery and policy issues in the field of developmental disabilities. Subjects were volunteers from among families contacted by social service agencies in Southeastern Michigan. The sibling relationship scores generally depicted positive, but non-intimate, relationships with the disabled siblings; in addition, these relationships were non-reciprocal in terms of domination, admiration, and nurturance. Furthermore, relationships with disabled siblings were lower in intimacy, similarity, admiration, competition, and being nurtured than were relationships with non-disabled siblings in the same families. Nurturance of and domination over a sibling were rated higher with disabled siblings than with non-disabled siblings. Overall family effectiveness and most of the component family factor scores for the subjects' families were higher than scores from a mental health clinic sample, and were generally similar to scores from a normative sample. No definitive trends in the data were linked to age of the subjects; however, there were associations with sibship constellation factors (birth order and age span between subjects and their disabled siblings) and characteristics of the disabled siblings (gender, level of impairment, and age). This review and research have significance for professionals involved with service delivery and program planning for developmentally disabled individuals and their families, as well as for social scientists studying general sibling relationships.PhDSocial workDevelopmental psychologyUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/161360/1/8712070.pd