We have an only. According to my dentists, only’s are the best. He has a number of patients who are an only. They are all admirable in every way.
My two closest adult friends - we are talking over 60 - are onlies as was my father. Everyone is normal, productive, generous, engaged with others, successful professionally, raised great kids, etc, etc.
I have a younger sister. The way we were raised, there was no particular interaction between us and no full family dynamic. I have no particular memories of my sister from throughout childhood except as a presence with all the emotional involvement in my life of a potted plant. I don’t think that was either of our “faults”, we just were treated very separately - I think my mother was afraid of sibling rivalry and didn’t want fighting.
As adults, living across the country from each other, we have very limited interaction or even communication. We have both tried throughout the years, but we have very different personalities and interests and the times together have not been pleasant. We can discuss our parents’ health and situation amicably which is probably most important thing. The entire situation is a bit sad if I dwell on it. I’ve often wondered if it would have been better for both of us to be onlies.
I am an only. My parents wanted to have lots of kids but for health reasons I was the only one they got 
That list of pros and cons is spot-on in my opinion. My parents were able to take me lots of places because they only had one kid. I was very comfortable around adults and that probably made me seem a little precocious. The down side is, I always felt “different” from other kids, because my life was so different. On vacations we didn’t have big family games on the beach and then have a cookout or go to the family-style fish fry. We would eat at a white tablecloth restaurant and go to museums. Which was great, but like I said, I felt different.
Now that my parents are aging, it is difficult to be the only one responsible. So often I wish for a sister to bounce ideas off of, or someone to spell me with the chores. I realize that just having a sibling is no guarantee that they would be helpful at times, but I have a LOT of friends whose sisters are their best friends and I am jealous.
Another factor is around holidays. My in laws are now deceased and the holidays this year will be hard for DH. I would love to take a little vacation over Thanksgiving or even Christmas but that means my folks would be sitting home alone. They are not physically up to going on a trip with us, and their siblings are almost all gone. I do not want to leave them home alone on a holiday when they are they type who love all the trappings of holidays - meals, music, gifts etc. If I had a sibling’s house they could go to it would be fine.
Today’s only children will have it a little better than my generation, because their are more of them. That will eliminate the “feeling different” issue I had, as I knew no other onlies. I didn’t even know families with less than three children!
surfcity–Think about that vacation you’d like to take. There may be a time when it won’t even be a possibility. Have a later Christmas celebration with your parents–think of it as a holiday extension. I’m sure your parents want you to enjoy your life and do what you need to do for your own family. Life changes and I’m sure they know that better than you.
Your parents probably just weren’t into family fish frys and picnics on the beach. They probably just preferred fine dining so that’s how you grew up. Nothing to do with lack of siblings.
My daughter was an only until I remarried with all the inherent benefits thereof. She always was so mature and self-contained…It was so shocking how she “changed” once her step sibs were around. More boisterous, louder, and “younger” with the good (snuggling with sibs, in jokes, and getting to be part of the “kids vs parents” situations) and the bad (fighting/sharing/scheduling). It’s actually quite a blessing for her to get to alternate being an only/1 of 3 every other week. It’s nice for me too.
H is an only and I am one of many. He has trouble with teasing, just doesn’t get it. I think he has trouble with the messiness of children and of sibling relationships.
It was hard for him when his folks died and I think he craves family now and is belatedly trying to get close to cousins, second cousins, etc. He would have been happy if we had had one kid, I insisted on two. I think now he wishes we had had more.
I am the mother of an only (not by choice; it just worked out that way). I do worry about her not having siblings to share the burden of elderly parents with, and DH and I are very conscious of this. We are going to do everything we can (i.e. move out of the house early, downsize, max out retirement accounts, simplify and arrange for our own care while we still can, etc.) to not burden our only child. I know I will decline, like everyone does, and I will not be denial about it, for her sake.
I get along really well with my sister and I wish my D had that kind of relationship. On the other hand, I also know of siblings who are indifferent to each other or even hostile. I don’t believe in having kids just to provide “companionship” for the others. Only children also don’t have to deal with the issues of parental favoritism, which does exist and which does sow bitterness down the years, no matter how much parents try to hide their preferences. Finally, I’m pretty sure we would not be paying full freight at an expensive private for D if she had siblings. She gets all our money as well as our attention.
We are very concerned about becoming our only’s burden prematurely as well.
We are on the same boat, but we paid full freight for 2 years only.
