Competição e cooperação por recursos entre irmãos e ambiente parental em famílias nucleares

Abstract

Competition among siblings is fostered by competing for limited resources, while cooperation may depend on the quality of coparenting and the temperament of older siblings. Resources can be sharing personal items and competing for parental attention, but there can also be assistance in raising younger siblings. Our objective was to evaluate possible relationships between socioeconomic variables, family configuration, parental environment and levels of competition and cooperation for resources in siblings during childhood, based on maternal perception. We used indirect measures through instruments applied to mothers. Participants were 17 mothers of two male children (up to 12 years old), from two types of family configurations selected for this research: Nuclear Families and Maternal Single Parent Families. The research took place in a virtual environment (Google Forms), with the application of a questionnaire of environmental characterization of development, the questionnaire of competition and cooperation for resources (QCCR) and the inventory of sibling behavior (SIB). Due to the insufficient N sample for maternal single-parent families, we analyzed data referring to nuclear families. There was a positive correlation between the companionship and empathy and empathy and teaching subscales of the SIB, as well as the empathy of the SIB with the care subscale of the QCCR, suggesting that higher levels of behaviors aimed at caring for the younger sibling reflect higher levels of older brother's empathy for the younger. We found correlations between the perception of positive involvement behaviors and the perception of cooperation, suggesting a scenario in which it would be advantageous for siblings in terms of cost/benefit to be empathetic and cooperative with each other. We found significant differences between income groups in perceived competition for attention scores, but not between toy and care competition scores. Post hoc analyzes showed differences in the scores of perception of competition for attention of the children of mothers from two specific income groups (3 to 6 and 9 to 12 minimum wages). We highlight the good performance that the QCCR obtained in measuring the levels of competition and cooperation for resources between siblings and the positive correlations with the SIB in a broader assessment of behaviors between siblings. It is necessary to develop more researches that focus on the aspects that are related in the study of the relationship between siblings.