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March 14, 2010 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
32:37
1614 God, the State and the Family - Sibling Abuse Part Three
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This is Sibling Abuse Part 3, the research.
This is not going to be necessarily the most gripping of podcasts, but I think it's important to get through it, if you can, though it is a little grim at times.
And I will put all of these at fdrurl.com forward slash sibling abuse.
So, we start with child abuse by siblings.
Green, Arthur S., from 1984.
The case studies of five children who inflicted serious injuries on their young siblings are described in detail.
The children shared the following experiences.
They had been physically abused themselves.
Their families were undergoing crises, which accentuated their maternal deprivation and rejection.
They were burdened with excessive caretaking for the target sibling, who was perceived as the favorite, and they also had experienced the recent loss of their father or paternal caretaker.
The psychodynamics associated with sibling abuse represented an intensification of, quote, normal sibling rivalry due to the abuser's own maltreatment and deprivation.
Pent-up rage towards the mother was displaced onto the sibling rival.
The sibling attacks were adaptive for the abusers in the following ways.
A. They afforded them a measure of revenge against the more highly regarded sibling rival.
B. I'm not sure what that last one means.
Perhaps it means to show abuse to the abusing parent in the hopes of changing the abuse.
To continue, the author states that sibling abuse occurs in families torn by violence where patterns of maltreatment are passed from generation to generation.
Since an abusing child usually has been abused, deprived, exploited, and rejected, one cannot help the child without intervening with the family unit.
These families require a multidisciplinary treatment approach, including crisis intervention, outreach, and the establishment of a supportive therapeutic relationship with the parent.
The distorted parental perception and scapegoating of the abusing child should be explored and eliminated.
The poor self-esteem of these children must also be a focus.
Without intervention, children who abuse their siblings will be at risk for perpetuating their cruel and violent behavior in their relationships with peers, spouses, and with their own children.
I just wanted to comment that I don't think that sibling abuse represents an intensification of normal sibling rivalry.
Abuse is the...
I mean, siblings should feel for each other love.
And it's not an intensification of normal sibling rivalry to abuse another sibling.
Anyway... So, this is another review.
In her review of the literature, the author mentions one study that revealed that 70% of young families used physical violence to resolve conflicts that usually centered around possessions.
68% of families with adolescents also engaged in physical violence in which conflicts tended to revolve around personal space boundaries, touching each other or looking funny.
Even among teenagers who fought over responsibilities and social obligations, 63% used high levels of physical violence.
Data revealed that although male sibling pairs, more often than through things, pushed and hit than did female sibling pairs, the highest use of physical violence occurred between boy-girl sibling pairs, 68% of which engaged in high levels of violence.
Another paper from 1984, Serious Sibling Abuse by Preschool Children, from the Journal of the American Academy of Child Psychiatry.
Critical differences between sibling rivalry and pathological sibling abuse are identified in ten cases.
Three different psychodynamic formulations of sibling abuse were observed.
One, chronic parental abuse of the child.
Two, unconscious covert parental permission for the child's aggressive behavior.
And three, a child who identified with a dangerous, destructive person in the caretaker's life.
It could be an abusive father or, I guess, wife.
Or grandparent, perhaps.
To continue, most of the abusing children were the eldest, and most of the abusive interactions took place while parents were in close proximity.
These abusive children had sad, helpless feelings and experienced more sickness in their early years than did non-abusive children.
They showed irregular sleep patterns, separation, anxiety, and moodiness.
Such children lacked empathy and a clear understanding of the consequences of their behavior.
The authors state that the responsibility for not modulating the child's behavior rests with parenting or other caretaking persons in the child's life.
I think it's incorrect to say that such children lack a clear understanding of the consequences of their behavior.
Of course abusive siblings understand the consequences of their behavior.
Any regular pattern that is compulsively or even desire-driven must recognize the consequences of its behavior.
If you're thirsty, you have a drink. If you're hungry, you have some food.
If you're tired, you go to bed. The consequences of abuse is physical and psychological harm to the victim.
So they're perfectly able to understand the consequences of their behavior.
The author doesn't want to, I think, look at the fact that what they want is negative consequences.
What they pursue and what they achieve is negative consequences.
They clearly understand the effects of their abuse.
1977 paper, The Use of Force for Resolving Family Conflict, The Training Ground for Abuse.
Respondents in a small exploratory study reported on how intrafamilial conflict was resolved in their family.
The author found that verbal aggression was used as a conflict resolution mode in nearly all families.
