essays about being a only child

Pros and Cons of Growing Up as an Only Child Essay (Critical Writing)

Introduction.

Not many people know what the term pros and cons mean and how it affects a child and the parents. The word pros mean that the child is being raised alone in the family hence has no one to share resources with or fight for things in the home. Cons mean loneliness or boredom.

Children born alone in the family have advantages and disadvantages. The grandparents in such families seem to love these children so much although even in a family with many siblings the grandparents also seem to love them with a single child, the love is not divided. The attitude of grandparents may be affected by traditional believes since they have different beliefs according to their background.

A lone child enjoys all the benefits of the family alone since he/she has no one else to share with. There are no economic constraints in such a family although even if the family has many children they usually have a way to care for their family since they planned for them again nowadays there are many methods of family planning so it is the role of the couple to choose the number of children they want although there is the aspect of God being in control of children to the believers.

Just as Rhoda M. in her article in www. Helium says; she grew alone so she had more cons than pros. she says that she had no one to play with & her life was spoilt I tend to believe her and this from experience with my own cousin.

A child raised alone can be spoilt and is hard for such a child to be independent although in school most of them do very well because the parents have a lot of attention in his/her homework or school work to be more specific. Let me once more revisit the story of my cousin. She was born and grew alone with her parents in an environment where they were no children even nearby the village with whom she could play. The only person she could play with was the parents. She was over pampered by the parents and the grandparents. She had all kinds of toys to play with but she was never contented because not all the time the parents were available for her to play with and again not all kinds of games she could play hence making her life in the home more miserable despite the fact that she had all that she needed. She lacked nothing that she needed. When she went to school after work the parents made sure that they had looked at her books and knew her progress in school and also her studies at home. I admired the way she was living and wished I could also be alone little did I knew that she did not enjoy much being alone. She was so solitary and bored at times for she had no one to play with. I evidenced this during the holidays because she was coming to our home and when the schools re-opened she could cry her heart out refusing to back to their home until she could be beaten up at times. I was wondering why she was behaving like that since she lacked nothing and ate the best foods. It’s later I came to realize that the cons were outweighing her and came to accept the saying of the late Pope John Paul II who said that “the only gift parents can give their children are sisters and brothers”.

Being the only child of the parent is enjoyable only at the tender age but when a time reaches when you have to be independent live starts being tough or when you have to live with other people especially in boarding schools where you seem to share everything and that is a life that you have never been introduced to.

Just as my cousin was living with her parents being provided with everything now things have taken another trend she is spoilt and might remain the same way for the rest of her life as Rhoda was saying in her article that she was spoilt. Now my cousin is married and keeps on bothering her husband every now and then. When they have a grudge and disagrees about an issue she runs home to her parents who have nothing else to do apart from regretting why they did not limit their love to her. The parents have no choice but to talk to her and sometimes she even doesn’t heed to whatever they say and they have no other option apart from giving her whatever she needs.

In China, there is a policy that governs the number of children one has to have and this policy was started in 1980. According to Chinese by James Reynolds BBC News, the national policy is for couples to have a single child and law has to be taken for anyone who violates that rule. In China, if a woman gets pregnant the second time she is allowed to take an abortion. Some of the reasons that make this country be so strict on the number of children are scarcity of land and poverty so raising many siblings becomes a problem. I read in a daily nation in 2006 that there was a couple in China who got many siblings and had to give out some of them to the relatives because they were unable to raise them. This policy can work well in the US because as the Chinese sterilize women and accept abortion the US government also accepts the same and their basic aim is to control the population. An American writer McFann, Carolyn says that there are pros and cons about a single child in the family although he advises couples to have one child. The American’s prefer just a single child either being adopted or born for the sake of heirs. The few numbers of siblings in the US enable them to control the population and this is one of the reasons that it remains a developed country. The fact that the country has few people there is no limited space and resources and the rate of pollution is low despite the fact that there are many industries. The benefit of and liabilities are the activities which children engage in. these benefits are realized by a child who is alone since there is no competition. Doreen Nagle says that all these benefits such as gifts, picnics, and the like are a result of the parents having no other child hence can afford to provide each and every other thing that the child needs.

