Sibling Rivalry: Children are stressed when fathers play favourites

Research by Megan Gilligan, a Purdue doctoral student in sociology, and Jill Suitor, a professor of sociology, found that sibling Baby Boomers are likely to be more stressed by their fathers' favouring one over another than by their mothers' doing so. 

Credit: Purdue University photo /Mark Simons

"It didn't matter who fathers favored. When favouritism was perceived there was tension among siblings, especially daughters," said Megan Gilligan, a Purdue doctoral student in sociology who is lead author on the article.

"Often the role of fathers is overlooked in these older relationships, but what we found shows dads do matter."

This research, which is published in the July issue of the Journal of Gerontology, Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, looked at 137 later-life families with both parents still alive when the data was collected in 2008.

The average age of the 341 siblings was 49, and they were asked about tension among each other and the perceived favouritism by their parents.

The parents were in their 70s and 80s, and the fathers were an average of three years older than the mothers.

"The importance of fathers' favouritism may come from these older adults noticing many of their friends' fathers no longer living, so they may value their dads even more than before; they realise their time together is limited," said Jill Suitor, a professor of sociology and article co-author.

Previous research by Suitor, Gilligan and Karl Pillemer, professor of human development in the College of Human Ecology at Cornell University, showed that if mothers favoured a child, it caused sibling tension.

However, that work focused only on mothers' favouritism. By looking at both living parents in this recent article, the researchers were able to evaluate the consequences of favouritism from both parents.

This research is based on the survey data from the Within-Family Difference Study, led by Suitor and Pillemer to evaluate the role favoritism plays in adult family relationships.

The data for the 13-year project were collected in the Boston metropolitan area. The project is funded by the US National Institute on Aging.

"The implications of these findings will be important to practitioners," Pillemer said. "We often think of the family as a single unit, and this reminds us that individual parent and child relationships differ and each family is very complex. Favouritism from the father could mean something different than favouritism from the mother. We suggest that clinicians who work with families on later-life issues be aware of this complexity and look for such types of individual relationships as they advise families on care giving, legal and financial issues."

The difference in this research could be the result of the role fathers played in this older generation.

"Fathers are important figures in families, and the father-child relationship is sometimes more tenuous than the mother-child tie," Suitor said.

"Mothers are often more open and affectionate with their children, whereas fathers have sometimes been found to be more critical, leading offspring to be more concerned when fathers favour some children over others."

This also could play a role in why daughters experience more tension with their siblings when fathers favour them.

"The gender difference may occur because fathers, as other studies have shown, often invest more in their sons, thus, the favouritism shown toward daughters may violate these norms and result in greater sibling tension," Gilligan said.

"For these reasons, when adult children perceive their fathers as engaging in favouritism, there may be greater concern about competition for his affection and support, resulting in higher levels of sibling tension."

Gilligan and Suitor also said that these values and norms may have changed since the Baby Boomer generation.

Suitor, Pillemer and Gilligan plan to extend the present project to include interviewing the Baby Boomers about their own adult children.

More information: Differential Effects of Perceptions of Mothers' and Fathers' Favoritism on Sibling Tension in Adulthood, Megan Gilligan, J. Jill Suitor, Seoyoun Kim, and Karl Pillemer, Journal of Gerontology, Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, 2013.

ABSTRACT
Objectives. We examine the differential effects of perceived maternal and paternal favouritism in adulthood on sibling tensions in adulthood.

Method. Data used in the analysis were collected from 341 adult children nested within 137 later-life families as part of the Within-Family Differences Study.

Results. Adult children's perceptions that their fathers currently favored any offspring in the family predicted reports of tension with their siblings, whereas perceptions of mothers' favouritism did not. Fathers' favouritism was a stronger predictor of daughters' than sons' reports of sibling tension.

Discussion. These findings contribute to a growing body of research demonstrating the consequences of parental favouritism in adulthood. Equally important, they demonstrate that perceptions of fathers' current favouritism plays an even greater role in shaping their adult children's sibling relations than do mothers' favouritism.

