Number of Siblings and Friendship Nominations Among Adolescents

Abstract

Considerable social science research questions the benefit of siblings. The most prominent example is the consistent negative association between sibship size and educational outcomes. But more recent work among kindergartners uncovered a potentially positive outcome—greater social skills—at least for those who have at least one sibling. We extend this line of inquiry to adolescence to see if there are long-term negative consequences of growing up without any siblings. Analyzing 13,466 youths from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we find no evidence that only children receive fewer peer nominations of friendship than youths with one (or more than one) sibling(s). Our results suggest that the previously observed social skills deficit among only children in kindergarten appears to be overcome by adolescence.