Although having one child is important it is good for the parent to take caution on how they bring up the child to avoid spoiling her and her life just as my cousin was spoilt. Parents should love these lone children but should have limitations because even the bible(to the believers) in proverbs states it clearly that ‘spare the rod spoil he child’ parents should be very cautious on how they handle their kids for them to grow up with good manners although there are few who are too hard to handle.

In cultural perspectives, there are different views of lone siblings depending on the locality and the tribe and their beliefs. In history, there are those who had superstations and in the traditional setting, the number of children determined the amount of wealth one had.

In my culture, they believe that having one child there are more cons than pros just as Rhoda M was believing. This child has most of the time to be with adults although this might create good closeness with the parents hence the parents can be in a good position to guide and counsel their child and also help him/her out of peer pressure. Even if the children fight when they are at a tender age and lack toys, gifts, and the like at times it is better to have at least two or three siblings because when they grow up they become cooperative and live in harmony helping each other, sharing and a less weight to cater for the parents in their old age although not all children can live this way.

According to Aronson, J.Z book, parents should have a single child so that they can be able to recruit him/her in academics because education is the only key to success and it’s the responsibility of a parent to do so.

In my opinion, one child is better than having multiple of them although two are better than one for socialization, playing, and deep connection. A one-child family is attractive and the couple does not need to worry much after they retire about how their child will survive since they take care of him/her with the few resources that they have. The only thing I find a nuisance is an overindulgence in the love for the child because this might spoil the child. I would prefer parents to have one child due to the current economical constraints and the fact that modern technology is so high hence people are more involved in other issues rather than large families.

Aronson, J.Z (1996). How schools can recruit hard-to-reach parents. Educational leadership.

Berger, K.S (2001). The developing person through the lifespan. New yolk: Worth. James Reynolds BBC news, Henan province, central China.

McFann, Carolyn. (2007). When planning your family, consider the pros and cons of being an only child. Ezinearticles.

• Sociology. The Joys of Being a Grandparent
• Foster Care Crisis in Georgia: Children in Substitute Families
• Finding Financing for Business Startup
• Grandparents Raising Grandchildren With Disabilities
• How the Understanding of Health, Healing, and Wellness Has Changed Over Time
• Parental Roles and Changes in the Last 50 Years
• Spanking Is Harmful to Children
• Parental Hopes and Standards for Sons and Daughters
• Growing Up with Hearing Loss
• Parenting Education Programs: Pros and Cons
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2021, August 27). Pros and Cons of Growing Up as an Only Child. https://ivypanda.com/essays/pros-and-cons-of-growing-up-as-an-only-child/

"Pros and Cons of Growing Up as an Only Child." IvyPanda , 27 Aug. 2021, ivypanda.com/essays/pros-and-cons-of-growing-up-as-an-only-child/.

IvyPanda . (2021) 'Pros and Cons of Growing Up as an Only Child'. 27 August.

IvyPanda . 2021. "Pros and Cons of Growing Up as an Only Child." August 27, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/pros-and-cons-of-growing-up-as-an-only-child/.

1. IvyPanda . "Pros and Cons of Growing Up as an Only Child." August 27, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/pros-and-cons-of-growing-up-as-an-only-child/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Pros and Cons of Growing Up as an Only Child." August 27, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/pros-and-cons-of-growing-up-as-an-only-child/.

• To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
• As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
• As a template for you assignment

IvyPanda uses cookies and similar technologies to enhance your experience, enabling functionalities such as:

• Basic site functions
• Ensuring secure, safe transactions
• Secure account login
• Remembering account, browser, and regional preferences
• Remembering privacy and security settings
• Analyzing site traffic and usage
• Personalized search, content, and recommendations
• Displaying relevant, targeted ads on and off IvyPanda

Please refer to IvyPanda's Cookies Policy and Privacy Policy for detailed information.

