The Quality of the Sibling Relationship and Social Competence of Early Adolescents, with Parental Support as Moderator

Abstract

Aim: The aim of the current study was to research whether early adolescents with a harmonious sibling relationship have better social competence than those with a conflictual sibling relationship and whether this difference in social competence is moderated by parental support. Method: The participants were 230 early adolescents (Mage = 12.54, SD = .67), enrolled in Dutch schools. The cross-sectional data was collected through the online questionnaire on social competence by Valkenburg & Peter (2008), the Sibling Relationship Questionnaire-Short version (SRQ-S) and the Network of Relationships Inventory (NRI). Results: A T-test for independent samples shows that early adolescents with a harmonious sibling relationship scored significantly higher on social competence than early adolescents with a conflictual sibling relationship. However, regression analysis using PROCESS shows that the association between sibling relationship types and social competence is not significant. Parental support has a significant association with social competence, which means that early adolescents with more parental support scored higher on social competence. Parental support is not a significant moderator for the association between sibling relationship quality and social competence. Conclusion: The results show that it is important to take into account multiple subsystems in the (nuclear) family in research of social competence of early adolescents. Considering these results, interventions can be developed and used to prevent or minimize deficits in, or to promote social competence. In these interventions, the focus should not be on just one subsystem within the family, but other systems and the family as a whole should be highlighted.