Only child
Encyclopedia
An only child is a person with no sibling
s, either biological or adopted
. In a family with multiple offspring, first-borns, may be briefly considered only children and have a similar early family
environment, but the term only child is generally applied only to those individuals who never have siblings. An only child, however, may have half-siblings or step-siblings who come along considerably late (after they reach their teens) and still be considered an only child. Children with much older siblings (generally ten or more years) may also have a similar family environment to only children.
, inflation, and a larger demand for the workforce, more families began to raise only children. In recent years, the number of families in the United States
, Europe
, and Japan
choosing to have one child has increased considerably since the 1940s, coinciding with achieving equality in the workforce. After the Korean War
ended in 1953, the South Korean government suggested citizens each have one or two children to boost economic prosperity, which resulted in significantly lowered birth rates and a larger number of only children to the country. Since 1979, the one-child policy
in Mainland China
has restricted most parents to having an only child, although it is subject to local relaxations and individual circumstances.
Families may have an only child for a variety of reasons, including: personal preference, family planning
, financial and emotional or physical health issues, desire to travel, stress in the family, educational advantages, late marriage, stability, focus, time constraints, fears over pregnancy, advanced age, infertility
, divorce
, and death of a sibling or parent.
s in Western countries. G. Stanley Hall
was one of the first experts to give only children a bad reputation when he referred to their situation as "a disease in itself." Even today, only children are commonly stereotyped as "spoiled, selfish, and bratty." While only children receive unlimited time for development and resources, there's no confirmation they are overindulged or considerably differ from children with siblings. Susan Newman, a social psychologist at Rutgers University
and the author of Parenting an Only Child, says that this is a myth. "People articulate that only children are spoiled, they're aggressive, they're bossy, they're lonely, they're maladjusted," she said. "There have been hundreds and hundreds of research studies that show that only children are no different from their peers." Similarly, a popular belief is held that only children have aversive social skills, and therefore a harder time making friends. Based on a 2004 study of American middle and high school students, such beliefs were confirmed false.
In China, the phenomenon of Little Emperor Syndrome
has been observed. The one child policy has also been speculated to be the underlying cause of forced abortions, female infanticide, underreporting of female births, and has been suggested as a possible cause behind China's increasing number of crimes and gender imbalance
. Despite this, a 2008 survey given by the Pew Research Center reports that 76% of the Chinese population supports the policy.
It has been posited that it is often more difficult for only children to cooperate in a conventional family environment, as they have no competitors for their parents and family. It is suggested that confusion arises about the norms of ages and roles and that a similar effect exists in understanding during relationships with other peers and youth, all throughout life. Furthermore, it is suggested that many feel that their parents place extra pressure and expectations as the single child of the family. Often, only children are perfectionists. Only children are noted to have a tendency to mature faster.
of 141 studies on 16 different personality traits contradicts the opinion, held by theorists including Alfred Adler
, that only children feel maladjusted due to pampering. The study found no evidence of any maladjustment in only children. The most important finding was that only children are not very different from children with siblings. The main exception to this was the finding that only children are higher in achievement motivation, largely because their greater share of parental attention translates into increased parental scrutiny: This scrutiny, especially as compounded by only children's access to a greater share of parental resources, exposes them to greater absolute quantities of both reward when they exceed parental expectations and punishment when they fall short. A second analysis revealed that only children, first-borns, and children with only one sibling score higher on tests of verbal ability than later-borns and children with multiple siblings.
The advantage of only children in test scores and achievement motivation may be due to the greater amount of parental attention they receive. According to the Resource Dilution Model, parental resources (e.g. time to read to the child) are important in development. Because these resources are finite, children with many siblings receive fewer resources.
In his book Maybe One, Bill McKibben
argues in favor of a one child policy based on this research. He argues that most cultural stereotypes are false, that there are not many differences between only children and other children, and where there are differences, they are favorable to the only child. Aside from scoring significantly better in achievement motivation, only children score significantly better in personal adjustment to new situations. Only children are also more likely to make outside friends, whereas children with siblings tend to be "more parochial and limited in their understanding of a variety of social roles", but it is usually more difficult for them to do so, even in early life. Traits such as self-control, interpersonal skills, and emotional control have been observed to vary much more noticeably
among only children.
Most research on only children has been quantitative
and focused on the behaviour of only-children and on how others, for example teachers, assess that behaviour. Bernice Sorensen, in contrast, used qualitative methods in order to elicit meaning and to discover what only-children themselves understand, feel or sense about their lives that are lived without siblings. Her research showed that during their life span only children often become more aware of their only child status and are very much affected by society's stereotype of the only-child whether or not the stereotype is true or false. She argues in her book, Only Child Experience and Adulthood, that growing up in a predominantly sibling society affects only children and that their lack of sibling relationships can have an important affect on both the way they see themselves and others and how they interact with the world.