Certain technologies we use are essential for critical functions such as security and site integrity, account authentication, security and privacy preferences, internal site usage and maintenance data, and ensuring the site operates correctly for browsing and transactions.

Cookies and similar technologies are used to enhance your experience by:

• Remembering general and regional preferences
• Personalizing content, search, recommendations, and offers

Some functions, such as personalized recommendations, account preferences, or localization, may not work correctly without these technologies. For more details, please refer to IvyPanda's Cookies Policy .

To enable personalized advertising (such as interest-based ads), we may share your data with our marketing and advertising partners using cookies and other technologies. These partners may have their own information collected about you. Turning off the personalized advertising setting won't stop you from seeing IvyPanda ads, but it may make the ads you see less relevant or more repetitive.

Personalized advertising may be considered a "sale" or "sharing" of the information under California and other state privacy laws, and you may have the right to opt out. Turning off personalized advertising allows you to exercise your right to opt out. Learn more in IvyPanda's Cookies Policy and Privacy Policy .

• Family Dynamics

The Biggest Benefit, and Top Risk, of Being an Only Child

With all the benefits of the close parent-only child bond, what could go wrong.

Posted September 20, 2023 | Reviewed by Davia Sills

• Find a Family Therapy Therapist
• Studies find only children tend to be closer to their parents than kids with siblings.
• Even in two-child families, the bond between parents and children wasn’t as strong.
• Despite all the benefits of the parent-only child tight connection, enmeshment can become a problem.

More one-on-one time with Mom and Dad, resources that don’t have to be shared, the absence of sibling competition —whatever the reasons, the result is the same: Research finds only children tend to develop a closer bond with parents than do their peers with siblings.

“I wouldn’t swap being my parents’ best friend for anything in the world,” Nina*, a 30-year-old only child, told me.

So is this closer bond that most only children have with parents a good thing? Can kids and parents get too close? For the most part, it seems like a positive, but there are some potential pitfalls to be aware of, too.

A well-documented close connection

The existence of a tight connection between only children and their parents was observed in a research review dating back to the 1980s when social psychologist Toni Falbo and researcher Denise Polit pored over 115 studies and concluded that only children “…surpassed all non-only borns, especially those from large families, in the positivity of the parent-child relationship.”

Since then, similar results have been seen in studies done in the West and East. When researchers in China, for example, explored the parent-child relationship of junior high school students, they found that singletons were more likely to say they had a close relationship with their parents than were children who had sisters or brothers. That finding held even in two-child families.

The closeness is well-established and makes sense, given increased interactions and time spent together. Cassie*, 47, is the middle of three sisters and parent of one. “I’m much closer with my daughter than the relationship I had with either one of my parents.” She attributes that in part to a different philosophy of parenting . Her parents expected her and her siblings to simply do what they said and didn’t have the capacity to go over their requests with each child as a parent of one generally has. “I have time to be very loving and respectful with my 7-year-old only.”

Singleton Sofia, 29, was raised in a large Hispanic family, as were most of her friends and relatives, yet she feels her relationship with her parents is much healthier than many of her friends have with their parents. “They couldn’t confide in their parents when they were younger and don’t today.”

The junior high school study also concluded that the connection remained tight even after the typically turbulent teen years. That was exactly the experience of only children Henry and Beth, who said they pulled away from their parents as adolescents. But they both reported that their bond with their parents grew stronger again after their rocky teenage years.

Today, Linda and her adult daughter Beth check in daily. They talk for about 10 to 15 minutes during Beth’s drive to work. “We are very close now, but high school and college were really rough,” Beth admits.

As an adult, Henry, 38, is closer to his dad than many of his friends with siblings are to their parents. “Dad and I became close buddies when I was a young boy, and we still are. My dad has a new hobby or interest with great regularity. I became his partner in all of that; we continue to do many things together… I loved his company as a kid and again as I got older. It was only the teen years when I pulled back.”

Henry’s experience is different with his two sons. “As a kid, my dad was joined to me. My boys, ages 6 and 8, are joined at the hip. When I was a kid playing cars or He-man, it was with my dad.” Sometimes, his boys don’t want him to play with them. “They tell me I’m playing wrong, and they don’t come to me with questions like I did with my dad,” Henry says.

