essay about being only child

Pros and Cons of Growing Up as an Only Child Essay (Critical Writing)

Introduction.

Not many people know what the term pros and cons mean and how it affects a child and the parents. The word pros mean that the child is being raised alone in the family hence has no one to share resources with or fight for things in the home. Cons mean loneliness or boredom.

Children born alone in the family have advantages and disadvantages. The grandparents in such families seem to love these children so much although even in a family with many siblings the grandparents also seem to love them with a single child, the love is not divided. The attitude of grandparents may be affected by traditional believes since they have different beliefs according to their background.

A lone child enjoys all the benefits of the family alone since he/she has no one else to share with. There are no economic constraints in such a family although even if the family has many children they usually have a way to care for their family since they planned for them again nowadays there are many methods of family planning so it is the role of the couple to choose the number of children they want although there is the aspect of God being in control of children to the believers.

Just as Rhoda M. in her article in www. Helium says; she grew alone so she had more cons than pros. she says that she had no one to play with & her life was spoilt I tend to believe her and this from experience with my own cousin.

A child raised alone can be spoilt and is hard for such a child to be independent although in school most of them do very well because the parents have a lot of attention in his/her homework or school work to be more specific. Let me once more revisit the story of my cousin. She was born and grew alone with her parents in an environment where they were no children even nearby the village with whom she could play. The only person she could play with was the parents. She was over pampered by the parents and the grandparents. She had all kinds of toys to play with but she was never contented because not all the time the parents were available for her to play with and again not all kinds of games she could play hence making her life in the home more miserable despite the fact that she had all that she needed. She lacked nothing that she needed. When she went to school after work the parents made sure that they had looked at her books and knew her progress in school and also her studies at home. I admired the way she was living and wished I could also be alone little did I knew that she did not enjoy much being alone. She was so solitary and bored at times for she had no one to play with. I evidenced this during the holidays because she was coming to our home and when the schools re-opened she could cry her heart out refusing to back to their home until she could be beaten up at times. I was wondering why she was behaving like that since she lacked nothing and ate the best foods. It’s later I came to realize that the cons were outweighing her and came to accept the saying of the late Pope John Paul II who said that “the only gift parents can give their children are sisters and brothers”.

Being the only child of the parent is enjoyable only at the tender age but when a time reaches when you have to be independent live starts being tough or when you have to live with other people especially in boarding schools where you seem to share everything and that is a life that you have never been introduced to.

Just as my cousin was living with her parents being provided with everything now things have taken another trend she is spoilt and might remain the same way for the rest of her life as Rhoda was saying in her article that she was spoilt. Now my cousin is married and keeps on bothering her husband every now and then. When they have a grudge and disagrees about an issue she runs home to her parents who have nothing else to do apart from regretting why they did not limit their love to her. The parents have no choice but to talk to her and sometimes she even doesn’t heed to whatever they say and they have no other option apart from giving her whatever she needs.

In China, there is a policy that governs the number of children one has to have and this policy was started in 1980. According to Chinese by James Reynolds BBC News, the national policy is for couples to have a single child and law has to be taken for anyone who violates that rule. In China, if a woman gets pregnant the second time she is allowed to take an abortion. Some of the reasons that make this country be so strict on the number of children are scarcity of land and poverty so raising many siblings becomes a problem. I read in a daily nation in 2006 that there was a couple in China who got many siblings and had to give out some of them to the relatives because they were unable to raise them. This policy can work well in the US because as the Chinese sterilize women and accept abortion the US government also accepts the same and their basic aim is to control the population. An American writer McFann, Carolyn says that there are pros and cons about a single child in the family although he advises couples to have one child. The American’s prefer just a single child either being adopted or born for the sake of heirs. The few numbers of siblings in the US enable them to control the population and this is one of the reasons that it remains a developed country. The fact that the country has few people there is no limited space and resources and the rate of pollution is low despite the fact that there are many industries. The benefit of and liabilities are the activities which children engage in. these benefits are realized by a child who is alone since there is no competition. Doreen Nagle says that all these benefits such as gifts, picnics, and the like are a result of the parents having no other child hence can afford to provide each and every other thing that the child needs.