Nearly all families.
Physical aggression to resolve parent-child and sibling conflicts occurred in about 70% of the families.
Physical aggression to resolve husband-wife conflicts occurred in 30% of the families.
Intergenerational patterns of conflict resolution were found.
Four types of intra-familial patterns were reported.
Screaming sluggers, silent attackers, threateners, and pacifists.
The author found a relationship between the method of conflict resolution used by spouses to resolve marital conflict and that which they used to resolve parent-child conflict.
Findings suggest that children are likely to use similar methods to resolve disagreements between one another.
So what goes on between the parents is mirrored and what goes on in the siblings.
Well, of course. So to continue, this is a bibliography that I found.
It began in July 1993.
It's a compilation of selected materials on sibling abuse, a type of family violence which receives little attention.
Although the topic is relatively obscure, the literature review revealed that sibling abuse, or violence between siblings, is quite common.
In fact, it has been shown to be even more common than child abuse by parents or spousal abuse.
Because of the potential lasting harmful effects on children that often extend into adulthood, the authors felt it was essential to compile what information is known about prevention, intervention, and remediation.
Sibling abuse is defined as physical, emotional, or sexual abuse of one sibling by another.
It ranges from relatively mild forms of aggression occurring between siblings, such as pushing and shoving, to extremely violent behavior, such as the use of a gun or a knife, by one sibling against another.
Excluding such acts as slaps, pushes, kicks, bites, and punches, it has been estimated that three children in a hundred are dangerously violent toward a brother or sister.
When all types of mild aggression and extreme violence toward a sibling are considered, the estimate soars to more than 36 million individual acts of sibling aggression each year.
It appears that sibling abuse is the most common and the most overlooked form of family violence.
Our understanding of the dynamics and causes of how sibling abuse is learned is greatly hindered by lack of research.
Typically, fights and other physical forms of aggression among siblings are expected.
Because of this, sibling abuse is often unidentified as a problem until serious injuries occur or until the child hurts someone outside the family.
And I don't think the authors here are saying that just because physical fights between siblings are expected that it's okay.
I mean, obviously it's not okay and it should never be expected as a normal course of development.
To continue, there are some factors that appear to contribute to the occurrence of sibling abuse.
In our society, parents accept sibling rivalry as part of family life.
It is not unusual for siblings to use violence as a means of control.
Parents often excuse sibling abuse as simple sibling rivalry or boys will be boys.
However, when parents fail to intervene, they give permission for the sibling abuse to continue.
Children also tend to learn about violent behavior from several other sources.
They observe violence in the media and sometimes in their family, among their peers, and in their neighborhoods.
Children who witness or experience violence tend to use it against their siblings.
One author stated that if you grow up and see violence between everyone else in the households, you not only learn the behavior, but also the justification and the morality of it as well.
It becomes acceptable for big people to control and punish little people.
Childhood is a time of strong competition.
Parents can inadvertently exacerbate a potential sibling problem by making comparisons between the siblings or by labeling children.
Sometimes parental favoritism is the real cause of a child's hostility towards a brother or sister.
Having, quote, favorites in a family can be just as devastating as overt abuse.
It can affect the favorite child as well as the non-favorite child.
Within the last few years, researchers have been investigating lasting deleterious effects of early experiences with siblings and brothers.
We now are beginning to understand the strong, sometimes long-lasting effects siblings have on one another's emotional development as adults.
Studies have shown that women who recall painful physical or emotional abuse by a sibling during childhood are much more likely than men to suffer from depression, anxiety and low self-esteem as adults.
Men who recall abuse by a sibling are more likely to suffer from low self-esteem.
Adults who suffered from sibling abuse as children are often less trusting and less likely to feel that the world is a predictable place.
Inability to trust, relationship difficulties and alcohol, drug and eating disorders also have been linked to sibling abuse in childhood.
Even less extreme sibling rivalry during childhood can create insecurity and poor self-images in adulthood.
Sibling conflict does not have to be physically violent to take a long-lasting emotional toll.
Emotional abuse, which includes teasing, name-calling and isolation, can be just as detrimental.
All siblings fight, and all siblings call each other names, and some play doctor.
But there is a difference between typical behaviors and abuse.
There are a few guidelines to help parents make this distinction.
One of the most important questions parents can ask themselves is, is one child constantly a victim of a sibling?
If the answer is yes, parents need to intervene, identify the source of the problem, and carefully monitor interactive behaviors between the children in the future.