I think generalizing the experience of “onlies” is fraught, because all kids are different. I grew up with siblings, and if the dynamic in the family is right, then I can see it being a positive experience, but it all depends on the dynamics in the household as well,not everyone has a ‘leave it to beaver’ kind of family, and I know a lot of people who don’t have great memories of their siblings. For example, in a multi kid family, parents whether they do it consciously or not, often can set the kids against each other, they favor one child over another, and that is not pleasant, or if 2 of the siblings are older, they can make a younger kids life hell (on the other hand, some older siblings are fantastic with younger ones).
My son is an only, and while in some ways we would have liked to have more kids, if to see how different or the same they were from our S, I also realize that having the one kid allowed us to give him things we couldn’t had we had multiple kids. For example, we were able to afford private school, that I think did a lot of good things for him, I suspect public school the way they are set up would have hurt him (as I believe they hurt me). We would not have been able to put the resources we did into his music, and I think in some ways I have a much better relationship with my son then I did with my dad because he is an only. I would never say “only children are better”, “multiple kids is better”, it all depends on the person, and I have a lot of friends who quite frankly have very problematic relationships with their siblings, as I do with mine.
As far as the Chinese study goes, I would be really, really careful about that. The only children in China they are looking at often have grown up around wealth, these are the ‘little emperors’ and to a certain extent, “little empresses”, and the issue with these kids is cultural and socioeconomic I believe, a lot more than being only children. Sure they marry later and so forth, they have grown up well off, and they are one of the first Chinese generations to have a career path, to be in the world of upper middle income kind of lifestyle, and they are emulating what most in the west are doing these days (upper middle income,middle income, well off kids tend to marry later in the US, too). Not to mention I have seen the kids of the wealthy, where the parents were able and willing to pay the ‘extra kid tax’, and they are just as spoiled as the onesies a lot of the time. Trying to attribute the negative attributes to them being a onesie is to me the same thing as assuming that you can correlate symptoms to some source without looking for the causality.
This is a common discussion among parents and sports coaches. It’s telling that you can usually spot someone who was an only child regardless of their age. As a longtime youth team sports coach, I preferred to choose kids who had siblings. Maybe “issues” would not be the right word, but “tendencies” in dealing with both parents and players from one kid homes.
Some of those tendencies, I’m sure, work out well in the long run. They’re just annoying as a coach.
Well put @musicprnt. I cringe when people around me make “only child” judgements, because there is a huge amount of variability among families and the impact of any given family structure. I manage to keep my mouth shut because they don’t know what they don’t know–and no amount of me “educating” them is going to change that.
Being the pregnancy impaired human that I found out I was, and knowing what extra medical and mental effort it took to get my daughter successfully produced and on this planet once she was conceived, we feel very blessed and appreciative to have the one child that we ended up with. That we didn’t lose her is a miracle. The fact that she turned out to be brilliant and talented, while also being humble and always grateful is all a huge plus. My husband and I were always a bit ambivalent about having children in the first place, but after meeting our daughter on the day of her birth and being able to raise her for the past 18 and a half years, we would not trade the experience for anything. There’s no point in second guessing our decision not to have more children or siblings for her. Like most things in life, we made our choices and we live with the good and the bad consequences.
We do worry about being a burden on her when we are older and are trying to take steps to mitigate that. But, the presence of siblings does not necessarily mean that the burdens of taking care of older parents won’t fall on one offspring more than the others. The situations of any given family are extremely varied and there is no one way.
Hub and I have siblings. We’re the black sheep of our families and our parents, as @musicprnt mentioned, set our siblings against us. Our parents had their favorites and we were the opposite of that. (We’re both intelligent geeks who live our lives according to what’s best for us and don’t worry about what the neighbors will think.) As adults, we’re still not close to our siblings. They prefer each other and that’s fine with us. When my parents died, let’s just say that Baileys was more helpful to me than my siblings.
That, finances, and living in a very small house where the third “bedroom” is in the basement, and a ton of other reasons made us decide that having only one child was perfect. What sealed the deal was when hub was really sick, our son was a toddler and also very sick, I was working full time and had a very unreliable babysitter. I was exhausted out of my mind. The thought of having to deal with two kids, one possibly an infant? No.
My son LOVES being an only. We once had to take in my friend’s 6 kids during a really bad time for her. It drove my son crazy. They screamed, yelled, broke his Wii, never let him have a moment’s rest. (Behavior not from bad parenting. Some of the kids had development problems from lead poisoning and other issues. I won’t go into it.) You never realize how quiet your family tends to be (not a rule in the house, just our personalities) until you’re suddenly sharing it with 6 other people.
