It’s hard for parents of more than one child not to compare them. Our minds like to sort and categorize, and the result is often either labeling (athletic, academic) or ranking (better than, stronger than, more able in one area or another). New research suggests that those thoughts, even if they stay unexpressed, may affect our children’s academic successes. The same research suggests that those parental expectations form early and aren’t affected by changes in a child’s performance.
Alexander C. Jensen, assistant professor of human development at Brigham Young University, and Susan M. McHale, professor of human development at Pennsylvania State University, used data collected from 388 mostly European-American families with various kinds of adolescent brother-sister/sister-sister/brother-brother sibling pairs (in families with more than two children, the researchers focused on the oldest and second-born).
In interviews, parents were asked: “To what extent are (younger and older sibling’s names) different when it comes to school and the academic arena, such as getting good grades? Would you say that (younger sibling) is a lot better at schoolwork, that (older sibling) is a lot better at schoolwork, or are they somewhere in between?”
Some parents said there was no difference, but in cases in which parents rated the academic abilities of siblings differently, those beliefs had an effect. If parents thought that No. 1 Son was better at schoolwork than No. 2 Son, then as measured by grade point average, over time, that assessment tended to become more and more accurate. On average, the sibling expected to do better did, increasing the spread between them, even after researchers controlled for things like relative performance in the prior year and average grade point averages.
As the researchers put it, “Offspring whom parents believed to be relatively more academically competent outperformed their siblings in school, and offspring whom parents believed to be relatively less competent were outperformed by their siblings.” That relative performance had another impact: “Youth who had higher GPAs relative to their siblings became comparatively more interested in academics the following year.”
“What we found was that parental beliefs play some role in relative academic performance,” Dr. Jensen said. “Not the only role, and probably not even the largest role, but it’s significant. It’s not even about whether the kids are aware of it. Just the presence of distinctions was enough to make a difference.”
In families where siblings defied expectations, those expectations did not change. Even if the sibling viewed as less able outperformed a sibling with higher expectations, the parents views (as measured in return interviews) remained “quite stable over time,” the researchers wrote. “By the time siblings are adolescents, parents may have developed firm ideas about what their children are like and how they compare — beliefs that are less malleable than youth’s GPAs.”
This study is far from perfect — the sample is small, geographically limited (all participants were from 17 school districts in a Northeast state), and even the researchers would like to know more. “What I wish we could answer,” Dr. Jensen said, “is how this is carried out. Are parents treating children differently? Do the kids pick up on the distinctions and act on them?”
It’s also unclear how these parental beliefs develop. Gender stereotyping may have an impact, as may ordinary childhood development. Parents of both boys and girls who said there was a difference between children were more likely to identify their daughter as the more academic of the pair. Parents were also more likely to say that the older child was the stronger student.
“An older kid at any given moment is more competent than a younger child,” Dr. Jensen said. “That doesn’t mean they have greater capacity, but I think that’s what kids tend to interpret it as.”
As adult children, many of us know that outright comparisons to siblings matter — and we believe we know exactly what our parents think we’re capable of, and how hard that judgment is to change. As parents, we may have learned not to voice our opinions, but learning not to form a comparison at all, and to let our thoughts about a child’s abilities change as the child herself changes, is more difficult.
“You can help each kid feel like they’ve got a lot of good going on for them without making them feel like they’re better than their siblings,” Dr. Jensen said. Or you can try.