Managing conflicts and aggressive behaviors between siblings is challenging for many parents, and parental responses to sibling conflict has been shown to influence the quality of children’s sibling interactions. Building on previous work on parental involvement in sibling conflict, the aim of this study was to investigate the mediating role of sibling bullying perpetration and victimization during childhood and adolescence in the relationship between parental intervention styles and conflicts in young adults’ sibling relationships. A sample of 302 individuals aged 17–33 years participated in the study. Results of structural equation modeling confirmed the proposed mediation model of young adults’ sibling conflicts. More precisely, parental control and parental noninvolvement were positively associated with experiences of sibling bullying perpetration and victimization, whereas parental coaching was associated with lower reports of sibling victimization. Involvement in sibling bullying during childhood and adolescence was, for its part, associated with sibling conflicts in young adulthood. Results of the current study confirmed that parenting intervention styles can influence children’s involvement in sibling bullying, which in turn, can predict conflicts in adult sibling relationships. In line with the family system theory, these results underline that parents can inadvertently play a role in the development of dysfunctional sibling relationships.
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