Relationships between Latinx Siblings
Aceves-Power, V., Girón, S. E., Killoren, S. E., & Campione-Barr, N. (2026). Confidants for life: Examining sibling relationship positivity and disclosure in U.S. Latinx college students while considering the role of familism. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 43(1), 115-140. https://doi.org/10.1177/02654075241288263
Latinx families tend to emphasize the role of familism, which is an ideology where family connection and obligation are considered highly important. Likely due to familism, sibling relationships are especially important in Latinx families, even during times of relationship change like young adulthood. While similar studies have been done to examine the role of familism in these positive relationships, not much work has been done to see what actually helps maintain positive sibling relationships during young adulthood. The authors of this study discovered that sharing personal information helps to form a closer bond with a sibling, while sharing more surface level information has a negative effect.
The participants in this study were college-age Latinx students from the U.S., all of whom had siblings with an age gap from 0 to 15 years. Each student was given a series of questions regarding their relationship with their sibling, what kind of information they typically discuss and share with their sibling, and how important the ideology of familism is to them.
The study found that while Latinx siblings get more distant as they get older and have fewer conversations, these conversations hold much more weight. In situations where siblings shared more personal information with each other, they had a much stronger and more positive bond. It was expected that sharing any information between siblings would lead to a more positive relationship, but the sharing about risky behaviors (e.g., drinking, skipping classes) led to a more negative relationship. Previous findings showed that any sort of disclosure was beneficial for the sibling relationship, but the familistic setting of Latinx culture may have made siblings uncomfortable with knowing about risky behaviors and impacted the quality of their relationship.
These findings help us better understand the different kinds of relationships siblings can have, depending on the culture that they grew up in. While simple communication may help in other cultures, more familistic cultures give more importance to sharing personal lives and really understanding one another deeply. In this study, information was only taken from the sibling who was a current college student. In the future, it may help to survey both siblings, as each individual could have a different perception of the relationship. In addition, the students surveyed were almost all second- or third-generation individuals living in the U.S.. First-generation youth may differ due to greater changes in cultural experiences between the country-of-origin and the U.S.. In the end, this research informs us of how to foster positive sibling relationships for long-term success.