" (also known as Five Factor Model) represent a natural taxonomy of human personality variables. Across different languages, the vast majority of adjectives used to describe human personality fit into one of the following five areas, easily remembered by the acronym OCEAN: Openness
, Conscientiousness
, Extraversion, Agreeableness
, and Neuroticism
. Factor analyses of personality test
s also tend to cluster around these five factors.
In his book Born to Rebel, Frank Sulloway
provides evidence that birth order
influences the development of Big Five personality traits. Sulloway suggests that firstborns and only children are more conscientious, more socially dominant, less agreeable, and less open to new ideas compared to laterborns. However, his conclusions have been challenged by other researchers, who argue that birth order effects are weak and inconsistent. In one of the largest studies conducted on the effect of birth order on the Big Five, data from a national sample of 9,664 subjects found no association between birth order and scores on the NEO PI-R personality test.
Sibling
Siblings are people who share at least one parent. A male sibling is called a brother; and a female sibling is called a sister. In most societies throughout the world, siblings usually grow up together and spend a good deal of their childhood socializing with one another...
s, either biological or adopted
Adoption
Adoption is a process whereby a person assumes the parenting for another and, in so doing, permanently transfers all rights and responsibilities from the original parent or parents...
. In a family with multiple offspring, first-borns, may be briefly considered only children and have a similar early family
Family
In human context, a family is a group of people affiliated by consanguinity, affinity, or co-residence. In most societies it is the principal institution for the socialization of children...
environment, but the term only child is generally applied only to those individuals who never have siblings. An only child, however, may have half-siblings or step-siblings who come along considerably late (after they reach their teens) and still be considered an only child. Children with much older siblings (generally ten or more years) may also have a similar family environment to only children.
Overview
Throughout history, only children were relatively uncommon. Faced with declining birth rates, birth controlBirth control
Birth control is an umbrella term for several techniques and methods used to prevent fertilization or to interrupt pregnancy at various stages. Birth control techniques and methods include contraception , contragestion and abortion...
, inflation, and a larger demand for the workforce, more families began to raise only children. In recent years, the number of families in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
, and Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
choosing to have one child has increased considerably since the 1940s, coinciding with achieving equality in the workforce. After the Korean War
Korean War
The Korean War was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China , with military material aid from the Soviet Union...
ended in 1953, the South Korean government suggested citizens each have one or two children to boost economic prosperity, which resulted in significantly lowered birth rates and a larger number of only children to the country. Since 1979, the one-child policy
One-child policy
The one-child policy refers to the one-child limitation applying to a minority of families in the population control policy of the People's Republic of China . The Chinese government refers to it under the official translation of family planning policy...
in Mainland China
Mainland China
Mainland China, the Chinese mainland or simply the mainland, is a geopolitical term that refers to the area under the jurisdiction of the People's Republic of China . According to the Taipei-based Mainland Affairs Council, the term excludes the PRC Special Administrative Regions of Hong Kong and...
has restricted most parents to having an only child, although it is subject to local relaxations and individual circumstances.
Families may have an only child for a variety of reasons, including: personal preference, family planning
Family planning
Family planning is the planning of when to have children, and the use of birth control and other techniques to implement such plans. Other techniques commonly used include sexuality education, prevention and management of sexually transmitted infections, pre-conception counseling and...
, financial and emotional or physical health issues, desire to travel, stress in the family, educational advantages, late marriage, stability, focus, time constraints, fears over pregnancy, advanced age, infertility
Infertility
Infertility primarily refers to the biological inability of a person to contribute to conception. Infertility may also refer to the state of a woman who is unable to carry a pregnancy to full term...
, divorce
Divorce
Divorce is the final termination of a marital union, canceling the legal duties and responsibilities of marriage and dissolving the bonds of matrimony between the parties...
, and death of a sibling or parent.
