Sibling abuse

Physical abuse

Sibling physical abuse is defined as a sibling deliberately causing violence to another sibling.^[6] The abuse can be inflicted with shoving, hitting, slapping, kicking, biting, pinching, scratching, and hair-pulling. Sibling physical abuse is more common than peer bullying and other forms of family abuse, such as spousal or child abuse,^[2] though for a multitude of reasons, it is very difficult to calculate exact prevalence rates. Even when sibling abuse is recognized it remains heavily under-reported, due to the lack of resources provided to families, such as child protective services and mandatory reporters.^[7] Professional childcare providers have considerably different definitions of the term, and lack a system to track reports. Sibling physical abuse persists from childhood through adulthood, with prevalence rates varying across studies, though its intensity and frequency declines as the victim and/or perpetrator grow up.^[2]

Sibling aggression is somewhat common even in families that could not be classified as pervasively abusive, with 37% of 498 children committing at least one act of serious abuse during the previous year; in abusive families, 100% of children committed at least one act of serious abuse.^[8] In Pakistani immigrant families in the UK, siblings have the highest proportion of physical abuse compared to other family members, with 35% being done by siblings, compared to 33% by mothers and 19% by fathers.^[9]

Several studies show that sisters are more likely to be victimized by brothers than vice versa.^[10][11] Additionally, age is also a contributing factor to sibling abuse, where older siblings are more likely to abuse the younger siblings.^[12]

Psychological abuse

Psychological abuse among siblings is even more difficult to identify. Psychological abuse in siblings can be identified by both the frequency and intensity of harmful interaction.^[6] These interactions can include ridicule to express contempt, as well as degradation towards the other's self-esteem. Adults, such as the parents or professional care providers have difficulty differentiating between psychological aggression and abuse because it is difficult to identify when the balance of power is not evenly distributed. Hence, the consequences of the aggression are not only injury, but also control or domination of one sibling over the other.^[2]

Although it has been found to be the most prevalent type of abuse in sibling conflict, prevalence rates are difficult to calculate, due to the difficulty in differentiating aggression from abuse.^[2] Whipple and Finton^[13][who?] report that "Psychological maltreatment between siblings is one of the most common, yet often under-recognized forms of child abuse." Several researchers have found negative psychological, academic, and social consequences to be related to sibling aggression and abuse; however, causal inference requires more study.^[2] One study found that adult sibling abuse survivors have much higher rates of emotional cutoff (34%) with brothers and sisters than what is evident in the general population (<6%).^[14]

Sexual abuse

Sexual sibling abuse is defined as sexual behavior "that is not age appropriate, not transitory, and not motivated by developmentally appropriate curiosity."^[6] To identify sexual abuse, there needs to be coercion and domination over one sibling.^[15] Prevalence rates are also difficult to calculate for several reasons: victims often do not realize that they are suffering abuse, until they reach maturity and have a better understanding of the role they played during the encounters; they are afraid of reporting; and there is no consensus on a definition of sibling sexual abuse.^[2]

As with other forms of abuse among siblings, there is a large lack of reporting in sibling sexual abuse, as parents either do not recognize it as being abuse or try to cover the abuse.^[15] An increased risk of sibling sexual abuse may be found in a heightened sexual climate in a family, or in a rigidly, sexually repressed family environments.^[6] Sexual abuse in siblings may have long-term affects on the victims. Many victims have been diagnosed with a variety of psychological problems.^[16] Victims have been recorded to correlate pain and fear with sex, leading to long term issues with intimacy.^[5]

