only children

[helenmelon]

talking to barry mack the other day, the subject of only children came up. he was saying how unusual he finds one-child families. i said i didn't find it unusual at all, but couldn't name many people i know who are only children (not counting chinese people) off the top of my head. he said in ireland, basically you're only an only child if your

Comments

[patrick___]

I could only think of 4, and in at least half of those cases, the child was adopted.

Ireland is pretty unuusual for Europe. In countries like Germany I think it's supposed to be real common for families to only have one child. They're having a real problem in some of them, because families aren't having enough kids to re-populate the population.

[troubadour76]

I am an only child, so add me to your list!

[helenmelon]

as an only child, did you feel like everyone but you had siblings? did you feel like you were unusual at all?

[troubadour76]

Nah, I had at least 2 close friends who were also only children. When I was really little, I wanted a sibling to play with, but as I got older, the idea seemed less and less appealing.

And I was definitely unusual, but it had nothing to do with being an only child!

[ludimagist]

I knew less than fave off the top of my head, but I know I would come up with more if I really went through my address book or something.

Also, there are people in my life for whom I don't know enough family details to know if they have siblngs, and people who seem to consider themselves only children in a way because there is an age difference as well as an estrangement issue.

How much of contemporary China do you think is a product of it becoming a culture of "only children?"

[helenmelon]

well, to be honest, reading history books, i get the feeling that the oldest child in old chinese families were often treated as if they were only children anyway, so in some ways, it's not all that different. also, "family" is a much more... expansive thing here. most of my students will claim to have several brothers and sisters, even if they have none, because they consider cousins and sometimes neighbors brothers and sisters. i used to think that was just a translation issue, but the longer i'm here, the more i think it runs much deeper.

all of that being said, there are a lot of spoiled kids in china. i feel like it can't be positive...

[soshesays]

I can think of 8. But there are a few more that are peculiar cases. I have a friend who was an only child, her parents divorced and remarried many years later, then her mother had another kid with her stepdad. Technically, that wouldn't make her an only child, but she was raised that way, because there is a 12 year difference between her and her sister, and they didn't grow up in the same household.

It's interesting. I don't think it's that unusual, but it's hard for me to think of examples, too. All of the Chinese families I know have exactly two kids.

[helenmelon]

that's interesting that all the chinese families you know have two kids. is it often the case where a girl is the older sibling and a boy the younger?

[soshesays]

I know three Chinese families (by which I mean, not Chinese-American), and in two of them they have two girls, and in one they have an older girl and a younger boy, yeah.

[gutzilla]

Having only one child by choice seems like buying only one guinea pig to me. Um... yeah. I can think of two off the top of my head that I know, there are doubtless more but in the UK at least it's more "normal" to have siblings.