Abstract
Family scholarship has documented negative associations between ambivalence and well-being in the context of parent-adult child relationships. As sibling ties remain salient throughout later life, ambivalence experienced in sibling relationships might also be related to older adult well-being. The purpose of this study was to examine the associations between sibling ambivalence and both psychological and physical well-being of older adults, as well as differences in these links by sibling gender composition. Data came from 702 older adults (392 women) who were 64.58 years old on average (SD = 4.51). Structural equation modeling using FIML revealed that participants who felt more ambivalence toward their siblings reported poorer psychological well-being. However, a multiple group analysis showed that this association was only significant for brother-brother pairs. Findings suggest the need to further investigate the implication of sibling ambivalence for psychological well-being in later life, especially for brothers.
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