Parental Differential Treatment From Adolescence Through Adulthood

• Parental Differential Treatment in African American Families: Longitudinal Links With Adolescent Adjustment
  Presented by: Anna R. Solmeyer, Susan M. McHale 

•  “Life Still Isn’t Fair”: Parents’ Differential Treatment of Offspring During Emerging Adulthood
  Presented by: Alexander C. Jensen, Shawn D. Whiteman, Karen L. Fingerman

• Differential Effects of Perceptions of Mothers’ and Fathers’ Favoritism on Sibling Conflict in Adulthood
  Presented by: J. Jill Suitor, Megan Gilligan, Karl A. Pillemer

Abstracts

Parental Differential Treatment From Adolescence Through Adulthood

Presented by: Anna R. Solmeyer, Susan M. McHale, Alexander C. Jensen, Shawn D. Whiteman, Karen L. Fingerman, Jill Suitor, Megan Gilligan, Karl A. Pillemer, Laurie Kramer

Parents' differential treatment of siblings is a common family dynamic that persists throughout the life course. Research on children has documented its links with less harmonious sibling relationships and adjustment problems for the disfavored sibling; however, little is known about how differential treatment changes as siblings enter adulthood or whether it continues to have the same negative impacts later in life. The papers in this symposium cover three age groups: adolescence, emerging adulthood, and middle adulthood and the symposium is designed to advance understanding of how differential treatment operates during these three developmental periods and in different racial/ethnic groups.