Celebrating all the benefits of having a sister

HAPPY Sister Day! In celebration let’s look at all the social and emotional benefits you get when you have a sister.

Having a sister while growing up is beneficial to your social and emotional development.

THE first Sunday of August every year marks Sisters Day, a celebration of female siblings. So we take a look at the proven psychological and sociological benefits of having a sister.

A study by Brigham Young University professor Laura Padilla-Walker in 2010 found that sisters gave their siblings better mental health. Her year-long study looked at 395 families with more than one child. The statistics showed “that having a sister protected adolescents from feeling lonely, unloved, guilty, self-conscious and fearful”.

Fiona Martin, Educational and Developmental Psychologist at the Sydney Child Psychology Centre said girls tend to be more emotionally and socially advanced from birth.

“Parents tend to reinforce girls’ emotional and social development from the moment they are born whereas boys have their motor skills reinforced,” Dr Martin said.

She cited the work of psychologist and author Simon Baron-Cohen who looked at the differences between men and women in his book Essential Difference: Men, Women and the Extreme Male Brain.

His research found the ‘female brain’ is “predominantly hardwired for empathy”.

Mr Baron-Cohen has written about how little girls “ respond more empathetically to the distress of other people, showing greater concern through more sad looks, sympathetic vocalisations and comforting”. He said this was in close parallel to men and women in adulthood where females more often than none spend more time comforting people.

His assessment fits in with the earlier study, showing the traits that make sisters not only beneficial for your psychologically, but also as a future support system.