Perceived parental conflict and its impact on the quality of adult sibling relationships in Hong Kong Chinese

Considerable research has established the enormous importance of sibling relationships during childhood and throughout the lifespan. Sibling relationships during adulthood add stability and meaning to people's lives and can buffer the effects of life transitions and loss. Given the importance of sibling relationships, and in particular the importance of family connectedness in Hong Kong, there is a need for greater understanding of factors that contribute to strong adult sibling relationships in Hong Kong. One factor that has been shown to negatively affect the quality of childhood sibling relationships is the intensity of parental conflict.;This study explored the hypothesis that parental conflict (reported retrospectively) would also be associated with the quality of adult sibling relationships. Participants in this research were individual adults in Hong Kong who lived in two-parent households and have at least one sibling. Measures included the Concord Index questionnaire that measures harmony and mutuality in family relationships, the Lifespan Sibling Relationship Scale questionnaire that measures sibling relationship quality, and the Parental Conflict Scale questionnaire that measures recollection of parental conflict. Participants were also asked a series of fill-in questions about their lived experiences regarding their perceptions of the impact of parental conflict on their adult sibling relationships.;The key findings were that memory of past parental conflict was significantly correlated with feelings about siblings during adulthood, but with no other measures of sibling relationship, and was significantly and strongly negatively correlated with harmony and mutuality in family relationships. Current rating of harmony and mutuality in family relationships was strongly associated with all measures of past and retrospective sibling relationship. Thematic analysis of responses to the open-ended questions showed a diversity in participants' understanding of how parental conflict affected their past and current sibling relationships, with participants indicating that parental conflict decreased, increased and had no impact on the ultimate quality of sibling relationships. Findings suggested that in the absence of memories of severe family conflict, sibling relatedness during adulthood may be relatively independent of adult recall of parental dissonance for Chinese adults.