Sibling Relationships and Their Determinative Factors in Later Years

Family relationships are thought to be important for elderly people's human relations, and a great deal of knowledge has been accumulated concerning them. But the "family" that has been discussed in this context is centered on 'the family of procreation,' meaning one's marital and parent-child relations. By contrast, 'the family of orientation,' including siblings, has been overlooked. With the growth in life expectancies, the importance of the sibling relationship which is one of the longest family relationships is seen in a new light. This paper focuses on sibling relationships in people's later years, and uses questionnaire data to examine their actual conditions and determinative factors. The findings are as follows: (1) Although the amount of 'contact' has been analyzed in earlier Japanese research, those engaged in the contact differ depending upon whether it is direct or indirect contact; (2) Although knowledge of "close relations between sisters" is applied in earlier research to situations of indirect contact and emotional support, it is not applied in cases of direct contact; (3) The influence of other human relations differs depending upon the kind of relationship (with a child, a spouse, or a friend) and the facet of sibling relations (direct contact, indirect contact, or emotional support) that is affected by them; (4) Although 'geographical distance' has become an important determinative factor in direct contact and indirect contact, 'consciousness of sibling relationship' has become an important determinative factor in emotional support. This suggests the necessity of a viewpoint and an analytical method that examine the sibling relationship in later years on the basis of its development up to that point.