What are the odds of being an only child?
Today, the number of only children is increasing. In the US, the rate is between 20% and 30% of families. In this article: Only child personality traits.
Modern science suggests only children are exceedingly normal. Studies that go back to the 1980s show there are no set differences between singletons and children with siblings, aside from onlies having stronger bonds with their parents.
The 2021 average child per family was 42.5% for one-child families (again, compared to all families with children). Two-children families share the same participation – 42.3%. Families with three or more kids account for the remaining 15.2%.
A 2019 study suggests that there is still a generally negative view of only children, including that they may be more likely to be selfish or narcissistic. People generally see narcissism as a negative or undesirable trait, so they may dislike others they deem narcissistic.
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 7, only children were just as popular as their peers with siblings. The study's authors concluded “there is little risk to growing up without siblings."
According to a National Institute of Child Health and Human Development study, only children and children with siblings ultimately have the same employment rates, marriage outcomes, levels of mobility, and average number of kids. The one trait that might separate them is sociability.
MYTH: Only children are lonely. FACT: Only children can have as many friends as their peers with siblings do.
Only children are unique in birth order in that they are the first- and last-born children in their families. Various theories of prominent psychologists such as Adler, Freud, Skinner, and Eysenck will be examined in their application to the importance of birth order in personality development.
A twin study of 35,000 showed moms of only children are happier than women without kids, and happier those with two or more. A recent study of 20,000 parents over 16 years shows the birth of a second child increases parental stress due to time pressure, and mothers are hit the hardest.
Seventy percent of children (under 18 years old) live with two parents, 23% with their mother only, 3% with their father only, and nearly 4% with no parent [1].
Is it good to have only one child?
Parenting having one child
You might feel that pressure, but having one child is more than okay. Raising children is not an easy task. Those raising more than one child might assume that a parent with only one has it easier. But one-child parents often go through similar challenges.
“If you want to maximize your subjective well-being, you should stop at one child,” the study's author told Psychology Today. A more recent study, from Europe, found that two was the magic number; having more children didn't bring parents more joy.
There weren't any differences in intelligence between the two groups. But only-child participants did have one advantage: They score higher on flexibility, which is a measure of creativity—how well a person is able to think in novel ways, or outside the box.
A study done by the National Bureau of Economic Research showed that only children tend to perform better in school, are higher achievers and are overall more mature. Most of this all comes down to only children simply spending more time with adults.
The chi-square test indicated that only children were significantly associated with anxiety symptom, depressive symptom, and the comorbidity of anxiety and depressive symptoms in college students (ps < 0.05), respectively.
A study has found that children who grow up without siblings are likely to have a different brain structure than those who do. Only children are often branded as selfish and spoiled compared to their peers who have brothers and sisters.
In a meta-analysis of research from 1926 to 1985, Polit and Falbo (1987) found no statistically reliable differences between children or adults with and without siblings in responses to personality measures such as extraversion, neuroticism, generosity, cooperativeness, leadership, and self-control.
Since they don't have siblings to interact with, only children are believed to be lonely and poorly socialized. They are also believed to be incapable of compromising or working well with others, since they haven't had to share their toys, space, identity, and parents' attention with others.
Having two children reduces mortality risk. Three different studies looked at thousands of older adults and found the same thing: two kids was the sweet spot for health. The risk of an early death increases by 18% for parents of an only child.
"Only child syndrome" is the belief that only children are spoiled, bossy, and antisocial— but this stigma isn't actually true. Find out how an only child's personality is formed, and learn ways to prevent negative behaviors in your kid. By.
Is it harder being an only child?
Also, lack of interaction with a sibling is believed to cause loneliness and antisocial tendencies. Some even think these effects carry into adulthood, with only children having difficulty getting along with co-workers, displaying hypersensitivity to criticism as they become older, and having poor social skills.
Youngest children are very slightly more likely to be Introverts (+1.13%) than they are Extraverts (-1.07%). Only children are less likely to be Introverts (-2.23%).
Grow your family to at least four children! According to a study out of Australia's Edith Cowan University, parents with the most life satisfaction (which means those who are the happiest) are those that have four or more children.
You get to focus on quality — not quantity. Having one means you can give your child undivided attention when she's having a hard time and needs you to be there, really be there, for her. It means she will grow up knowing that she was all that was needed or wanted.
Because of that long connection, she adds, siblings matter a lot for our personal growth and well-being. “Throughout the lifespan, people who have close sibling relationships have better mental health, better psychological health, and better social relationships, generally speaking.”
