RESEARCH ARTICLE
Birth Order, Traits and Emotions in the Sibling System as Predictive Factors of Couple Relationships
Hadas Doron*
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2009Volume: 2
First Page: 23
Last Page: 30
Publisher Id: TOFAMSJ-2-23
DOI: 10.2174/1874922400902010023
Article History:
Received Date: 29/12/2008Revision Received Date: 5/2/2009
Acceptance Date: 18/2/2009
Electronic publication date: 12/3/2009
Collection year: 2009
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
The objective of this study is to examine the connection between an individual's traits, emotional functioning and role division - which are influenced by birth order in the family of origin - and traits, emotional functioning and role division in the later spousal-couple context. 69 subjects which are either first-borns, middle or youngest children in their family of origin, were administered questionnaires measuring traits and emotions in both their past sibling and present couple system. Additionally, a role division questionnaire measured role division in their couple system. According to study's hypothesis, a correlation was found between the emotions expressed in the sibling system and in the couple system; traits were found to be correlated between the sibling and the couple systems only for first-borns and middle children. Contrary to research's hypothesis, no effect was found of birth order, on role division in the couple system. The findings' practical and methodological implications are discussed.
