‘You’re actually pretty normal - for an only child.’ This is a phrase I’ve heard my whole life, and one that I’ve always been oddly proud of. Having grown up as the only child of a single mother in central London, there are plenty of traditional childhood staples I missed out on – like learning how to ride a bike, for example, which I still can’t do at the grand old age of 34 – but somehow, I managed to swerve the dreaded ‘only child syndrome’.
The phrase, which was coined after a study published by two leading psychologists in the early 1900s, suggests that children growing up without siblings are more likely to be spoilt, narcissistic, depressive and impulsive than children with siblings. My husband, family and friends (and yes, I do have plenty of them, despite not being able to hone my social skills on a brood of brothers and sisters) assure me I’m none of these things. And I have plenty of fellow only children pals who don’t display these traits either. But now I’m a mother myself, to a beautiful one-year-old daughter, and almost certain I’ll only be having one child, I can’t quite shake the weirdly guilty feeling that I might be denying her a fundamental rite of passage, just because I don’t want to go through the whole birthing-and-rearing-a-child thing again.
There are many reasons why I’m pretty strongly in the ‘one and done’ club. Firstly, having a kid is bloody hard work. I know everyone tells you that, but until you’ve done it yourself, you can’t fully comprehend the impact it will have on your life. As my mum cheerfully put it over the phone when I called her with a wailing newborn in my arms, ‘It’s like a bomb has gone off in the middle of your life.’ Every few months there’s a new stage to master – first there’s actually giving birth, then figuring out how to breastfeed, then getting them to sleep, then weaning, teething, tantrums; the list is never-ending. As soon as you manage to get past one hurdle, there’s another one waiting for you around the corner, and the thought of putting yourself through each stage more than once sounds like pure lunacy to me.
Then there are the logistics. One child fits fairly nicely into our lifestyle. We can all co-habit quite comfortably in our small South East London house, and not mind too much that its garden is the size of a postage stamp. We can still go on family holidays a couple of times a year, and we can (just about) afford the ludicrous cost of childcare without crippling ourselves financially. Throw more than one child into that mix and the whole thing falls apart. We don’t have family nearby to help, and inevitably the main burden of dealing with childcare falls to me, because my husband’s job pays a lot better than a freelance journalist’s salary. It almost certainly wouldn’t make sense for me to carry on working, and for my own sanity, that’s not even worth considering.
But as my fellow mum friends begin calculating the perfect age gap to start trying for their second – and others seem almost appalled at the thought I might not provide my daughter with a permanent playmate - I can’t help wondering if not having a brother or sister will be harmful to her in some way. While I had a pretty happy childhood, there were definitely moments when being branded with the only child label made me feel like an outsider (I much preferred the terminology I was taught in French class, where I was une fille unique).
Am I saddling her with those same assumed stigmas I grew up with, of people always wondering if you’re going to be a bit socially weird, outrageously spoilt or bad at sharing? Am I being selfish not having another child that she can laugh and fight with, a companion for her to muddle through life alongside? Or is recognising that having another child would probably be more than I could handle the ultimate act of self-care?
Luckily, it seems that thinking has moved on since the turn of the last century, with recent figures showing a growing trend towards single child households. According to the Office for National Statistics, in 2017 40% of married couples had a single child, and it has been predicted that this figure could rise to 50% by 2030. Just last month a study led by the team from the Shaanxi Normal University in Xi'an, China, revealed that ‘only child syndrome’ is in fact a myth, and that those without siblings are in no way more selfish than those who have them.
The clinical psychologist Linda Blair, author of the book Birth Order, says there can actually be benefits to only having one child. ‘Only children are not at all badly adjusted – in fact, they have terrific advantages,’ she says. ‘They get the total attention of their parents, as well as good linguistic input, and therefore they’re more likely to succeed in school than other kids. They also know how to use free time, because they have more of it, and they’re usually very organised because they don’t grow up in chaos.’
There are, naturally, some disadvantages too – mainly missing out on what Blair refers to as ‘street smarts’, where you learn how to be quick off the draw and read other people’s intentions. ‘But that’s only for survival, because otherwise you’d get beaten up by your brothers and sisters,’ she says. As for the notion that only children are socially awkward, Blair says that’s no longer the case. ‘Fifty or sixty years ago, if you were a single child, it’s usually because you were the one miracle that your parents could manage, and so you were overprotected and didn’t have a lot of freedoms. But nowadays generally that child is chosen, because the parents only want one, and so they’ll bend over backwards to make sure they have good social interaction and mix with other kids as often as possible.’
When I ask whether putting myself first is a selfish act, Blair disagrees. ‘In my experience, more and more people are choosing to have single children because they want their own life. And as a psychologist I advocate that so much, because if a child looks at their parents and sees sacrifice, difficulty and exhaustion, do you think they want to become adults? It’s a much more beautiful role model to show that you have a life too, and then the child – and this is especially important for girls – will think, “Hey, I can have a career, I can do whatever I want and I can have a family.”’
There’s one more reason why my daughter is likely to be the only child we have. When she was just three weeks old, we discovered that she had a rare digestive issue which required emergency surgery and meant she had to spend the next three months in hospital recuperating. It was the toughest thing I have ever been through, and while I’d like to say it hasn’t clouded my judgement when it comes to having future children, it has certainly shown me how much is at stake when we bring these tiny creatures into the world, and just how much can go wrong. Today she is a happy, healthy one-year-old, who is always ready with a smile and a cheeky giggle, and if you met her, you’d have no idea of what she went through in those early months. If that’s not une fille unique, I don’t know what is.