Although having one child is important it is good for the parent to take caution on how they bring up the child to avoid spoiling her and her life just as my cousin was spoilt. Parents should love these lone children but should have limitations because even the bible(to the believers) in proverbs states it clearly that ‘spare the rod spoil he child’ parents should be very cautious on how they handle their kids for them to grow up with good manners although there are few who are too hard to handle.

In cultural perspectives, there are different views of lone siblings depending on the locality and the tribe and their beliefs. In history, there are those who had superstations and in the traditional setting, the number of children determined the amount of wealth one had.

In my culture, they believe that having one child there are more cons than pros just as Rhoda M was believing. This child has most of the time to be with adults although this might create good closeness with the parents hence the parents can be in a good position to guide and counsel their child and also help him/her out of peer pressure. Even if the children fight when they are at a tender age and lack toys, gifts, and the like at times it is better to have at least two or three siblings because when they grow up they become cooperative and live in harmony helping each other, sharing and a less weight to cater for the parents in their old age although not all children can live this way.

According to Aronson, J.Z book, parents should have a single child so that they can be able to recruit him/her in academics because education is the only key to success and it’s the responsibility of a parent to do so.

In my opinion, one child is better than having multiple of them although two are better than one for socialization, playing, and deep connection. A one-child family is attractive and the couple does not need to worry much after they retire about how their child will survive since they take care of him/her with the few resources that they have. The only thing I find a nuisance is an overindulgence in the love for the child because this might spoil the child. I would prefer parents to have one child due to the current economical constraints and the fact that modern technology is so high hence people are more involved in other issues rather than large families.

Aronson, J.Z (1996). How schools can recruit hard-to-reach parents. Educational leadership.

Berger, K.S (2001). The developing person through the lifespan. New yolk: Worth. James Reynolds BBC news, Henan province, central China.

McFann, Carolyn. (2007). When planning your family, consider the pros and cons of being an only child. Ezinearticles.

• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2021, August 27). Pros and Cons of Growing Up as an Only Child. https://ivypanda.com/essays/pros-and-cons-of-growing-up-as-an-only-child/

"Pros and Cons of Growing Up as an Only Child." IvyPanda , 27 Aug. 2021, ivypanda.com/essays/pros-and-cons-of-growing-up-as-an-only-child/.

IvyPanda . (2021) 'Pros and Cons of Growing Up as an Only Child'. 27 August.

IvyPanda . 2021. "Pros and Cons of Growing Up as an Only Child." August 27, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/pros-and-cons-of-growing-up-as-an-only-child/.

1. IvyPanda . "Pros and Cons of Growing Up as an Only Child." August 27, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/pros-and-cons-of-growing-up-as-an-only-child/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Pros and Cons of Growing Up as an Only Child." August 27, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/pros-and-cons-of-growing-up-as-an-only-child/.

• The Secret by Rhoda Byrne
• The Prescott Valley Events Center
• Lone Parents: Social Work and Exclusion
• Saudi Arabian Lone Wolf Terrorism in 2011-2016
• “The Odd Women” and “Women in Love”: Evolving Views of Gender Roles
• Child Behavior Today and Ten Years Ago
• Grandparents-Grandchildren Relations Then and Now
• Finding Financing for Business Startup
• Lone Workers in the Waste Industry
• Grandparents Raising Grandchildren With Disabilities
• Parental Roles and Changes in the Last 50 Years
• Spanking Is Harmful to Children
• Parental Hopes and Standards for Sons and Daughters
• Growing Up with Hearing Loss
• Parenting Education Programs: Pros and Cons

Not So Lonely: Busting the Myth of the Only Child

A burgeoning acceptance toward families with only one child is finally starting to creep into society at large, eliminating the mythical stereotype.