Children's Hearts: MRI detects early damage following chemotherapy

Detecting early damage to a child's heart following chemotherapy is possible using MRI scans, says a study from Canada.

Even when children's heart function appeared to be normal, a new MRI method of mapping the heart was able to identify damage, University of Alberta researchers said.

A UK cardiologist said the impact of anthracycline treatment on children's hearts was only now being understood.

Early detection was crucial, he said.

While chemotherapy treatment with anthracyclines is known to be effective against many types of cancer, it can lead to irreversible changes to the heart muscle which may not become apparent until several years after treatment.

Writing in the Journal of Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance, the researchers said they performed MRI scans on children and young adults aged seven to 19 who were in remission following this type of treatment.

Richard Thompson

Using an emerging MRI method called T1 mapping, they said they were able to identify the early effects on patients' hearts.

This happened even in children whose heart function appeared normal by ultrasound.

Dr Edythe Tham and Dr Richard Thompson, who led the study, said: "In childhood cancer survivors, MRI changes were related to anthracycline dose given to the children.

"These changes are also mirrored by thinning of the heart wall and a reduction in the exercise capacity."

Early protection
Dr Chris Plummer, consultant cardiologist at the Freeman Hospital in Newcastle, said the side effects of chemotherapy were well-known.

"Chemotherapy with anthracyclines is a very effective treatment for cancer but it can be quite toxic to the heart.

"We've known that for a long time but the number of children affected is only becoming appreciated now.

"We have to look for ways to protect the heart and intervene earlier when damage occurs.

"Waiting for visible heart damage to appear is too long to wait."

But Dr Plummer said carrying out an MRI scan of a child's heart was not an easy thing to do.

"Scanning the heart is more difficult than other organs because it is constantly in motion. But with modern scanners the images are fantastic.

"It's the best way of looking at the structure and function of the heart - and it's entirely safe.

"It is an excellent way of precisely monitoring heart function in children."

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Autism: MEG Research Advances Detection from brain activity

Roberto Fernández Galán

Neuroscientists from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and the University of Toronto have developed an efficient and reliable method of analyzing brain activity to detect autism in children.

Their findings appear today in the online journal PLOS ONE. The researchers recorded and analyzed dynamic patterns of brain activity with magnetoencephalography (MEG) to determine the brain's functional connectivity – that is, its communication from one region to another.

MEG measures magnetic fields generated by electrical currents in neurons of the brain. Roberto Fernández Galán, PhD, an assistant professor of neurosciences at Case Western Reserve and an electrophysiologist seasoned in theoretical physics led the research team that detected autism spectrum disorder (ASD) with 94 percent accuracy.

The new analytic method offers an efficient, quantitative way of confirming a clinical diagnosis of autism.

"We asked the question, 'Can you distinguish an autistic brain from a non-autistic brain simply by looking at the patterns of neural activity?' and indeed, you can," Galán said.

"This discovery opens the door to quantitative tools that complement the existing diagnostic tools for autism based on behavioural tests."

In a study of 19 children—nine with ASD—141 sensors tracked the activity of each child's cortex.

The sensors recorded how different regions interacted with each other while at rest, and compared the brain's interactions of the control group to those with ASD.

Researchers found significantly stronger connections between rear and frontal areas of the brain in the ASD group; there was an asymmetrical flow of information to the frontal region, but not vice versa.

The new insight into the directionality of the connections may help identify anatomical abnormalities in ASD brains.

Most current measures of functional connectivity do not indicate the interactions' directionality. "It is not just who is connected to whom, but rather who is driving whom," Galán said.

Their approach also allows them to measure background noise, or the spontaneous input driving the brain's activity while at rest.

A spatial map of these inputs demonstrated there was more complexity and structure in the control group than the ASD group, which had less variety and intricacy.

This feature offered better discrimination between the two groups, providing an even stronger measure of criteria than functional connectivity alone, with 94 percent accuracy.

Case Western Reserve's Office of Technology Transfer has filed a provisional patent application for the analysis' algorithm, which investigates the brain's activity at rest.

Galán and colleagues hope to collaborate with others in the autism field with emphasis on translational and clinical research.