Number of Siblings and Personality

Number of Siblings and PersonalityAuthor(s): Judith BlakeSource: Family Planning Perspectives, Vol. 23, No. 6 (Nov. - Dec., 1991), pp. 272-274Published by: Guttmacher InstituteStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2135778 .

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Comment

Number of Siblings and Personality

by Judith Blake

Are children from small families advantaged and those from large families disadvan- taged, other factors being equal?

To many in the family planning field, the answer is unequivocal-small families have the edge. But, challenged as family planning is today by special interest groups as well as by Congress, the Judiciary and the White House, hard data are needed to back up this view. Over the last decade, data from 11 national surveys on the achievement levels of 150,000 children have shown that offspring from small families score higher on IQ tests than those from large families and go sub- stantially farther in school-even after controls have been introduced for parents' socioeconomic background, education, marital status and similar important influences.' In- evitably, however, concern is expressed about the personalities of these children. What kind of human beings are those from small families? Are they asocial, self-centered, and aloof, while those from large families are warm, generous, and outgoing? Duane Alwin has said it well:

A more balanced approach to the issue of family size might give greater at- tention to non-intellective criteria. Hav- ing a number of siblings may help de- velop other traits beneficial to self and society, such as ability to get along and cooperate with others, to share one's be- longings, and to care for and help others. One would hope that the questions future generations will ask regarding the desired number of children and their ultimate "quality" will not be an- swered solely on the basis of criteria associated with amounts of schooling.2

Judith Blake is Fred H. Bixby Professor of Population, School of Public Health and Department of Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles. She acknowledges support from the National Science Foundation, the Na- tional Institute of Mental Health and the Fred H. Bixby Foundation in the pursuit of this research. Barbra Richardson, Jennifer Bhattacharya and Sonja Myhre pro- vided valuable statistical and clerical assistance.

Others have asserted that those from small families are driven by overriding ambition and a desire to achieve.3

These beliefs depict children from small families as smart and accomplished, with high levels of drive and achievement motivation, but low levels of sociability and warmth. This combination of characteristics, while tolerable in a minority, could be trou- blesome in a whole society of progeny re- sulting from low birth rates. After all, even professional and business enterprises are not well served by egocentric and driven loners; and coldness, aloofness and ambition are not characteristics associated with successful marriage or parenthood.

Fortunately, research on personality and number of siblings does not suggest bleak personality outcomes among those from small families. Before we consider these findings, we might ask why anyone would expect children from small families to have negative personality traits. One reason is that so much thinking is conditioned by psychoanalytic theory and the expectation that childhood experiences have enduring and measurable personality effects. Increasingly, however, psychologists are pointing out that these effects change or disappear as people move into adulthood.4 Some influences like gender socialization are constantly reinforced in adult life and therefore maintain a lot of power, but other forces lose saliency over time, especially as individuals mature and are touched by more immediate events that bear no sub- stantive connection to their earlier lives.

Children and Sociability Aside from the general influence of childhood experiences on adult personality, the number of siblings is thought to affect social development and, consequently, sociability. Generally regarded by psychologists as the need for affiliation, sociability is thought of as "the desire to draw near, cooperate, re- ciprocate, and be with a friend. The actions associated with this motive are meeting peo-

ple, making acquaintances, showing good will and love, doing things to please others, and avoid wounding others."5

Large families are believed to provide practice in learning social skills, and to cre- ate a structural imperative to interact, share, and take others' views and needs into ac- count; small families are seen as allowing aloofness and autonomy. Denise Polit and Toni Falbo have suggested that because only children may have a closer association with parents than other children they may feel less need to affiliate with peers.6

The evidence up to now (based primari- ly on samples of youngsters) tends to show that only children and children from small families exhibit no difference in sociability, or that they are more sociable than those from large families. Kenneth Terhune has summarized the findings on personality and number of siblings up to the early 1970s, although most of the data refer to comparisons of only children with those who have siblings.7 Many of the studies found that only children and those from small families are generally more outgoing and socially ac- cepted by peers. Only one study controlled for social class, however.

