Differences Between Parents And Children

for the parents and children. Thus the features of child care are directly related to parental belief and culture rather than availability (Weisner & Gallimore, 1977).

Thus few child care strategies available for women from low income group are statuary crèche or day care, care by self at work place, crèche/ centers run by voluntary sector, crèche/ center run by community or NGO-Government partnership, day care center (private or paid), latch key children, employing caregivers for care at home, care by self at home (such as piece rate workers), care by other adults at home and care by sibling (Datta, 2004, p. 94). Hence, availability of siblings creates a reliable option for family to look after younger one and the carry out daily chores.

One no longer has a child, but instead one has children” (p.165) these children have unique characteristics and are different from one another, hence the parenting practices need to be modified. It has been seen that parents provide different treatment to children in sequence of their birth and thus, nature of relationship between the siblings are an extension of parent’s rearing techniques. Sibling relationship quality can have variations due to gender of child, age of sibling, birth order and family dynamics too. This relation can show extreme stages of love and happiness to hate and negativity. From middle childhood to early and middle adolescence the relationship with siblings change there is intimacy, bonding and closeness (Kim, McHale, Osgood & Crouter, 2006). Sibling relationships have been viewed to provide psychosocial skillfulness learnt and are adapted through interactions thereby making other social relations at ease. The study of sibling relationships can also be seen as a window through which one can comprehend a wide variety of patterns and processes of family life. The quality of sibling relationships are an extension of the kind of relationship parent and child share, the quality of treatment offered by parents and the strategies parents adopt in handling siblings conflicts (Brody, 1998).

1.3.1 Sibling caregiving

“The sibling

Sibling caretaking and performing household chores are a part of child’s life. These roles are offered more to girls than boys of particular age. Children start helping in household chores and sibling care at an early age, as Weisner (1996) describes this as 5 to 7 years developmental transition at a cultural and interactional level in which children participate in caring and perform household chores but their role is not recognized or elaborated in many cultures. These activities can be same or might vary from one cultural community to another as involvement of parents, gender obligations to perform specific tasks or style of caring might differ from one another. In midst of these caregiving activities, children might be a part of shared help within “indirect chains of support” (p. 308) under the supervision of an adult in which one child assist the other, who in turn assists the third and so on. Sibling care and performance of chores acts as an indicator of child social functioning in a commune (Weisner, 1996). Cirirelli (1994) found in both industrialized (modern or urban, technologically advanced societies of western nations United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Europe, Australia, and so on) and non-industrialized (technologically backward agrarian or pastoral societies found in more remote