Rudd and Herzberger report that brothers who committed incest were more likely to use force than fathers who commit incest (64% vs. 53%).^[17] Similarly, Cyr and colleagues found that about 70% of sibling incest involved sexual penetration, substantially higher than other forms of incest.^[18] Bass and colleagues write that "sibling incest occurs at a frequency that rivals and may even exceed other forms of incest," yet only 11% of studies into child sexual abuse examined sibling perpetrators.^[19] Rayment and Owen report that "[in comparison of] the offending patterns of sibling offenders with other teenage sex offenders ... Sibling abusers admitted to more sexual offenses, had a higher recidivism rate, and a majority engaged in more intrusive sexual behaviour than other adolescent sex offenders. The sibling perpetrator has more access to the victim and exists within a structure of silence and guilt."^[20] A survey of eight hundred college students reported by David Finkelhor in the Journal of Marriage and Family Counseling found that fifteen percent of females and ten percent of males had been sexually abused by an older sibling.^[21]

Family system

This category of risk factors associated with sibling abuse looks at the family system as a whole. It includes negative and conflictual parent-child relationships,^[16][22] parental hostility toward a child,^[23][22] spousal abuse, partner conflict, marital conflict,^{[24][25][16][26][22]} mother's marital dissatisfaction and negative emotional expressiveness,^[27][22] maternal self-criticism,^{[28][29][30][22]} financial stress,^[31][32][22] low family cohesion, family disorganization and household chaos,^{[33][34][35][22]} husband's losses of temper,^[34][22] low maternal education,^[36][22] and family triangulation.^{[37][38][39][22]}

Parenting behavior

This category of risk factors associated with sibling abuse examines the parenting behavior of adult caregivers. It includes parental differential treatment of children,^[40][22] fathers favoring later-born sisters,^[41][22] active and direct judgmental comparison,^[42][22] parents labeling their children "bad-good" and "easy-difficult",^[43][44][22] low parental involvement, particularly by fathers,^[41][22] ineffective parenting,^[45][22] inconsistent discipline,^[46][22] coercive parenting,^[47][22] maternal coercive, rejecting, and over-controlling behaviors,^[34][48][22] parental abuse of children,^[49][22] parent's use of violence to resolve parent-child conflict,^[50][22] parental neglect and approval of aggression,^[51][22] corporal punishment,^[34][22] not providing supervision,^[52][22] not intervening in sibling conflict,^[53][22] not acknowledging child-voiced claims of maltreatment,^[54][22] not reinforcing pro-social behaviors,^[55][22] and restricting children's efforts to diversify interests and specialization.^[56][22]

Individual

This category of risk factors associated with sibling abuse considers individual traits of the offender child and the victim child. For offender children, known individual risk factors include lack of empathy for victims,^[57][22] aggressive temperament,^[58][22] lower or higher self-esteem than peers,^[59][50][22] unmet personal needs for physical contact in emotion-deprived environments,^[60][37][22] experience of victimization, including by siblings,^[61][22] sibling caretaking of younger brothers and sisters,^[62][63][22] and boredom.^[64][22] For victim children, a known risk factor is psychological distress such as anger, depression, and anxiety from violence victimization by siblings (linked to re-victimization).^[65][66][22]

Other risk factors

Several other risk factors are associated with sibling abuse. One is birth order and age spacing. A study found that first-born children were more likely to be sibling abuse offenders.^[67][22] Imitating an older sibling's aggressive behavior,^[68][22] being given the task of sibling caretaking,^[62][22] and close age spacing^[69][70][22] were also found to be closely associated with sibling abuse.

Another risk factor is gender. The presence of a male child within the sibling group^{[36][16][71][72][22]} and older brother-younger sister pairs^{[69][73][49][61][10][22]} are associated with the occurrence of sibling abuse and being female^[74][22] is associated with the experience of victimization by a sibling.

Sociocultural background also factors into sibling abuse. Some known sociocultural background risk factors include cultural practices such as primogeniture and patriarchy,^[75][56][22] disability of a sibling,^[59][76][22] family economic pressure,^[32][22] excessive sibling caregiving,^[63][22] and ethnic/cultural background in which sibling aggression is widely condoned.^[77][22]

Parental alcoholism,^[22] parental support of child aggression,^[22] and social glorification of violence in the media^[22] have also been associated with sibling abuse.