Brother and sister

Children with no siblings are no less capable of having and displaying solid social skills when compared to children raised with siblings, a new study suggests.

This study observed more than 13,000 students from middle school and high school.

Researchers explain how no concern should be shown about the inability for children without siblings to develop social skills necessary to interact with other students.

Many people fear children without siblings will lack social skills developed by interacting with their brothers and sisters.

For this study, data was collected from children between grade 7 and grade 12 from over 100 different schools throughout the United States.

The researchers assessed popularity when asking children to list upwards of five male and five female friends. The number of friends were then tallied to determine how many times any individual was noted.

It was discovered that students were listed as a friend upwards of five times by their classmates and the presence of siblings did not affect the voting.

In each test, siblings appeared to have absolutely no impact on the popularity of any student among his or her peers.

Researchers believe the interactions children are involved with at school allow adequate development of social skills. Those students lacking the ability to interact with siblings will receive an abundance of opportunities to interact with students as they age through school.