Only Children: Lonely and Selfish?

By LAUREN SANDLER

CALL me a terrible mother. I have an only child. For now at least, I’m planning to keep it that way, for my happiness and for hers. But the notion that an only child might be a happy one contradicts strong cultural beliefs. According to these, children like mine will end up rotten with selfishness and beset by loneliness.

And negative assumptions about parents who deprive their child of siblings strengthen the general opprobrium against only children. If a child doesn’t have siblings, it’s generally assumed that there’s a hush-hush reason for it: we don’t like being parents (because we are selfish), we care more about our status — work, money, materialism — than our child (because we are selfish), or we waited too long (because we are selfish). When have you heard someone say an only child is better off? A general picture emerges that only children are loners, misfits and always, always selfish. I don’t buy it. As an only child, with one of my own, and as someone who has just spent three years writing about the subject, I’m convinced that if, by dint of will or biology, you have an only child, you can stop worrying about it.

Don’t take my word for it. Consider the data: in hundreds of studies during the past decades exploring 16 character traits — including leadership, maturity, extroversion, social participation, popularity, generosity, cooperativeness, flexibility, emotional stability, contentment — only children scored just as well as children with siblings. And endless research shows that only children are, in fact, no more self-involved than anyone else. It turns out brutal sibling rivalry isn’t necessary to beat the ego out of us; peers and classmates do the job.

Disponível em: <http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/09/

opinion/sunday/only-children-lonely-and-selfish.html?src=mv&_r=0> Acesso em: 09 jun. 2013.