INTRODUCTION

It is important to study the relationship between gender, family structure and number of siblings because it allows people to better understand how family structure may effect a person's relationship dependency. This study measures relationship dependency with the two subscales of the interpersonal dependency inventory: emotional reliance and the assertion of autonomy.

Previous research has explored the differing levels of emotional reliance for different type of relationships, like best friend, mother, roommate, etc. They found that with the combination of these types of relationships women reported higher emotional reliance than men (Ryan, La Guardia, Solky-Butzel, Chirkov, & Kim, 2005). Turner &Turner also found that women typically have higher levels of emotional reliance than men (1999).

There have been several studies researching the closeness of siblings, or the quality of a siblings' relationship with emotional reliance. For example, it has been found that sibling relationship warmth was associated with emotional understanding and self-disclosure (Howe, Aquan-Assee, Bukowski, Lehoux, & Rinaldi, 2001). However, there has been little to no research regarding the relationship between the number of siblings and their effect on emotional reliance.

Research has shown that overall young men have higher levels of the assertion of autonomy then women (Van Gundy, 2002). Another study researches the idea of family types related to how likely a parent will allow a child to assert their autonomy. They found that in mother-only homes, the parent was more likely than two-parent homes to allow the youth to make his or her own decisions. (Dornbusch, Carlsmith, Bushwall,, Ritter, Liederman, Hastorf, & Gross, 1985). This study primarily compares the differences between mother-only households and two biological parent households. It would be interesting to see how a variety of non-traditional family structures, like single parent but also foster and step parents relate to an individuals' assertion of autonomy.

Overall, these studies examine different family structures, siblings and gender individually, but it would be interesting to see how they combine to interact in relation to measures of dependency. It is hypothesized that there will be a successively significant increase in emotional reliance with an increasing number of siblings for both traditional (two parent) and non-traditional households (single parent, foster, and step combined) but this effect will be larger for women than for men. It's also hypothesized that the opposite is true for the assertion of autonomy: there will be successively decreasing assertion of autonomy scores with an increasing number of siblings for both traditional and non-traditional families but this effect will be larger for men. It's also hypothesized that emotional reliance scores will be larger for those raised in a traditional family than those raised in a non-traditional household, with the effect being larger for women. The opposite will be true for assertion of autonomy, those raised in non-traditional households will have higher assertion of autonomy scores with the effect being larger for men than women. This study will build on the understanding of each family structure, number of siblings, and gender, and how they interact with each other in relation to a person's dependency.

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