Turning to research completed since the Terhune review, John Claudy and colleagues address differential uses of free time in their analysis of the Project Talent Study.8 Control- ling for indicators of the parents' socioeconomic status, but not for IQ, they found that only children participated more than did children from two-child families in extracurricular activities, reading for pleasure, col- lecting and other hobbies, raising animals and pets, acting, music, dance, photography and clubs. Children with a sibling, on the other hand, participated more in sports and other team activities, high school leadership, hunt- ing and fishing, woodworking, crafts and cooking. Only children were engaged in activities that were often solitary, intellectual, and artistic; those with a sibling were engaged in group-oriented and practical activities.

272 Family Planning Perspectives



Polit and Falbo performed a meta-analysis of 141 studies on this topic published between 1926 and 1985.9 Most were psychology studies conducted in the United States, and almost all were based on samples of En- glish-speaking young people whose average age was 17. Although the researchers ex- pected that only children would have less need to associate with peers because of their strong relationship with their parents, sociability differences between only children and those with siblings were not evident.

My own analysis of data on children aged 6-11 from Cycle II of the Health Examination Survey indicates that those from small families were more likely to participate in cul- turally-related extracurricular activities than were children from large families.10 This analysis controlled for the childrens' age and sex, parents' education, family income, family intactness, mother's employment status, community size and region of the country. Those from small families also preferred intellectual and relatively solitary uses of time. Spending time alone, however, was not a consequence of not being liked; a variety of ratings, including those of teachers, identi- fied children from small families as more well-liked than those from large families. A further analysis of youngsters age 12-17 from Cycle III of the Health Examination Survey (which also controlled for the factors listed above) showed that children from small families were likely to engage in intellectual and artistic extracurricular activities, while those from large families participated only in sports, or in sports, church activities, youth groups and other community efforts, voca- tional activities (participated in by boys but not girls), or no activity at all.

Thus, research to date does not suggest that only children and those from small families are asocial, aloof and self-centered. This issue calls for further investigation, however, because these studies were based mainly on children-specifically, only children com- pared to others as a group-and frequently family background was not controlled for.

Achievement Motivation Again following psychoanalytic theory, many people believe that achievement motivation is "set" in childhood. Moreover, the number of siblings is thought to affect achievement motivation because desire to achieve could stem from intense "achievement training," a socialization characteristic that researchers suggest is associated with small families. Par- ents in these families allegedly set high goals for their children, impose standards of excel- lence on problem-solving tasks, and give high praise for tasks done well.11 These lofty standards are believed to stem in part from inex-

perienced parents' underestimates of the time it takes for a child to reach such goals as sleep- ing through the night, becoming toilet trained, eating independently and learning to talk.12 Moreover, parents who have fewer children have a proportionately larger emotional, fi- nancial and time investment in each child. Some sociologists have even claimed that the small family is driven by social status com- petition, with the parents maintaining high expectations of their children, who are mon- itored assiduously.13 Large families, on the other hand, are believed to be cooperative and consensual, with tasks allocated on the basis of function rather than performance criteria.

In Polit and Falbo's meta-analysis of possible differences between only children and those with siblings,14 achievement motivation shows a relationship with number of siblings (unlike most other personality traits), but the authors could not conclusively control for social class. It is not entirely clear, therefore, whether we are seeing an association of social class or family size with achievement motivation. In an earlier study in which I used indicators of achievement motivation from a number of surveys Youth in Transition, High School and Beyond, and Cycle III of the Health Examination Sur- vey-and controlled for parental background, the results show neither bivariate effects with number of siblings, nor suppressed effects that emerge when other components of the respondents' background are added.15