Siblings are agents of development in the cognitive, social, and effective domains.
Siblings teach one another cooperation and competition skills.
For instance, college students with a history of positive sibling relationships have the easiest time getting along with roommates.
They have a good sense of boundaries, show respect for others, and expect to be treated fairly in return.
Experts agree that healthy sibling relationships can be tremendously beneficial, not only during college, but also throughout life.
This is Characteristics of Male Adolescent Sibling Incest Offenders Preliminary Findings.
This is 1989. The author investigated demographic sexual, individual, and family variables to determine unique characteristics of 170 male adolescent sibling incest offenders who were referred for evaluation to an outpatient mental health clinic.
This is the exception to what I was talking about in part one.
I wasn't going to talk about this, but except for this part.
This sample was subdivided into three groups, sibling offenders, child molesters, and non-child offenders.
Data from a confidential questionnaire, intake, data form, and demographic report were analyzed, comparing sibling incest offenders with other offender types.
Family environment, socialization, and sexual victimization were ideological factors investigated.
Results challenge the previously held assumption that sibling incest is a benign phenomenon.
A distinction needs to be drawn between peer-age siblings who engage in mutually consenting exploratory sexual behaviors and children who sexually exploit their brothers or sisters over whom they have power, whether by implied age or status or expressed through intimidation or force.
The latter group represents serious sex offenders in need of intervention and treatment.
Generally, the sibling incest offenders came from the most dysfunctional families, those having high rates of physical, sexual, and drug-slash-alcohol abuse.
There was some evidence to suggest a multi-generational transmission of incestuous dynamics.
Also, when compared to the two other groups, the sibling incest offenders were the most likely to have been sexually victimized prior to initiating their sexual offending behaviors.
Of the sexually victimized sibling incest offenders, two of three were abused by family members or relatives.
So again, we see that it is adult to child and then child to child.
It's adult to child that occurs even with incest.
The data show a significant association between choice of victim by gender and the adolescent's own experience as a victim of sexual abuse.
An adolescent who was victimized by a male was more likely to choose a male victim, or both a male and female victim.
An adolescent victimized by a female or never sexually victimized was most likely to choose a female victim.
The sibling incest offenders had significant deficits in socialization skills.
They were more conduct disordered than the child molesters or non-child offenders and more likely to have been involved in previous therapy.
And this is what I was talking about many moons ago when I was chatting with a fellow about bisexuality, saying that there is a correlation between being sexually abused by a male and choosing a male victim.
And this fellow was not a victimizer, right, at all.
that is not the same as homosexuality that is occurring from a hormonal or genetic standpoint.
Here's another study from 1990.
That's amazing. That's 20 years ago and this stuff is still so buried in our culture.
So this is Family Violence in American Families, Risk Factors and Adaptations to Violence in 8,145 Families.
That's quite a lot of families.
It's not a small sample. So the editors present an in-depth overview of violence in contemporary families in the United States.
They draw on data from two landmark investigations.
The book is written for the scholarly community.
This is kind of mind-blowing.
The section on violence by children, ages 3 through 17, states that children are the most violent people of all in American families.
The rates are extremely high for violence against a sibling.
800 out of 1,000 had hit a brother or sister, and more than half had engaged in one of the acts considered to be severely violent.
The finding was a surprise, although it could have been an obvious prediction, because of the well-known tendency for children to imitate and exaggerate the behavioral patterns of parents, and because there are implicit norms that permit violence between siblings, exemplified by phrases such as, It was shown that two-thirds of American teens, ages 15 to 17, assault a sibling at least once during a year.
And in over a third of these cases, the assault involved an act with a relatively high probability of causing injury, kicking, punching, biting, choking, or attacking with a knife or a gun.
In the section on assault to families and violence by children in the family, the authors ask the questions.
Are children who experience physical assault from parents and who witness assaults between their parents or both more likely than other children to engage in violence toward family and non-family members?
Data indicate that the rate of sibling violence is higher among children in families in which child assault and or spouse assault are present, and highest of all when both child assault and spouse assault are present.
However, the analysis shows that sibling violence is more strongly associated with child assault than with spouse assault.
In other words, if parents hit kids, kids will hit each other more than if parents hit parents.
Although the relationship between sibling violence and violence in other family relationships for both boys and girls is similar, boys display more assaultive behavior towards siblings than girls.
Data were presented to suggest that perhaps minor violence and violence that is severe enough to be classified as a criminal assault are learned family behaviors.
There were no significant differences in rates of sibling violence for children from blue or white collar families.
