Abstract
Sibling rivalry refers to a marked change in a child’s affect and/or behavior that occurs in response to the birth of a sibling. The feelings and behaviors that characterize sibling rivalry include increased negative affect with predominant feelings of jealousy, anger, and rejection, lack of positive regard for the sibling, increased oppositionality, overt or covert aggression toward the sibling, marked competition for parental affection and attention, and regression to earlier stages of development (e.g., use of babytalk, loss of bladder or bowel control). Although child clinicians report that sibling rivalry is a frequent presenting complaint, there is a dearth of empirical data about the prevalence, incidence, or stability of the phenomenon. In addition, there are no data on external validity. For example, it is not clear whether the disorder is related to other aspects of intra- or interpersonal dysfunction. Sibling rivalry disorder has been included as an official childhood emotional disorder in the World Health Organization ICD-10 diagnostic system. A similar category does not exist in DSM III-R. This chapter briefly reviews theoretical and empirical advances in the study of sibling rivalry in order to evaluate the rationale for including sibling rivalry as either a diagnostic category for children or a condition that is not attributed to a mental disorder but as a relational problem that is documented as a focus of treatment in DSM-IV.
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© 1992 Plenum Press, New York
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Carter, A.S., Volkmar, F.R. (1992). Sibling Rivalry. In: Lahey, B.B., Kazdin, A.E. (eds) Advances in Clinical Child Psychology. Advances in Clinical Child Psychology, vol 14. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-9838-7_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-9838-7_9
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