Research on Adults To supplement these data on children, I have conducted an analysis of two large-scale surveys of American adults, the Study of Amer- ican Family Growth (1957) and Americans View their Mental Health (1976).?6 The for- mer was a probability sample of 1,165 white, native-born, ever-married Catholic and non- Catholic women residing in the eight largest metropolitan areas of the country (exclud- ing Boston) in the mid-1950s. The wives were interviewed for an average of one hour and 20 minutes and given a personality in- ventory to mail back; the response rate was 83 percent. Data on sociability are based on whether the women preferred working and problem-solving alone or with others. Data on achievement motivation come from five items concerning the respondents' "drive to get ahead" (questions on what sacrifices one would be willing to make, such as leaving friends and relatives, to achieve one's goals); four items on need for achievement; and seven items on social status aspirations and the desire for upward social mobility.

The 1976 study was a national probability sample of both men and women in the noninstitutional population of the United

States. Respondents were asked to indicate their preferences for having more friends versus achieving one's goals or having power; preferences for working with com- patible people versus being challenged or having influence at work; and preferences for being liked versus being respected for one's accomplishment or having a major influence on others. The form of these questions offered a choice between a response measuring sociability and one measuring desire for achievement. Both surveys also asked about parental background characteristics such as education, income, family intactness and size of community where the respondent grew up, as well as the number Df siblings he or she had.

Variables like sociability and achievement motivation are "latent variables," that is, they must be measured indirectly (unlike variables such as schooling or income); therefore I used an analysis technique de- signed to give an independent measure of how well the model worked (a modification Df the LISREL technique).17 The results suggested that the models effectively measured the latent variables. Hence, if the background variables and number of siblings are not related to the latent variables (in this case sociability and achievement motivation), it is unlikely that this result can be explained by poor measurement. Our main analysis strategy was to assess

whether the number of siblings, considered independently, related to variables of so- .iability and achievement motivation, and then to see if the relationship would hold up after parental background was introduced. Among women, our results show no relationship at all between number of siblings ind sociability in the 1957 survey, and a positive relationship in the 1976 survey that does riot hold up when controls are introduced. Among men, there is a weak positive relationship with number of siblings-that is, those from large families are marginally more sociable-in the 1976 survey; howev- ?r, the finding does not remain when controls are introduced. Additionally, there is nio evidence of a lack of sociability among )nly children of either sex. Both surveys show achievement motiva-

-ion to be negatively associated with num- )er of siblings among both men and women: rhose from small families have higher ichievement motivation, as Polit and Falbo *ound for youngsters.18 But it is rare for this inding to survive controls for parental socio- ~conomic status. Out of 16 possible associ- itions between number of siblings and the atent variable, only eight are significant and, )f these, only three are still significant when zarental background is controlled for. Thus,

Volume 23, Number 6, November/December 1991 273



Number of Siblings and Personality

the apparent negative association of family size and achievement motivation is actual- ly a positive association between socioeconomic status and achievement motivation. These results underscore the importance of controlling for family background when at- tempting to assess the relationship between number of siblings and personality.

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Conclusions Our results indicate that the assumption that children from smaller families are less sociable than children from larger families is weak and is confounded by other factors. Rather, the results suggest that, on average, those from more advantaged socioeconomic backgrounds are less sociable, and those from small families are more frequently from advantaged backgrounds. These findings are in agreement with the findings in previous studies of children and of young people summarized by Polit and Falbo, and with the results of my earlier research on children. The combined data suggest that there may be no effect of number of siblings on sociability at any age.

For both sexes, achievement motivation is negatively associated with number of siblings among adults surveyed in 1957 and 1976, but this finding rarely survives controls for parental background. Achievement motivation thus appears to be related to high social status rather than small family size.

Although family size does not appear to affect personality, parents who have small families nonetheless offer their children great advantages intellectually and educational- ly. In particular, children's verbal ability can be strongly influenced by intense interac- tion with adults and this is a major predic- tor of schooling success.19 Thus, planning to have small families enables parents to ac- complish important personal and social achievements for their offspring. Of course, there is no evidence that verbal ability among children from large families cannot improve over the life course, but if such a change occurs, it could come too late to influence educational attainment.

