The Effect of the Parental Differential Treatment for Sibling

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-551-5_104How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Parental differential treatment; attachment theory; social comparison theory; socioemotional competence; sibling relationships

Abstract

Infancy represents a critical stage in human development, during which biological, genetic, and environmental factors exert irreplaceable influences across the lifespan. The present study focuses on the phenomenon of parental differential treatment (PDT) in multi-child families, examining its underlying causes as well as its profound implications for children’s psychological and social development. Grounded in attachment theory and social comparison theory, this research synthesizes representative studies published in leading journals and databases in recent years, identifying key variables, theoretical foundations, and emerging trends. The findings suggest that PDT manifests primarily through differential emotional investment, unequal resource allocation, and achievement-based comparisons. Driving factors include parental characteristics such as economic capacity, socioeconomic status, and educational background, as well as child-related variables like birth order, age, and gender. Specifically, PDT’s impact on children is evident in internalizing behaviors (e.g., depression, low self-esteem), externalizing behaviors (e.g., aggression, antisocial tendencies, academic disparities), socioemotional competencies (e.g., emotion regulation, interpersonal functioning), and sibling relationships (e.g., rivalry, jealousy, alienation), revealing potential mechanisms of influence.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Shiqi Huang
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/03/26
TI  - The Effect of the Parental Differential Treatment for Sibling
BT  - Proceeding of 2025 8th International Conference on Humanities Education and Social Sciences (ICHESS 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 966
EP  - 973
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-551-5_104
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-551-5_104
ID  - Huang2026
ER  -