Influences of the brother-sister dyad on adult intimate relationships for African American females

This current study explored the impact of the brother-sister dyadic relationship on African American women's romantic relationship satisfaction. Particularly, this study focused on the sibling relationship that occurred during the participants' adolescence. This researcher hypothesized the influence of having a relationship with the brother closest in age during adolescence would affect the female participant's romantic, emotionally-intimate relationship satisfaction. The goals of this research were (a) to explore the parent-child attachment for African American females utilizing the Parent Attachment Questionnaire (PAQ; Kenny & Perez, 1996), (b) to explore the brother-sister attachment for African American females utilizing the Sibling Relationship Questionnaire (SRQ; Furman & Buhrmester, 1985), (c) to explore the impact of the attachment with a brother on later romantic, emotionally-intimate relationships utilizing the Relationship Assessment Scale (RAS; Vaughn & Matyastik Baier, 1999). The present study examined the correlation between sibling attachment and later adult emotionally-intimate relationship satisfaction in 144 African American female participants. Participants were 18 years or older, had a brother, were in a romantic, monogamous relationship, and identified as African American, or mixed race African American. In general, the findings of this study showed minimal significance between measures. Utilizing a two-way ANOVA with the overall scores from the PAQ, SRQ, and RAS, no significance was found. However, further examination utilizing multiple regression there was significance for two the groups of participants (Romance1 and Romance2). The implications of these results for future use can assist clinicians to incorporate the client's attachment experience into therapy. Future researchers can focus on the sibling attachment in therapy to understand the client's interpersonal connections. The limitations of this study consisted of: the restriction of participant's age; the number of items requested to complete; and the inability to generalize it to all female relationships for African American individuals, as the majority of participants were heterosexual.