For the purpose of this essay ‘parents are like doctors, but siblings are like nurses’ will be considered in terms of the relative influence of parents and siblings on the development of a child from their early childhood through to adolescence, and how that mirrors the relative influence of doctors and nurses on patient care and recovery. It is also important to acknowledge the limitations of parental and sibling influences, due to the overwhelming genetic influence over the individual in areas such as personality, the impact of peer influence, especially during adolescence[i], and other factors. It is implicit in the statement ‘parents are like doctors, butsiblings are like nurses’, that the sibling relationship is very important, despite the apparent power and authority of the parent or doctor figure.
Likening parents to doctors and siblings to nurses is easiest to do in early development as the roles played by both parents and siblings are most similar to their healthcare counterparts at this stage, since the impact of genes and peers is much smaller due to a greater shared environment with the family group. Throughout early childhood, the infant is completely dependent on their parents for survival, which clearly parallels a hospital environment, where the doctor is solely in charge of ensuring the survival of the patient and determining the best course of action to treat them. However, the treatment aspect slightly separates itself from the framework of parents as doctors, since doctors’ influence is greater in the early stages of treatment, after which their involvement will fall and administering the non-surgical care will be controlled by nurses.
Parents will frequently deal with conflict with their children as they age, especially as they move to adolescence, by which point the involvement of parents will need to increase where, in contrast, doctor involvement in patient welfare over time will normally decrease[ii]. The close attachment that develops early on between parent and child is rarely experienced to the same degree between doctors and patients. This affection is due to the support and care provided by the parent and the resulting satisfaction of the child, creating feelings of attachment and connection[iii]. Despite these differences between parents and doctors, it could be argued that the main point of infants’ reliance on their parents for encouragement and safety as they begin to navigate the world is a key point of agreement between the two roles, as ensuring the safety of those in their care is the most integral part of being both a doctor and a parent.
At these early stages siblings will be less influential over the child, relative to the parent, as they will typically also be a young child who is unable to be responsible enough to help care for the infant. However, siblings are influential at this stage in a unique way due to the fact that relationships that develop between children early on will shape their closeness over a much longer period of time, which in turn will impact the type of social behaviours the individual will move towards as they age, either prosocial or more antisocial and destructive. This is more pronounced in younger siblings, due to the power dynamic that exists between older and younger siblings causing the younger child to imitate their older sibling’s behaviour more, a nuance that is not considered through the sibling-nurse paradigm. This is demonstrated at its most extreme during adolescence when peer affiliation in the younger siblings, due to older sibling influence, is most pronounced[iv].
In some key respects siblings can be thought of as being ‘like nurses’ with regards to child development. Nurses typically work in support with doctors and are influenced by them in how they treat the patient, and this is paralleled in sibling relationships which are hugely influenced by parental treatment of the offspring. When parents, especially mothers, treat their children differently or interact more frequently with the younger child over the older one, this can contribute to feelings of jealousy between siblings, which is often illustrated through antagonism from one sibling to another, potentially resulting in long-term negative sibling dynamics[v]. This highlights the influence parents have over sibling relationships and demonstrates that although siblings have great importance in the development of the individual, the sibling influence is generally less than that of the parent during early development.
During adolescence, parents have a more complicated role when it comes to influencing the development of offspring, due to the psychological and behavioural changes that will occur at this stage. Although there are similarities between parents and doctors in their large influence over the wellbeing of the patient or child, the different ways in which the two help those in their care demonstrates a shortcoming of the doctor-parent comparison. Arguably adolescence is the period when it is most important that parents provide caring support and facilitate open communication with the child, to encourage prosocial behaviour patterns which will influence the adolescents’ long-term outcomes[vi]. A close parent-child relationship can increase the chances of the adolescent seeking approval from the parental figure, and so behaving accordingly. This contributes to higher levels of imitation of the mature parental figure, thus importing coping mechanisms and contributing to positive peer affiliations. The importance of parenting in the long-term mental state of the adolescent can be paralleled with the expectation of nurses to monitor progress of their patients and help them with any concerns they may have, in contrast to doctors who are typically involved only in the physical well-being of their patients. This highlights a limitation of the statement that ‘parents are like doctors’, as parents are needed to ensure the psychological wellbeing of their offspring in addition to the physical aspect typical of doctors to their patients.
The importance of family role models in providing emotional support to adolescents can be extended to siblings as well as parents, particularly with regards to older siblings, because sibling dynamics substantially influence developmental outcomes. The importance of siblings for emotional support is similar to that of nurses as a large part of their job is helping patients with their concerns, over which they have a large influence as a medical professional. This influence can be seen in sibling relationships as well, where they are able to shape the long-term outcomes for individuals. This is particularly common of older siblings, as they often transmit their beliefs onto younger siblings, generating similar behavioural patterns. For example, younger siblings tend to become sexually active at an earlier age if they have an older sibling who normalises or promotes sexual conduct through their behaviours[vii]. Arguably, this demonstrates the shortcomings of the statement comparing siblings with nurses, as patients do not generally mirror nurses’ behaviour in this way. A way in which sibling influence compliments the sibling-nurse paradigm is the fact that their influence over the adolescent’s behaviour and subsequent mental wellbeing can be favourably compared to the ability of nurses to improve the emotional state of patients through their actions.
