SALON

Thursday, Jan 12, 2012 4:40 PM UTC

The war on only children

Smaller families are becoming the norm. So why are we still so quick to judge people without siblings?

By

Topics: Parenting,

The war on only children (Credit: amok.lv via Shutterstock)

I was making small talk with a woman I’d just met when the inevitable subject of family came up. “Do you have any brothers and sisters?” she’d asked. “No,” I’d replied. And there it was: the subtle change in her expression, the quick reassessment, the pinched face I’ve seen a thousand times before. “Well, that must have been nice for you,” she replied. “You must have been so spoiled.”

It’s one of the standard responses we “onlies” get — near strangers denigrating us because of our parents’ reproductive habits. Nobody ever says, “Youngest of four? So you’re really immature, right?” or “You’re a twin? Wow, you must be a total dick.” But I didn’t answer, “Yeah, after my dad left my 21-year-old mom when she was pregnant with me, you can imagine what a cosseted, pampered existence this princess had.” That’s because I didn’t want to get the other classic reaction: unbridled pity for my no doubt sad, lonely existence. Hi, what year is this?

Growing up in my mostly Irish-Catholic neighborhood, I understood that I was an anomaly. Hell, just having parents who were divorced was considered exotic. Back then, I generally shrugged off my dubious reputation as both wildly pampered and horribly starved for company, content with my childhood claim to fame as The Girl Who Didn’t Have to Share.

As I grew older, I met other onlies. It wasn’t always easy to find them – shockingly, they look a lot like everybody else. We exchanged stories of our similar bad and sad reps, but I noticed we almost never expressed a longing for a different fate. We were just a contented if misunderstood minority. But times have changed. There are now roughly 20 million only children in America, representing nearly a quarter of all our families. You’d think those swelling ranks would have changed those misconceptions.  So how come if we don’t smoke in bars anymore, we’re still dissing only children?

Whether you’re an only yourself or the parent of one, you’ve likely experienced the stigma. As my friend Anne recently recounted, “A pregnant mom, whose son is in my son’s class, was chatting with me one day, and remarked that she was so happy and relieved to be pregnant because she really, emphatically did not want her child to be an only child. She said this to me as if it were the worst fate that could befall a child. I guess she didn’t realize that she was talking to the very happy parent of an only child. Or maybe she did.”

Yet only children aren’t so tragic. They not only tend to do as well or slightly better academically than their siblinged counterparts, they also have just as many friends. And in a 2010 Time magazine story, Lauren Sandler mentioned a groundbreaking study that showed “the personalities of only children were indistinguishable from their peers with siblings.” The study, by the way, was published 25 years ago. You’d think it would have sunk in by now.

That’s why it’s so stunning when my fellow adults still make assumptions about my upbringing or personality based on the fact I had to outsource my childhood noogie-getting. Because when you think of people like Betty White, Al Pacino, Lance Armstrong, Daniel Radcliffe, Mahatma Gandhi, Selena Gomez and Rudy Giuliani, you can totally see how only children are all exactly alike! Yet the sweeping generalizations about antisocial freaks persist. No wonder my friend Jessica admits, “I take it as a compliment when people are surprised to find out I don’t have siblings.”

It’s even more bizarre when the subject turns to our offspring. There’s a difference between a natural curiosity – how many kids do you have? — and a judgment, either stated or not so subtly implied, about it. I love my two girls, and can’t imagine either of their lives without their touching sisterly bond. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to nod my head in quiet assent when some yahoo goes on about that “helicopter mom” of one who doesn’t “get it” about what parenting is really like, or how “entitled” her kid is. I’ve seen your children too, folks. They’re all pretty equally cranked up.

It’s especially galling to hear the contempt for onlies – that vaguely snide attitude that the real selfishness is on the part of the parents – coming as it does within a culture in which the subjects of infertility, pregnancy loss, deferred child rearing, and divorce are the stuff of idle playground chatter. If a child you know has no siblings, chances are you know the reasons why. It’s rarely because the parents are such big jerks. But whether it’s by the hand of fate or conscious decision, who’s to knock another’s choices, anyway? Why be a self-appointed Goldilocks of family size, bloviating that one is pathetic, five is pushing it, but two or three is juuuuust right? As my friend Anne’s mother once sagely told her, having one is a long way from the worst thing you could do to a child.