Having an only has allowed us to homeschool after my son was tormented in ps. I quit my career and with it went half our income. Still, we managed to save up enough money for a huge road trip so that he got to see America first hand and live geography and social studies rather than just read about it in a book. He never had cousins to play with nor any neighborhood kids and never longed for them. He still got out in the world (to this day, store workers and hub’s coworkers ask how he’s doing as they’ve known him since he was a baby) and had friends through activities. He has a huge vocabulary and interacts with adults very well. Both attributes of homeschoolers and onlies.
He’s also kind, caring, generous, and has an incredible sense of humor. Hub and I seriously could not imagine ourselves with another child. We got the perfect child for us.
I’ve already been preparing for when he goes off to college next year. I raised him to be his own person and independent. He’s going to have new adventures and find others who will become part of his collective family. He’ll do things his way and eventually be his own kind of parent. I freely accept this. It’s how life is supposed to be. He knows I’m always here for him. Always going to be his mamma. (Same as applies to those with more than one kid.)
NM1, I cannot agree more. My son was the result of my 5th pregnancy, and I was warned about the CA returning if I tried for more. I have LTC policy, still work at one facility, and I am determined to never be a burden to him. I plan to keep working past 65, have enough $$ to never effect him, etc.
That’s interesting, magnetron. I was also a youth sports coach for a while and then VP of the league so I dealt with disciplinary issues. I couldn’t tell you which of my kids had siblings and which didn’t.
@FarscapeFan I think my daughter loves being an only too. That comment made me remember when she was not quite two years old and said something that I thought was “I want a little brother.” I launched into a response about how that just wasn’t going to happen, and she looked at me with her big blue eyes and said, “No Mommy, I want a little umbrella.”
@NorthernMom61 that’s hilarious!
I’m an only. I was precocious as a child, very comfortable around adults, but I always had friends and cousins to socialize with. I was certainly not spoiled with material things. My parents, who didn’t have a good marriage, depended on me for their happiness and validation, which I learned to resent as I became a teenager. I didn’t appreciate all their attention and intrusion into my life.
The worst part of being an only, though, is dealing with my aging mother on my own. It’s stressful and time-consuming, altho I know that those of you with siblings go through the same thing.
I have 2 kids. I’m not sure I could’ve dealt with the noise and chaos having any more children than that would’ve entailed.
The con of being an only. You have no one to discuss how crazy your parents are acting.
This has been said to my twins that at least they have someone to talk with about internal family issues.
@Momofadult, do you mind elaborating a little on how you and your sister were raised so separately? Are you very far apart in age? I don’t mean to pry, but I don’t think I’ve heard anyone describe their childhood quite that way before and I’m interested. I’m sorry you got the sister without the sisterly bond.
I don’t think either single-kid or multiple-kid families are inherently either better or worse - depends so much on temperaments and circumstances. I was the youngest of 3 (close to my sister, and exasperatedly tolerant of my brother) and would have had a hard time surviving my well-meaning parents (especially mom) by myself. I have 2 daughters 4 years apart who are very close, and very much foundations of each others’ lives, lucky them in that respect. I wanted a third, but circumstances would have made it hard. For a few years, I yearned for another one so much that I might have staged an accident if I could have been guaranteed a kid in reasonable physical and mental health. I still occasionally think of that phantom third young adult in the family, but for the most part am relieved we quit while we were more or less ahead.
I don’t think you can generalize that only is better or not. It depends upon the kids and the family. I have siblings, and so does my H, and we never were close to any of them (even when young). We also were from families that had some degree of dysfunction. Each of us tried in our own way to reach out to cousins, but this also was for naught. Although we only have one kid due to infertility issues, I think we both questioned whether the lack of siblings was really a loss. Perhaps I am too weak as the mother of an only girl, but I had many carpools with pairs of brothers, and they all were always beating on each other (as do my step D’s boys) - the younger usually being walloped by the older. This led me to think I did not really miss out. Although pairs of girls generally do not get physically rough - mind games are more the thing!
On the other hand I know quite a few people who have had great relationships with siblings, and their kids got great, concerned aunts and uncles in the bargain. This would be ideal in my opinion. However, just having siblings doesn’t make this happen.
My grad school roommate and another close friend were both only girls. They were, as some others have said above, somewhat more mature and self contained that the average - in my opinion. Maybe we were closer because they had no siblings (and I was not close to mine) - who knows.
In some ways, like another poster above said, I wonder how well I would have done if I had to balance the needs of more kids. I have juggled work and my kid plus older sick parents, and I don’t really know how well I could have added one more.