Adolescence is a pivotal time in the development of an individual, due to the long-term patterns of behaviour that develop, mediated through external factors. This has been shown through parental and sibling influence, providing some level of agreement with the comparison of parents with doctors and siblings with nurses. However, it is necessary to also consider the impact of peer groups in adolescent development, an aspect missing from the doctor-nurse comparison. This can be demonstrated through the example of alcohol use. Underage drinking is increasingly common, and the extent to which it occurs is often heavily influenced by parental, sibling and peer influences, outlining some key drawbacks from the original comparison involving only parents and siblings. Studies suggest that the normalisation of alcohol use by parents and siblings will cause the adolescent to seek peer groups that also reflect this approval of drinking, resulting in the adolescent becoming exposed to alcohol more frequently[viii].
Sibling influence over adolescent alcohol use, is potentially greater relative to the influence of parents, a direct conflict to the idea of siblings as nurses, who are typically less influential than doctors over the patients’ course of treatment. If the comparison was accurate with regards to adolescent substance use, it would be expected that parents would have a greater influence than siblings, rather than the opposite. The outsized impact of siblings in this regard may be due to the greater influence of sibling drinking patterns on the adolescents’ peer affiliation relative to parental drinking patterns, directly affecting the level of alcohol use the individual will partake in, thus creating long-term patterns of use and behaviour[ix]. Although peer influence is reduced compared to that of siblings and parents, as it is the unique family attitudes which lead adolescents to seek out individuals with certain values, it is peers who mediate actions such as alcohol use, thus allowing for sibling influence to be demonstrated through the subsequent behavioural patterns. Therefore it can be considered a shortcoming of the statement ‘parents are like doctors, but siblings are like nurses’ that it doesn’t consider other external influences on child’s development.
The influence of a number of groups over alcohol use is mirrored in similar ways across many aspects in the development of an individual during early adolescence. Genetics are a key example of this as they cause predisposed traits which have significantly high levels of control over certain psychological traits of an individual, such as personality which parents can only influence marginally during the entire process of an individual’s upbringing. A wide range of environmental factors which are also prevalent have not been examined in this essay due to their specificity, should also be recognised as external to the family environment. An example could be frequent house moves which would force the child to regularly adapt to new environments, potentially resulting in positive or negative social and psychological developments depending on the relative successes of the moves. These factors were not significantly prevalent during early development, thus allowing for greater accuracy of the comparison between parents and siblings with doctors and nurses. However, as the individual begins to expand beyond the shared family environment, they become increasingly impacted by other factors which are not considered in the original comparison statement.
Overall, it is important to acknowledge that siblings and parents are not the only influences on a child when assessing the truth of the statement ‘parents are like doctors, but siblings are like nurses’. It can be concluded that it is most accurate during early development when the child is highly dependent on the parents and siblings, but as they age and become more self-sufficient this decreases, giving way to other factors, thus reducing the accuracy of the statement. Despite this conclusion, it must be recognised that this will be unique for each family, especially in non-typical family’s such as those with disabled siblings, or for adopted children who likely experience multiple family units during development, and more commonly, the impact a parental divorce may have.
[i] Michael Windle – Parental, Sibling, and Peer Influences on Adolescent Substance Use and Alcohol Problems
[ii] Carol M. Worthman, Mark Tomlinson, Mary Jane Rotherham-Borus – When can Parents most Influence their Child’s Development? Expert Knowledge and Perceived Local Realities
[iii] Laurence Steinberg – Parent-Child Relationships
[iv] Jody Dunn – Sibling Relationships in Early Childhood
[v] Susan M. McHale, Kimberly A. Updegraff, Shawn D. Whiteman – Sibling Relationships and Influences in Childhood and Adolescence
[vi] Matchteld Hoeve, Judith Semon Dubas, Veroni I. Eichelsheim, Peter H. Van der Laan, Wilma Smeenk, Jan R. M. Gerris – The Relationship between Parenting and Deliquency: A Meta-analysis
[vii] Susan M. McHale, Kimberly A. Updegraff, Shawn D. Whiteman – Sibling Relationships and Influences in Childhood and Adolescence
[viii] Sandra C. Jones, Christopher A. Magee – The Role of Family, Friends and Peers in Australian Adolescent’s Alcohol Consumption
[ix] Bernadette Ward, Pamela Snow, Erica James, Jessica Griffith – The Influence of Parents and Siblings on Children’s and Adolescents’ Attitudes and Behaviours towards Alcohol: A Critical Review of the Literature