It’s true that we onlies are a different breed. My girlfriend with three sisters will never understand my horror around peeing in front of other people. It’s not an accident that I work in solitude. But like my friend Judith says, “I’ll never know the joys of a sibling, but I’ve chosen the people I want as close family. And I don’t experience the rancor of siblings, either … Sharing? Do you know how much easier it is to share as an adult when you didn’t have to protect what’s yours as a little kid? …  It’s easier to give away a big slice of pie when you’ve had all that extra pie to yourself for so long.” The number “1″ is neither an automatic ticket to a childhood of indulgence nor a guarantee of miserable adult isolation. It’s just another configuration of a family. And if you think you know what we onlies are really like, ask us to split a pie with you sometime.

Mary Elizabeth Williams

Mary Elizabeth Williams is a staff writer for Salon and the author of "Gimme Shelter: My Three Years Searching for the American Dream." Follow her on Twitter: @embeedub. More Mary Elizabeth Williams.

Next Article

You Might Also Like

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Serena William in an emotional moment during the final women's French Open match against Russia's Maria Sharapova. Williams won 6-4, 6-4, while Rafael Nadal defeated fellow Spaniard David Ferrer 6-3, 6-2, 6-3 in the men's finals on Sunday.
    AP/David Vincent

  • Ongoing anti-government protests at Taksim Square. Five people have died and thousands have been injured since the protests began on May 31. On Friday, Turkey's government agreed to suspend redevelopment plans for Gezi Park, which initially sparked the protests, until a court rules on its legality.
    AP/Vadim Ghirda

  • Billy Porter is all heart and "sole" at a performance of the Cyndi Lauper-scored "Kinky Boots," which won the Tony Award for Best musical on Sunday night.
    AP/The O+M Company, Matthew Murphy

  • A chemical plant explosion and fire in Louisiana on Thursday morning killed a 29-year-old and injured 73 more. The cause of the fire is still undetermined.
    AP/Gerald Herbert

  • So much for pie-throwing loyalty. Media Mogul Rupert Murdoch and third wife Wendy Deng announced they are filing for divorce on Thursday after 14 years of marriage. The pair are pictured at the 69th Annual Golden Globe Awards in Los Angeles this year.
    AP/Matt Sayles

  • Ariel Castro, accused of holding three women captive in his house for roughly a decade, walks into a Cleveland courtroom on Wednesday. Castro, 52, pleaded not guilty to hundreds of charges that include rape and kidnapping.
    AP/Tony Dejak

  • Supporters of Iranian presidential candidate, Hasan Rowhani, campaigned with banners on the streets of Tehran on Wednesday in anticipation of the Iranian presidential elections on Friday.
    AP/Ebrahim Noroozi

  • People watch from the side of the road as a flame-fighting plane passes over the Black Forest area north of Colorado Springs. A raging fire which has been burning since midweek has destroyed more than 360 homes and killed two.
    AP/Brennan Linsley

  • A restaurant in Dunabogdany, Hungary, is roof-deep in floodwaters spilling from the River Danube. Heavy rainfalls this week continued to flood major rivers and lakes in Germany, Austria, Switzerland the Czech Republic and Hungary.
    AP/MTI, Balazs Mohai

  • A gas mask-sporting demonstrator walks past Portuguese graffiti on a bank which reads "Fascist government." Thousands took to the streets São Paulo, Brazil, on Thursday to violently protest a 10-cent hike in bus and subway fares, while similar protests took place in Rio de Janeiro, Brasilia and Porte Alegre in southern Brazil.
    AP/Brennan Linsley

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

More Related Stories

Comments

 75 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username ( settings | log out )

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: "We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves": Growing up primate

Recommendations