2026/05/08 by Matthias Klingler, Marcel Raab, Florian Schulz · 1 voice
Psychology · Social Sciences · #Cognitive Abilities and Testing #Family Dynamics and Relationships #Intergenerational Family Dynamics and Caregiving
paper · doi:10.31235/osf.io/d3j8x_v1
openalex publication_date 2026/05/08 · openalex created_date 2026/05/09 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/14
Relationships with siblings can constitute an important resource for well-being and health across the life course. However, little is known about how sibling relationships change as young adults transition through key stages of household and family formation. In particular, the transition out of the parental home has received scant attention. Moreover, research on other family formation events has yielded mixed findings and often relies on designs vulnerable to unobserved heterogeneity or hampered by imprecise measurement of life-course transitions. In this brief report, we examine changes in sibling relationships following first-time transitions out of the parental home, distinguish between moves into non-couple and couple households, and compare these effects with transitions to cohabitation, marriage, and parenthood. Using data from the German Family Panel and an event-study approach that isolates the net effects of typically closely spaced life-course events, we find that leaving the parental home is the central turning point for sibling contact, which declines sharply and persistently, while relationship quality remains largely unaffected. Other family formation events have only very small and mostly transitory effects. Overall, the findings highlight the remarkable stability of sibling relationship quality across the transition to adulthood.