Since everything has a cost, it is under- standable that some ask whether small families exact some kind of personality costs from children. Are the offspring of small families selfish, aloof, egocentric, asocial or excessively driven by ambition? Vast amounts of data on youngsters, including the Terhune and the Polit and Falbo studies, provide encouragingly negative answers, and the data on adults presented here, which control for socioeconomic background, also suggest no direct relationship between family size and sociability.

Thus, the much-vaunted personality advantages of large families and the disad- vantages of small families are conjecture, not fact. At this point, we have reason to believe that coming from a small family, on average, has either no effect on personality or is beneficial. I think it is unlikely, therefore, that our nation will pay a negative "personality price" for the intellectual and educational advantages of low fertility.

References 1. J. Blake, Family Size and Achievement, University of Cal- ifornia Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1989.

2. D. F. Alwin, review of Family Size and Achievement, Sci- ence, 245:199, 1989.

3. J. H. S. Bossard, Parent and Child, University of Penn- sylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1953; and J. H. S. Bossard and E. S. Boll, "Personality Roles in the Large Family," Child Development, 26: 71,1955.

4. 0. G. Brim, Jr., and J. Kagan, "Constancy and Change: A View of the Issues," in 0. G. Brim, Jr., and J. Kagan, eds., Constancy and Change in Human Development, Har- vard University Press, Cambridge, 1980; J. Kagan, "Per- spectives on Continuity," in 0. G. Brim, Jr. and J. Kagan, eds., Constancy and Change in Human Development, Har- vard University Press, Cambridge, 1980; and P. Baltes, "Life Span Developmental Psychology: Some Con- verging Observations on History and Theory," in P. B. Baltes and 0. G. Brim, Jr., eds., Life Span Development and Behavior, Vol. 2, Academic Press, New York, 1979.

5. R. E. Boyatzis, "Affiliation Motivation," in D. C. Mc- Clelland and R. S. Steele, eds., Human Motivation: A Book of Readings, General Leaming Press, Morristown, N. J., 1973.

6. D. F. Polit and T. Falbo, "Only Children and Person- ality Development: A Quantitative Review," Journal of Marriage and the Family, 49:309,1987.

7. K. W. Terhune, "A Review of the Actual and Expect- ed Consequences of Family Size," Department of Health Education and Welfare, publication no. 76-770, Gov- ernment Printing Office, Washington, D. C., 1974.

8. J. G. Claudy et al., The Consequences of Being an Only Child: An Analysis of Project Talent Data, American Insti- tutes for Research, Palo Alto, Calif., 1979.

9. D. F. Polit and T. Falbo, 1987, op. cit. (see reference 6).

10. J. Blake, 1989, op. cit. (see reference 1).

11. B. C. Rosen, "FamilyStructureand AchievementMo- tivation," American Sociological Review, 26:574,1961; and B. C. Rosen and R. D'Andrade, "The Psychological Ori- gins of AchievementMotivation," Socwmetry, 22:185,1959.

12. D. E Polit and T. Falbo, 1987, op. cit. (see reference 6).

13. J.H.S. Bossard, 1953,op.cit. (seereference3);andJ.H.S. Bossard and E. S. Boll, 1955, op. cit. (see reference 3).



16. C. E Westoff et al., American Family Growth, 1957-1967, data file, Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1982; J. Veroff, E. Douvan and R. A. Kulka, Americans View Their Mental Health, 1976, data file, University of Wisconsin Cen- ter for Demography and Ecology, Madison, Wis., 1979; and C. F. Westoff, et al., Family Growth in Metropolitan Amer- ica, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1961.

17. J. Blake, B. Richardson and J. Bhattacharya, "Num- ber of Siblings and Sociability," Journal of Marriage and the Family, 53:271, 1991.



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Number of Siblings and Personality

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