Stereotypes
Only children are often subject to a stereotype that equates them with spoiled bratSpoiled brat
A spoiled child is a child that exhibits behavioral problems from overindulgence by his or her parents. Spoiled children may be described as "overindulged", "grandiose", "narcissistic" or "egocentric-regressed"...
s in Western countries. G. Stanley Hall
G. Stanley Hall
Granville Stanley Hall was a pioneering American psychologist and educator. His interests focused on childhood development and evolutionary theory...
was one of the first experts to give only children a bad reputation when he referred to their situation as "a disease in itself." Even today, only children are commonly stereotyped as "spoiled, selfish, and bratty." While only children receive unlimited time for development and resources, there's no confirmation they are overindulged or considerably differ from children with siblings. Susan Newman, a social psychologist at Rutgers University
Rutgers University
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey , is the largest institution for higher education in New Jersey, United States. It was originally chartered as Queen's College in 1766. It is the eighth-oldest college in the United States and one of the nine Colonial colleges founded before the American...
and the author of Parenting an Only Child, says that this is a myth. "People articulate that only children are spoiled, they're aggressive, they're bossy, they're lonely, they're maladjusted," she said. "There have been hundreds and hundreds of research studies that show that only children are no different from their peers." Similarly, a popular belief is held that only children have aversive social skills, and therefore a harder time making friends. Based on a 2004 study of American middle and high school students, such beliefs were confirmed false.
In China, the phenomenon of Little Emperor Syndrome
Little Emperor Syndrome
"Little Emperors" is a name that refers to only children in the People's Republic of China after the one-child policy was implemented. Attributed most frequently to increased spending power within the family unit and the parents' desire for their child to experience the benefits they were denied,...
has been observed. The one child policy has also been speculated to be the underlying cause of forced abortions, female infanticide, underreporting of female births, and has been suggested as a possible cause behind China's increasing number of crimes and gender imbalance
Human sex ratio
In anthropology and demography, the human sex ratio is the sex ratio for Homo sapiens . Like most sexual species, the sex ratio is approximately 1:1. In humans the secondary sex ratio is commonly assumed to be 105 boys to 100 girls, an assumption that is a subject of debate in the scientific...
. Despite this, a 2008 survey given by the Pew Research Center reports that 76% of the Chinese population supports the policy.
It has been posited that it is often more difficult for only children to cooperate in a conventional family environment, as they have no competitors for their parents and family. It is suggested that confusion arises about the norms of ages and roles and that a similar effect exists in understanding during relationships with other peers and youth, all throughout life. Furthermore, it is suggested that many feel that their parents place extra pressure and expectations as the single child of the family. Often, only children are perfectionists. Only children are noted to have a tendency to mature faster.
Scientific research
A 1987 quantitative reviewMeta-analysis
In statistics, a meta-analysis combines the results of several studies that address a set of related research hypotheses. In its simplest form, this is normally by identification of a common measure of effect size, for which a weighted average might be the output of a meta-analyses. Here the...
of 141 studies on 16 different personality traits contradicts the opinion, held by theorists including Alfred Adler
Alfred Adler
Alfred Adler was an Austrian medical doctor, psychotherapist, and founder of the school of individual psychology. In collaboration with Sigmund Freud and a small group of Freud's colleagues, Adler was among the co-founders of the psychoanalytic movement as a core member of the Vienna...
, that only children feel maladjusted due to pampering. The study found no evidence of any maladjustment in only children. The most important finding was that only children are not very different from children with siblings. The main exception to this was the finding that only children are higher in achievement motivation, largely because their greater share of parental attention translates into increased parental scrutiny: This scrutiny, especially as compounded by only children's access to a greater share of parental resources, exposes them to greater absolute quantities of both reward when they exceed parental expectations and punishment when they fall short. A second analysis revealed that only children, first-borns, and children with only one sibling score higher on tests of verbal ability than later-borns and children with multiple siblings.
The advantage of only children in test scores and achievement motivation may be due to the greater amount of parental attention they receive. According to the Resource Dilution Model, parental resources (e.g. time to read to the child) are important in development. Because these resources are finite, children with many siblings receive fewer resources.
In his book Maybe One, Bill McKibben
Bill McKibben
William Ernest "Bill" McKibben is an American environmentalist, author, and journalist who has written extensively on the impact of global warming. He is the Schumann Distinguished Scholar at Middlebury College...
argues in favor of a one child policy based on this research. He argues that most cultural stereotypes are false, that there are not many differences between only children and other children, and where there are differences, they are favorable to the only child. Aside from scoring significantly better in achievement motivation, only children score significantly better in personal adjustment to new situations. Only children are also more likely to make outside friends, whereas children with siblings tend to be "more parochial and limited in their understanding of a variety of social roles", but it is usually more difficult for them to do so, even in early life. Traits such as self-control, interpersonal skills, and emotional control have been observed to vary much more noticeably
Statistical dispersion
In statistics, statistical dispersion is variability or spread in a variable or a probability distribution...
among only children.