There may be slight variations in closeness and findings based on the number of children, birth order , and gender . For instance, in the China study, “parents were emotionally closer to their same-sex children,” and daughters appeared to benefit more from being only children than sons. Looking at the broad picture of the studies to date, however, the consensus holds that only children have closer bonds with their parents.

Shannon, 38, would second that. “I’ve noticed my relationship with my mother is unique in that my mother is my best friend, my everything. We have a strong bond… we work out our troubles. We went through a lot when my mother remarried twice after my dad, but that further cemented our attachment . Sure, there are glitches. Sometimes, though, I ask myself, ‘Who am I separate from her?’”

Possible problems in being too close

One of the biggest potential problems only children and parents face is becoming enmeshed to the point there is no separation between the two. As youngsters, the closeness can be stifling for the child, and as a child gets older, boundaries can be hard to decipher or difficult to maintain.

For all the benefits of the close parent-child bond, like camaraderie, emotional support, and a sense of security, when your connection is too close with no breathing room, it becomes difficult to separate.

Only child Connie, 64, has an only child and an only grandchild and had difficulty separating from her parents. “Being too close,” she says, “is a detriment not only to the child but also to the parent, who sometimes fails to develop outside interests and relationships and relies on the child as their raison d’etre. I see my daughter-in-law doing that now with our grandson, and I’m worried about it for him… and for her. Someday, he’s going to fly away, and she really has no other interests in life except him.”

Enmeshment can be a problem in families of all sizes. In the one-child family, close ties are common and beneficial as long as the connection is not too close, too dependent, or too smothering… and parents don’t apply too much academic pressure.

As the body of research on only children continues to grow—and the negative only-child stereotypes disappear—the strong only child/parent bond stands out as one of the few remaining distinctions between only children and their peers with siblings.

*Names of study participants in the Only Child Research Project mentioned here have been changed to protect identities.

Copyright @ 2023 by Susan Newman .

Facebook image: DisobeyArt/Shutterstock

Why So Many Only Children Excel in School

How Close is Too Close in Mother-Daughter Relationships?

Falbo, T., & Polit, D. F. (1986). Quantitative review of the only child literature: Research evidence and theory development. Psychological Bulletin, 100 (2), 176–189. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.100.2.176

Yixiao Liu Quanbao Jiang (2021). “Who Benefits from Being an Only Child? A Study of Parent–Child Relationship Among Chinese Junior High School Students.” Frontiers in Psychology ., 08 January8. Volume 11. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.608995

Susan Newman, Ph.D. , is a social psychologist and author. Her latest book is The Book of No: 365 Ways to Say it and Mean it—and Stop People-Pleasing Forever.

• Find a Therapist
• Find a Treatment Center
• Find a Psychiatrist
• Find a Support Group
• Find Online Therapy
• United States
• Brooklyn, NY
• Chicago, IL
• Houston, TX
• Los Angeles, CA
• New York, NY
• Portland, OR
• San Diego, CA
• San Francisco, CA
• Seattle, WA
• Washington, DC
• Asperger's
• Bipolar Disorder
• Chronic Pain
• Eating Disorders
• Passive Aggression
• Personality
• Goal Setting
• Positive Psychology
• Stopping Smoking
• Low Sexual Desire
• Relationships
• Child Development
• Self Tests NEW
• Therapy Center
• Diagnosis Dictionary
• Types of Therapy

It’s increasingly common for someone to be diagnosed with a condition such as ADHD or autism as an adult. A diagnosis often brings relief, but it can also come with as many questions as answers.

• Emotional Intelligence
• Gaslighting
• Affective Forecasting
• Neuroscience

Not So Lonely: Busting the Myth of the Only Child

A burgeoning acceptance toward families with only one child is finally starting to creep into society at large, eliminating the mythical stereotype.

