When you think of preventing divorce, you usually think about improving communication, strengthening the marital friendship and dealing with conflict. What you probably do not think about is how many children were in your family growing up.

Yet, one new study says, based on their findings, maybe you should think about how many siblings you have.

Sociologist, Doug Downey at Ohio State University, co-authored a study that looked at the number of siblings in your family growing up and how that relates to divorce. What they found was that the more siblings, the less chance you have to divorce. In fact, each sibling lowered your chances by 2%. The thinking here is that more siblings help your social skills development. You basically get more practice negotiating conflict and working with other people.

But before you decide to add more kids to the family, not all researchers are convinced that having lots of siblings is a preventative factor for divorce. The criticism is that this is one study, and one study doesn’t constitute a definitive finding. Others feel that in today’s age, children have many opportunities to practice their social skills away from the home in places like school. Thus, the playing field evens out and sibling count isn’t all that significant.

Whatever the case, it is an interesting finding.

Could it be that having lots of siblings helps you get along better in your marriage? Certainly the need to share comes up more often!

Since we only have one study, you’ll have to let me know if this rings true in your case! Maybe their is some truth to the say, “The more, the merrier!”