A study from Princeton University and Stony Brook University found that parents and nonparents have similar levels of life satisfaction, but parents experienced both more daily joy and more daily stress than nonparents. “Life without children is simply much more stable,” Glass says.
The researchers found that women who had live births had telomeres that were an average of 4.2 percent shorter than their counterparts with no children. This equates to around 11 years of accelerated cellular aging, said Anna Pollack, an epidemiologist at George Mason University and the lead researcher of the study.
Since having five or more kids is generally the cutoff point for being considered a “large” family, here are all the ways your parenting will change once you hit that pivotal plus-five milestone.
Children Affect Happiness
In terms of happiness, a compelling argument for having an only child comes from science that strongly indicates that mothers with one child are happiest.
Experts say the best time to get pregnant is between your late 20s and early 30s. This age range is associated with the best outcomes for both you and your baby. One study pinpointed the ideal age to give birth to a first child as 30.5. Your age is just one factor that should go into your decision to get pregnant.
How many kids you should have?
Two children. Research suggests that having two children is still most people's idea of the 'ideal' family size.
Two kids require more time, more attention, and more energy than one, which means you have less of all of those to spend on each other. Date nights, romantic evenings, and even casual conversations are harder to come by. You also have more things to disagree on.
The reason firstborns are under attack is because they are pacesetters. They are the family's glory and honour. If the devil can attack them, he can get the rest of the children in the family. Again, the firstborn has influence over the other children in the family; hence he is meant to be the mentor to them.
They found no differences between the two groups; only children did not emerge as being any more selfish than children with siblings. This particular stereotype is thought to stem, at least in part, from the idea that only children grow up as the sole focus of their parents' attention.
Only children outperformed the participants with siblings on creativity, but they scored lower on trait agreeableness – psychological differences that appeared to coincide with relevant structural differences in their brains.
There's a long-held myth that only children become spoiled and demanding as adults. A comprehensive personality study now shows that this myth is unfounded. Not only is personality not determined by family position, but it can also change across the adult years.
An only child is a person with no siblings, by birth or adoption.
The truth is that having one child as opposed to two or more allows for a much more controlled environment, and there are also fewer relationships in the family to potentially complicate the overall family dynamic.
My general response is that it's a 50/50 chance that a woman will have a boy or a girl. But that's not exactly true – there's actually a slight bias toward male births. The ratio of male to female births, called the sex ratio, is about 105 to 100, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
Researcher Doug Downey observed adults who grew up as an only child were least likely to marry. Those who did marry were the most at risk for divorce than adults who grew up with at least one sibling.
Is an only child lonely?
MYTH: Only children are lonely. FACT: Only children can have as many friends as their peers with siblings do.
In terms of happiness, a compelling argument for having an only child comes from science that strongly indicates that mothers with one child are happiest.
One is a sweet spot. A twin study of 35,000 showed moms of only children are happier than women without kids, and happier those with two or more. A recent study of 20,000 parents over 16 years shows the birth of a second child increases parental stress due to time pressure, and mothers are hit the hardest.
When we look at the statistics the chances of having a boy or a girl are almost the same and there's no medical evidence to suggest we can influence this. You may, however, have heard about the 'Shettles Method'. In the 1970s Dr Shettles found that female and male sperm had different characteristics.
They found that the most fertile months for conceiving a boy were from September to November, while the lowest fertile period was from March to May.
Almost everyone has around a 50% chance of having a boy and a 50% chance of having a girl. What we can say is that dad's sperm determines whether a baby will be born as a boy or a girl. About half of his sperm will make a boy and half a girl. The sex of the baby depends on which sperm gets to the egg first.
Close with family
And lastly, Beurkens and Sherman note that being an only child can make one particularly close to one's parents. "They tend to have closer relationships with their parents during childhood and in adulthood," Beurkens explains.
Absent children, however, there less need to stay together. Couples without children divorce more often than couples that have at least one child, according to researchers, despite numerous studies that marital happiness nosedives in the first year or two after the birth of a child and sometimes never quite recoups.
When it comes to who is happier, parents or child-free people, most of the research up until now has concluded that it is the childless who are more satisfied with their overall lives.
Among married and cohabiting adults, love is cited more than any other reason for why they decided to get married or to move in with their partner: 90% of those who are married and 73% of those living with a partner say love was a major factor in their decision.