Child assault victimization is significantly related to sibling violence for both socioeconomic groups.
The highest rates of sibling violence occur among children from multi-assaultive families regardless of social class.
Another study or another book, Intimate Violence in Families, Family Studies Tax Series.
This is 1990. Chapter 5.
Hidden Victims, Siblings, Adolescents, Parents, and the Elderly examines family relations that have been largely overlooked.
It focuses on sibling violence, not sibling abuse.
Violence between siblings is so common that people rarely think of these events as family violence.
The author states that sibling violence is the most common form of family violence.
Sociologists have found that parents feel it is important for their children to learn how to handle themselves in violent situations.
Parents do not actively discourage their children from becoming involved in disputes with their siblings.
In fact, parents may try to ignore aggressive interactions and only become involved when minor situations are perceived as escalating into major confrontations.
Sibling rivalry is considered a quote, normal part of sibling relations, and many believe that such rivalry provides a good training ground for successful management of aggressive behavior in the real world.
Parents generally feel that some exposure to aggression is a positive experience that should occur early in life.
Parents view frequent and violent confrontations between siblings as inevitable.
The author describes sex, age and other factors related to sibling violence.
Some researchers have postulated that sibling violence is a learned response.
Some sociologists believe that siblings learn from their parents that physical punishment is an appropriate technique for resolving conflicts.
In comparison, children who are raised in a nonviolent environment learn that there are a variety of nonviolent techniques available for resolving conflicts with brothers and sisters, and later with their spouses and children.
In other words, it is not innate.
Sibling violence is transmitted from the parents.
This is another paper, The Role of Siblings and Peers, 1987.
Parents and professionals may fail to regard sibling abuse as pathological because, one, they consider such aggression as normative, or children are, quote, just going through a stage.
Two, they think children are not strong enough to inflict severe harm.
Three, they believe they can ultimately control such bouts of aggression by using physical force themselves.
And four, most importantly, they believe these aggressive exchanges occur between equals.
The precipitance of sibling aggression are unknown.
It has been suggested that poor parenting leading to emotional disturbance may be one basis of pathological levels of aggression exhibited by one sibling toward another.
One authority sees sibling rivalry as a natural consequence of children's competition for a limited amount of parental attention and finite family resources.
Children will work to minimize competition by finding their own niche in the family, thus one child may become the family scholar and another the family artist.
When parents' rewards are distributed only to children who assume certain roles, and when the competition for those rewards is extreme, a child may assume the role of the black sheep.
And seek only negative kinds of attention.
To avoid this problem, parents are told to put all children in the same boat rather than taking sides in a controversy, to spend time alone with each child, and to attend to and reward the unique abilities and achievements of each child.
This was also quite chilling.
Special Issues in Child Sexual Abuse from 1988.
The author states that although sexual contact between daughters and their fathers or stepfathers is the most frequently reported incestuous activity, incest between siblings probably occurs more frequently.
The author cites a survey of New England students that revealed that while only 1% of the girls were victims of incest with their fathers or stepfathers, 15% had sexual contact with a sibling.
80% of these girls were sexually involved with their brothers, while 20% had homosexual contact with their sisters.
None of the boys reported parental incest, while 10% participated in sibling incest, which was equally divided into brother and sister incest.
90% of the girls and 80% of the boys were 12 or under at the time.
The girls reported that 30% of the sibling incest took place under the threat of force.
The author identified the factors which might contribute to the development of sibling incest as parental and family psychopathology and sibling psychopathology.
The traumatic impact of sibling incest depends on the type of molestation, frequency, duration, and extent of the sexual contact.
The degree of coercion and physical force applied, the discrepancy of age between the siblings and the nature of the sibling relationship.
I'm not sure I would really go with that last statement, but let's continue some Some researchers have presented evidence that homosexual incest may be more pathogenic than heterosexual incest because the former involves the breaching of an additional taboo homosexuality.
Some journal articles abused and unabused children's perception of their mothers, fathers, and siblings from 1981.
In this study, the author reported two basic differential patterns that arise when children from abusive families are compared.
With those from non-abusive families.
First, both abused and non-abused children from abusive families seem to have more negative feelings and perceptions and fewer positive ones towards their parents and siblings than children from non-abusive families.
Well, that seems kind of obvious.
But I thought this was interesting and underlines why I've spent quite a lot of time talking about ambivalence.
Second, the children from abusive families also have more feelings of ambivalence towards their parents than do children from non-abusive homes.
