The Linked Timing of Siblings' Marital Transitions

• In Event: Sociology of Population Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 3. Family and Gender

Abstract

Despite their ubiquity in people’s lives, siblings are conspicuously underrepresented in sociological research on the transition to adulthood. To address this gap, I advance a framework of linked timing as a theoretical lens for understanding the temporal relationship between siblings’ key life events. I use this framework to investigate how, within their shared family environments, siblings’ marital events shape an individual’s own probability of marriage. Drawing on more than a decade of longitudinal whole-family data from the Chitwan Valley Family Study (CVFS) in Nepal, I examine siblings’ interdependent marital transitions in an arranged marriage setting. Results indicate that marriage rates increase for men after their younger siblings marry, whereas women’s marriage rates decrease following the marriage of a sister. For focal brothers, I find that a sibling’s marriage more than doubles the odds of transitioning into an arranged versus a self-choice marriage. These findings suggest that siblings act as temporal anchors during the family formation process, underscoring the importance of incorporating the timing of sibling events into research on the transition to adulthood. I argue that family sociologists, social demographers, and life course scholars should more intentionally consider the myriad ways siblings shape individuals’ life trajectories.

Author

• Emma Mariah Banchoff, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor