Physical and Emotional Sibling Violence: A Necessary Role for Social Work

Abstract

With physical and emotional sibling violence being one of the most common forms of violence against children (Straus, Gelles, & Steinmetz, 2006), the implications of this type of violence should be understood as a significant part of family violence across the life span. Social work, with its person-in-environment focus, should consider and address all types of violence affecting children and adults, including physical and emotional violence between siblings. The social work role in this area includes not only understanding the prevalence, consequences, and correlates of this form of family violence, but also understanding the lack of policy and interventions to address it, so that the profession can take a lead in solving this social problem. Despite sibling assault being one of the most common forms of childhood victimization (Finkelhor, Ormrod, Turner, & Hamby, 2005), the prevalence of physical and emotional sibling violence in the population has been minimally considered. Hoffman, Kiecolt, and Edwards (2005) found that more than 60 percent of college students had experienced physical sibling violence, whereas Simonelli, Mullis, Elliot, and Pierce (2002) found that 89 percent of male and 98 percent of female respondents reported experiencing emotional aggression from a sibling.

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