Most research on only children has been quantitative
Quantitative
A quantitative property is one that exists in a range of magnitudes, and can therefore be measured with a number. Measurements of any particular quantitative property are expressed as a specific quantity, referred to as a unit, multiplied by a number. Examples of physical quantities are distance,...
and focused on the behaviour of only-children and on how others, for example teachers, assess that behaviour. Bernice Sorensen, in contrast, used qualitative methods in order to elicit meaning and to discover what only-children themselves understand, feel or sense about their lives that are lived without siblings. Her research showed that during their life span only children often become more aware of their only child status and are very much affected by society's stereotype of the only-child whether or not the stereotype is true or false. She argues in her book, Only Child Experience and Adulthood, that growing up in a predominantly sibling society affects only children and that their lack of sibling relationships can have an important affect on both the way they see themselves and others and how they interact with the world.
The Big Five
Many contemporary personality theorists believe that the "big five personality traitsBig Five personality traits
In contemporary psychology, the "Big Five" factors of personality are five broad domains or dimensions of personality which are used to describe human personality....
" (also known as Five Factor Model) represent a natural taxonomy of human personality variables. Across different languages, the vast majority of adjectives used to describe human personality fit into one of the following five areas, easily remembered by the acronym OCEAN: Openness
Openness to experience
Openness to experience is one of the domains which are used to describe human personality in the Five Factor Model Openness involves active imagination, aesthetic sensitivity, attentiveness to inner feelings, preference for variety, and intellectual curiosity. A great deal of psychometric research...
, Conscientiousness
Conscientiousness
Conscientiousness is the trait of being painstaking and careful, or the quality of acting according to the dictates of one's conscience. It includes such elements as self-discipline, carefulness, thoroughness, organization, deliberation , and need for achievement. It is an aspect of what has...
, Extraversion, Agreeableness
Agreeableness
Agreeableness is a tendency to be pleasant and accommodating in social situations. In contemporary personality psychology, agreeableness is one of the five major dimensions of personality structure, reflecting individual differences in concern for cooperation and social harmony. People who score...
, and Neuroticism
Neuroticism
Neuroticism is a fundamental personality trait in the study of psychology. It is an enduring tendency to experience negative emotional states. Individuals who score high on neuroticism are more likely than the average to experience such feelings as anxiety, anger, guilt, and depressed mood...
. Factor analyses of personality test
Personality test
-Overview:There are many different types of personality tests. The most common type, the self-report inventory, involves the administration of many questions, or "items", to test-takers who respond by rating the degree to which each item reflects their behavior...
s also tend to cluster around these five factors.
In his book Born to Rebel, Frank Sulloway
Frank Sulloway
Frank J. Sulloway is a visiting Scholar in the Institute of Personality and Social Research at the University of California, Berkeley, and a Visiting Professor in the Department of Psychology....
provides evidence that birth order
Birth order
Birth order is defined as a person's rank by age among his or her siblings. Birth order is often believed to have a profound and lasting effect on psychological development...
influences the development of Big Five personality traits. Sulloway suggests that firstborns and only children are more conscientious, more socially dominant, less agreeable, and less open to new ideas compared to laterborns. However, his conclusions have been challenged by other researchers, who argue that birth order effects are weak and inconsistent. In one of the largest studies conducted on the effect of birth order on the Big Five, data from a national sample of 9,664 subjects found no association between birth order and scores on the NEO PI-R personality test.
See also
- Multiple birthMultiple birthA multiple birth occurs when more than one fetus is carried to term in a single pregnancy. Different names for multiple births are used, depending on the number of offspring. Common multiples are two and three, known as twins and triplets...
- ChildfreeChildfreeChildfree also known as "voluntary childlessness" is a form of childlessness. The term was coined in the English language late in the 20th century and is used to describe people who have made a personal decision not to have children. The term childfree also describes domestic and urban...
- Single parentSingle parentSingle parent is a term that is mostly used to suggest that one parent has most of the day to day responsibilities in the raising of the child or children, which would categorize them as the dominant caregiver...
- Birth orderBirth orderBirth order is defined as a person's rank by age among his or her siblings. Birth order is often believed to have a profound and lasting effect on psychological development...
- One-child policyOne-child policyThe one-child policy refers to the one-child limitation applying to a minority of families in the population control policy of the People's Republic of China . The Chinese government refers to it under the official translation of family planning policy...
- Two-child policy
- Cost of raising a childCost of raising a childThe cost of raising a child varies from country to country.-Developing countries:According to Globalissues.org, "Almost half the world — over three billion people — live on less than $2.50 a day." This statistic includes children. On this number, it costs roughly US$900 to raise a child for a year,...
- Sole Survivor PolicySole Survivor PolicyThe Sole Survivor Policy or DoD Directive 1315.15 "Special Separation Policies for Survivorship" describes a set of regulations in the U.S. military that are designed to protect members of a family from the draft or from combat duty if they have already lost family members in military...