Bill and Hillary have one. Franklin D. Roosevelt was one. And the chances are you probably know one or two. Even I have one of the selfish, lonely, and maladjusted creatures said to be populating America in greater numbers every year. I am referring to the “only child,” also known as singletons or onlies.

Despite the only child being a growing demographic, having one still attracts a surprising amount of criticism. At a playground in London, one mother told me she thought having an only child was tantamount to child abuse as she watched my daughter toddle alone in the sandbox. When I told my mother that I probably wouldn’t have any more children, she exclaimed disparagingly that one child was “simply not a family.” My husband, on the other hand, has not had any of these accusations leveled against him. The shaming of mothers of singletons is yet another arena in which guilt, scorn, and impossibly high expectations are heaped upon women, encouraged by society’s biased views.

A year ago, the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs estimated the world’s population at 7.2 billion. At the same time, natural resources like clean air and water are dwindling. Yet to talk of restricting the number of children people choose to have smacks of coercive policy-making or, worse, genetic engineering. In developed countries, though, a limit on family size seems to be occurring organically, without the need for legislation or encouragement from campaigners. If you had asked American women in the 1930s how many children they wanted, 64 percent would have said they wanted at least three. Today, most women feel that 2.5 is ideal. Many of us, however, don’t manage more than one. In fact, 23 percent of Americans have only one child; in New York City, as in a lot of urban centers, the figure is 30 percent.

For many, the rationale for stopping at one child is financial. The cost of raising a kid in the U.S.—before he even gets to college—is $245,300. For others, there simply aren’t enough childbearing years left to have another. And, for a very small minority, the environment and overpopulation are factors. But there is something else at work here: Society is moving away from seeing only children as disadvantaged—though the shift is happening painfully slowly.

Just more than a hundred years ago, the psychologist G. Stanley Hall declared that being an only child was a disease in itself. He was responsible for putting forth the stereotype of the singleton as deficient, indulged, and spoiled. His theories—which he promoted around the same time that psychoanalysis was beginning to blossom—firmly took root. Hall has since undergone some scrutiny, and many of his theories have been rejected within the realm of academia, but popular opinion has yet to catch up. Hall’s words continue to reverberate around playgrounds and kitchen tables all over the country. We hear so often that only children are self-centered, antisocial, and unable to share, that the stereotype has become a self-fulfilling prophecy, or at the very least, what is known as a “ cultural truism .”

In her essay “ G. Stanley Hall: Male Chauvinist Educator ,” the scholar Gill Schofer accuses Hall—the father of child psychology—of being outdated. In Hall’s eyes, women were born solely to be mothers and wives. They were not to engage in any pursuits that might be mentally taxing, such as learning Latin, Greek, or mathematics. If women were to roam outside the realm of the house, society would crumble.

In fairness to Hall, who was born in 1844 and lived the life of a Victorian gentleman, these views were not uncommon for the time. He wrote at length about his mother , whom he worshipped. He described her as the epitome of the Angel in the House, selflessly devoted to her children, her husband, and God. For society to function, Hall believed, all women needed to model themselves on her.

Some of Hall’s opinions were quaint, while others were dangerous. For instance, he advocated something called “retarding,” a process by which a girl’s education was designed to prevent her from engaging in analytical or cerebral pursuits—any curiosity about important subjects such as science, history, or politics was to be repressed in order for her untainted maternal intuition to come to the fore. To Hall, “a purely intellectual woman is…a biological deformity .” And “to a man, wedlock is an incident, but for women, it is destiny.”

So why have Hall’s views on only children held such a grip on our culture when we have shed every one of his opinions on gender roles? In the 1980s, when more women were heading for the workplace and delaying having children, articles in academic journals with titles like “ Negative Stereotypes About Only Children Unfounded; They Do Well on Any Measure ” finally started to appear. These articles helped balance the established preconceptions about only children with careful research. And then, in 1987, Denise F. Polit and Toni Falbo undertook the first large-scale attempt to understand the effects of not having siblings on children.

Polit and Falbo’s findings, which were the result of in-depth analysis of past and current studies, came to the conclusion that singletons and multiples shared much more than we had previously thought. What’s more, they found that the disadvantages of being an only child were, on balance, nonexistent.

