The Role of Siblings in Adolescent Delinquency Next to Parents, School, and Peers: Do Gender and Age Matter?

Abstract

Purpose This study aimed to explore whether and how sibling delinquency affects adolescent delinquency, over and beyond the effects of other social domains such as parents, school, and peers, and whether this sibling effect is time-varying over the course of adolescence. Methods Six waves of data from the "Research on Adolescents Development And Relationships-Younger cohort" (RADAR-Y) were analyzed using hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) techniques. Besides an overall model, separate models were tested for the periods of early and late adolescence respectively, in which we accounted for differences in sibling pair composition with regard to gender and age. Results Sibling's delinquency was shown to be positively related to adolescent delinquency in early adolescence, only for sister and mixed-sex sibling pairs, but these effects disappeared in later adolescence. In brother pairs, an opposite pattern was observed: sibling delinquency was not related to delinquent behavior in early adolescence, whereas it was in late adolescence. Conclusion Sibling's delinquency explains part of adolescents' delinquency in early adolescence, beyond the influence exerted by peers, parents, and school. Analyzing early and late adolescence in separate models provided a more detailed insight in the influence of sibling's delinquency over time, and controlling for sex composition reveals that development of sibling similarity in delinquency differs between brothers, sisters, and mixed-sex sibling pairs.

The Sibling Effect for Delinquency: Mediation by Proactive Criminal Thinking and Moderation by Age

“…The effect, at least with respect to siblings, appears to be concentrated in early adolescent, perhaps because moral thinking is still at an early stage of development at this age and is more susceptible to influence than it is during mid-to late adolescent. As was observed in several previous studies (Huijsmans et al, 2019;Walters, 2018b), the sibling influence effect carried over into later adolescent, but, according to the present findings, this effect was no longer mediated by PCT. Effects in a mediation analysis are nearly always small (Kenny & Judd, 2014;Walters, 2019b) and the current results were no exception.…”

“…The appearance of a sibling influence effect in early adolescent (ages 10-13) but not in mid-adolescent (ages 14-17) is just the opposite of what Walters (2018b) found in a 5-year follow-up and Huijsmans et al (2019) observed in male sibling pairs. It should be noted, however, that the zero-order correlation between Wave 1 sibling delinquency and Wave 3 serious offending was only significant in the mid-adolescent subsample, just as sibling delinquency only predicted delinquency in older male sibling pairs in the Walters (2018b) study.…”

“…It was further hypothesized that the sibling influence effect would achieve significantly better results than a second comparison pathway (moral neutralization effect). Because age (Huijsmans et al, 2019; Walters, 2018b) and gender (Craine, Tanaka, Nishina, & Conger, 2009) have been found to moderate the sibling–delinquency relationship, preliminary analyses were conducted to determine whether either of these two variables moderated the sibling–delinquency relationship in the present sample. In the event of a significant moderating effect for age or sex, the sample would be further subdivided according to age (10-13, 14-17), sex (male and female), or both.…”

“…Finally, when Huijsmans and colleagues explored sibling delinquency with six waves of data, they determined that antisocial behavior correlated in female and mixed-gender sibling pairs in early adolescent but not in late adolescent. A reverse pattern was observed in male sibling pairs, where no effect could be discerned in early adolescent but where delinquency in a sibling predicted subsequent delinquency in a male sibling in late adolescent (Huijsmans, Eichelsheim, Weerman, Branje, & Meeus, 2019). The inconsistent results obtained with age and sex moderation of the sibling delinquency relationship, as outlined in this review, was one reason for conducting the current investigation.…”

In-laws or outlaws? Associations between in-law family members’ and individuals’ convictions

“…Apart from rather consistent associations with partner convictions for both males and females, male convictions are associated with having convicted male in-laws (that is, fathers-and brothers-in-law), whereas female convictions are associated with having convicted female in-laws (only mothers-in-law). This may suggest a same-sex spill-over or role-modelling effect, which has been found previously for biological sibling pairs (for example, Huijsmans et al, 2019) and to some extent also for intergenerational transmission of criminal behaviour (that is, transmission is stronger from same-sex parents and children) (for example, Farrington et al, 2017), although findings are not always consistent (for example, Beijers et al, 2017). However, the sex-specific results should be interpreted with some caution because the sample sizes and the number of convicted individuals became small after splitting the sample by gender.…”