“Only children tend to wind up with better vocabulary and a more sophisticated sense of humor.” — author Jeffrey Kluger
Parenting an only child comes with plenty of perks. Just
ask Hope Austin. She has plenty of time and energy to play with her 3-year-old
daughter Grace, she isn’t drowning in childcare expenses, and she knows Grace
will have more money for college.
But that doesn’t mean raising a singleton is easy.
“With the cost of childcare and the fact that I’m about
to go back to school, I just don’t know if I can give her a sibling,” says
Austin. “But I wonder if I’m doing the right thing.”
Increasingly, researchers say that she is. Like Austin,
many of today’s parents are opting for just one child, and new research is
challenging long-held assumptions that siblings are a must for a happy
childhood. In fact, some researchers and authors are making a convincing case
that only children may have an edge over kids with siblings in some areas — academics,
for example.
In her 2011 book, “The
Case For the Only Child,” social psychologist Susan Newman writes that
many women are having children later in life and more and more families are
concerned about the cost of raising children.
With these demographic and economic trends dovetailing
with research showing that only children aren’t disadvantaged at all, it’s not
hard to understand why single-child families are growing at a faster rate than
families with more than one child, she says.
Downsizing the
family
The iconic image of two parents surrounded by two or
three rosy-cheeked children is dated — and quickly disappearing, says Newman.
Until 1967, over two-thirds of Americans preferred a family of three or more
children, but in a 2007 Gallup poll, half of Americans said the ideal family
contains one, two, or no children.
According to government reports, America’s birth
rate declined from its 1957 peak of 3.7 children per woman to 1.9 children per
woman in 1980. Today, the number of children per family hovers at 1.88, and
over 20 percent of women have only one child.
A singular
advantage?
A century after iconic psychologist G. Stanley Hall
famously proclaimed that being an only child is “a disease in itself,”
researchers are discovering the opposite effect: hundreds of studies show that
only children are socially capable and academically adept.
One researcher making a strong case for only children is
Douglas Downey of Ohio State University. His recent study of 13,500 kids found
that any difference in social competence between only children and those with
siblings disappears by adolescence: by grade seven, only children were just as
popular as their peers with siblings.
In another study, Downey found that only children have an
academic edge over their peers with siblings. He collected data from 24,599 and
eighth-graders and found having more siblings lowers academic success. As
family size increases, each child receives less parental attention and fewer
educational resources.
And adult only children fare just fine, according to
California State University assistant professor at Heidi Riggio. She found that
adult singletons make friends just as easily and display similar social traits
as adults who grew up with siblings.
According to Jeffrey Kluger, author of “The Sibling Effect: What the Bonds Among
Brothers and Sisters Reveal About Us,” only children have some key
advantages over children with siblings.
“Only children tend to wind up with better vocabulary and
a more sophisticated sense of humor, simply because they grow up in a house
outnumbered by parents,” he says.
Skill-building for singletons
Though only
children enjoy some advantages, Downey’s research shows that young only
children lag slightly in some areas of social development, though the gap disappears
later on. Only children have fewer opportunities to key social skills like
negotiation and sharing, simply because they aren’t living with other children.
According to
child and adolescent therapist Dr. Kyle Good, conflict is the key to social learning
for only children.
“Parents often
shy away from conflict and want to avoid it,” says Good. “But conflict can be a
valuable teaching tool.”
But parents
can create learning opportunities by allowing only children to observe parents
resolving minor conflicts.
Singletons can
gain some of the skills children learn from having siblings — including
negotiation and joint problem-solving — by developing close relationships with
friends and cousins. Childcare can also serve to boost socialization; “Only children
can get a great deal of socialization through daycare, because they’ll be
interacting closely with the same children for many hours a day,” says Kluger.
Regardless of family size, family play is highly
beneficial, says Good. The parent-guided interactions that take place during
family play help children develop behavioral regulation and emotional
understanding.
One and only
When deciding how many children to have, today’s parents
have a lot to ponder, says Newman. “No one can decide what the right family
size for you except you and your partner,” she says. “The biggest influence on
how your kids turn out is your parenting, not how many kids you have.”
It’s a message Austin appreciates. She grew up with two
brothers, and remembers feeling left out and excluded at times. Though she
never wanted to be an only child, she can see herself raising one. Grace is
happy and growing up well, she says: “That’s what matters.”
Raising successful singletons
• Encourage
healthy conflict resolution: Don’t shy away from family conflicts. Instead, use
them as a springboard for lessons in negotiation, emotional understanding, and
self-control. Only children can benefit from observing parents as they resolve
minor conflicts.
• Promote
extended-family relationships: Only children can gain a deeper sense of
identity and gain valuable social skills through interactions with extended
family members of all ages.
• Play
as a family: Parent-guided interactions that occur during family play allows
only children to develop empathy, social understanding, and behavioral
regulation.
Malia
Jacobson is a nationally published health and parenting journalist and mom of
three.