Reading the study today, certain details jump out, such as the section on antisocial behavior, one of the traits Hall ascribed to onlies without exception. In previous research, sociability had been measured by self-report, with only children seeing themselves as much less sociable than other children. However, when peers were asked about the sociability of singletons, they were said to be more sociable than children with siblings on average. Another case of cultural truism, perhaps? If you tell a child often enough that he is unsociable, eventually he’ll start to believe it.

More recently, Lauren Sandler’s 2013 book One and Only: The Freedom of Having an Only Child and the Joy of Being One , merges personal stories and anecdotes with up-to-date statistics. Parental happiness, Sandler reports, declines with every child. And in Denmark, women with one child scored far happier than women with no children or women with more than one. Despite this research, the myth of these sad and lonely only children with their desperate and unfulfilled mothers stubbornly persists.

Many studies on the benefits of one-child families, however, seem to feature factors that are irrelevant to many women when they are deciding how many children to have. Most of us probably don’t pay much heed to the fact that only children have higher IQs than those with siblings, or the fact that they often reach higher academic rankings . It certainly wouldn’t be a reason for any woman I know to stop at one. The fact is that modern motherhood and a working life are often incompatible. Some women excel at juggling careers and multiple children—either through hard work, having the money for childcare, living near family members who can look after their children for free, or any combination of these factors. Others simply can’t do it. We stop at one because we don’t have the money, the time, or the love for another child. Our financial and emotional resources, we feel, are only ample enough to nurture one child well. Or perhaps crippling postpartum depression frightens some women away from going through the difficult and lonely years of caring for another baby. That was certainly a factor for me.

One major raison d’être for feminism is to allow women to make informed choices: whether or not to marry, to work, to have children. But the taboo around choosing to have one child persists. I found it shocking that so many people I barely knew felt entitled to point out how selfish I was for not giving my daughter a sibling. But selfishness is closely linked to—and sometimes confused with—self-preservation, a human being’s most deeply ingrained instinct for survival, and a desirable and healthy characteristic for someone raising a child.

Perhaps, in time, as more people choose to stop at one child, the stigma will disappear. This will also make it easier on those who had the decision to have one child thrust upon them through infertility, ill health, the breakup of a relationship, or, in some cases, the death of a child’s sibling. It will also free children without siblings from having to prove to the world that they can be social, generous, and well-adjusted. Negative comments directed at one-child families suggest a view of life where we can all choose what we want, when and how we want it. Even when it comes to having children, the image that people are being sold—and that some are buying—is one of the happy consumer with an array of endless choices. Yet the reality of bearing children is far from this.

Whatever happened to the idea that life cannot be perfectly planned, nor can we always get what we want when it comes to the big decisions facing us. We are all muddling through, doing the best we can. Siblings won’t necessarily make a sad and lonely child happy, nor will not having siblings necessarily make a happy child miserable. Singletons, in other words, are more maligned than maladjusted , and it does them a disservice to perpetuate outdated stereotypes invented by a reactionary Victorian gentleman. G. Stanley Hall has been dead for 90 years. Maybe a burgeoning acceptance toward one-child families is finally starting to creep into society at large, one that will allow modern women and the people around them to stop seeing one child as being “only” one, and to start seeing them for the abundance they really are.

JSTOR is a digital library for scholars, researchers, and students. JSTOR Daily readers can access the original research behind our articles for free on JSTOR.

Get Our Newsletter

Get your fix of JSTOR Daily’s best stories in your inbox each Thursday.

Privacy Policy   Contact Us You may unsubscribe at any time by clicking on the provided link on any marketing message.

More Stories

• A Mother Superior’s Demons

• In the Palm of Your Hand

A History of Diwali

Jews vs. the “Judeo-Christian Tradition”

Recent posts.

• A Brief History of the Muses
• The War on Bugs
• Bears, Beers, and the Question of Free Will

Support JSTOR Daily

Sign up for our weekly newsletter.