Adolescents may experience homeschool abuse.
Their future draws researchers' concern.
From the Journal of the American Medical Association, 1992, the author reviewed two studies and reported that sibling abuse is perhaps the most common form of violence within families.
Of the students surveyed who had siblings living at home at age 12 years, almost half were victims or aggressors of, quote, violent acts of kicking and punching.
10% said their siblings beat them up and 4% said their siblings threatened them with a knife or gun or had used a knife or gun against them.
In a survey of middle and senior high school attitudes, 74% of the students approved of hitting one sibling if one is reacting to being hit first, 43% approved of hitting if the sibling breaks one's stereo, 38.5% approved of hitting if the sibling makes fun of the student in front of friends, and 24.8% approved of hitting a sibling if there is an argument and the other sibling does not listen to reason.
The author states that violence between children is so commonplace that it is perceived as, quote, normal childhood behavior.
Parents take it for granted that kids will be kids and tend to ignore sibling violence, yet it can have long-lasting effects.
The researcher found that parents often hotly defended the aggressive child and were either unaware or refused to believe that their children behaved violently towards one another, especially when weapons were involved.
It was found that families with sons only consistently have more sibling violence than families with daughters only.
This difference increases as the children mature until it is twofold by ages 15 and 17 years.
Child abuse by siblings from 1984 The case studies of five children who inflicted serious injuries on their young siblings are described in detail.
And I think, yeah, we've talked about some of this.
I'm gonna skip to the next one. Treating Sibling Violence from 1990.
The author suggests that sibling violence is a widespread problem that can be distressful in its own right and can cause other family disturbances.
This paper presents a problem-solving, task-centered model for treating sibling violence.
The model emphasizes helping parents and siblings create rules for controlling sibling conflict.
Rules are developed through in-session problem-solving that includes direct negotiation between siblings.
Rules are then implemented in tasks carried out between sessions.
Specific goals for the father were to talk to the boys instead of hitting them.
The mother's goal was to follow through on consequences with the boys.
The parents' goal was to spend more time together.
The goals for the boys included ask before using others' things, avoid name calling, and back off before fighting.
All family members were expected to reduce physical fighting.
Amazing that these rules even need to be expressed, but there it is.
Sibling interaction in abusive and neglectful families.
This is from 1986.
An observational study of sibling interaction in abusive, neglectful, and non-abusive two-parent families provided data to explore the impact of abuse on verbal and physical social behaviors between siblings.
The author summarized the following conclusions drawn from my literature search on sibling interaction and relationships.
A. Siblings may be thought of as first peers, who provide children with some of their earliest social experiences.
B. Sibling relationships generally endure the tests of time and intra-relationship struggles.
C. Siblings act as models for the acquisition and development of social skills.
D. Siblings may protect one another from hostile, intra- or extra-familial influences.
E. Siblings are agents of development in the cognitive, social, and affective domains.
Researchers have begun to isolate trends regarding the influence of sibling relationships on peer relationships.
In general, the rate of children's negative interaction with siblings was four times greater than positive sibling interactions.
Children averaged 48 verbal and 21 physical sibling interactions per hour.
And of the 69 sibling interactions, 1.6 were positive and 6.4 were negative.
I'm sorry, that doesn't add up.
But I think the four times things is valid, but that doesn't add up.
Sad facts about sibling violence.
From the Boston Globe, 1982.
This article asserts that the bottom line is that when kids see their parents being violent against each other, they learn that people who love each other have a right to be violent.
Researchers have distinguished between petty violence and abusive violence, And they believe that 29 million of the nation's 36 million children ages 3 to 17 have engaged in petty violence.
As children grow up, boys remain much more violent than girls.
A 2005 study puts the number of assaults each year, two children by a sibling, at about 35 per 100 kids.
The same study found the rate to be similar across income levels in racial and ethnic groups.
And I've read elsewhere that over 50% of sibling relationships are considered abusive.
I don't know that I need to add much to this other than to just say that, of course, this is the Level of violence that children grow up with.
And to me, of course, it's not at all surprising then when we grow up, we think of using the state to solve problems.
We think of using violence to solve problems because that's what we've lived.
That's what we've experienced.
And until we can start to solve this problem, there's no point trying to fix the social institutions.
There's no point trying to fix the social institutions because they arise.
Out of the experiences of our families, the state is an effect of the family of the family of the family.
I can't say it often enough.
And that's why we have to fix our own personal relationships before we can even imagine how to fix the state.
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