Bill and Hillary have one. Franklin D. Roosevelt was one. And the chances are you probably know one or two. Even I have one of the selfish, lonely, and maladjusted creatures said to be populating America in greater numbers every year. I am referring to the “only child,” also known as singletons or onlies.

Despite the only child being a growing demographic, having one still attracts a surprising amount of criticism. At a playground in London, one mother told me she thought having an only child was tantamount to child abuse as she watched my daughter toddle alone in the sandbox. When I told my mother that I probably wouldn’t have any more children, she exclaimed disparagingly that one child was “simply not a family.” My husband, on the other hand, has not had any of these accusations leveled against him. The shaming of mothers of singletons is yet another arena in which guilt, scorn, and impossibly high expectations are heaped upon women, encouraged by society’s biased views.

A year ago, the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs estimated the world’s population at 7.2 billion. At the same time, natural resources like clean air and water are dwindling. Yet to talk of restricting the number of children people choose to have smacks of coercive policy-making or, worse, genetic engineering. In developed countries, though, a limit on family size seems to be occurring organically, without the need for legislation or encouragement from campaigners. If you had asked American women in the 1930s how many children they wanted, 64 percent would have said they wanted at least three. Today, most women feel that 2.5 is ideal. Many of us, however, don’t manage more than one. In fact, 23 percent of Americans have only one child; in New York City, as in a lot of urban centers, the figure is 30 percent.

For many, the rationale for stopping at one child is financial. The cost of raising a kid in the U.S.—before he even gets to college—is $245,300. For others, there simply aren’t enough childbearing years left to have another. And, for a very small minority, the environment and overpopulation are factors. But there is something else at work here: Society is moving away from seeing only children as disadvantaged—though the shift is happening painfully slowly.

Just more than a hundred years ago, the psychologist G. Stanley Hall declared that being an only child was a disease in itself. He was responsible for putting forth the stereotype of the singleton as deficient, indulged, and spoiled. His theories—which he promoted around the same time that psychoanalysis was beginning to blossom—firmly took root. Hall has since undergone some scrutiny, and many of his theories have been rejected within the realm of academia, but popular opinion has yet to catch up. Hall’s words continue to reverberate around playgrounds and kitchen tables all over the country. We hear so often that only children are self-centered, antisocial, and unable to share, that the stereotype has become a self-fulfilling prophecy, or at the very least, what is known as a “ cultural truism .”

In her essay “ G. Stanley Hall: Male Chauvinist Educator ,” the scholar Gill Schofer accuses Hall—the father of child psychology—of being outdated. In Hall’s eyes, women were born solely to be mothers and wives. They were not to engage in any pursuits that might be mentally taxing, such as learning Latin, Greek, or mathematics. If women were to roam outside the realm of the house, society would crumble.

In fairness to Hall, who was born in 1844 and lived the life of a Victorian gentleman, these views were not uncommon for the time. He wrote at length about his mother , whom he worshipped. He described her as the epitome of the Angel in the House, selflessly devoted to her children, her husband, and God. For society to function, Hall believed, all women needed to model themselves on her.

Some of Hall’s opinions were quaint, while others were dangerous. For instance, he advocated something called “retarding,” a process by which a girl’s education was designed to prevent her from engaging in analytical or cerebral pursuits—any curiosity about important subjects such as science, history, or politics was to be repressed in order for her untainted maternal intuition to come to the fore. To Hall, “a purely intellectual woman is…a biological deformity .” And “to a man, wedlock is an incident, but for women, it is destiny.”

So why have Hall’s views on only children held such a grip on our culture when we have shed every one of his opinions on gender roles? In the 1980s, when more women were heading for the workplace and delaying having children, articles in academic journals with titles like “ Negative Stereotypes About Only Children Unfounded; They Do Well on Any Measure ” finally started to appear. These articles helped balance the established preconceptions about only children with careful research. And then, in 1987, Denise F. Polit and Toni Falbo undertook the first large-scale attempt to understand the effects of not having siblings on children.

Polit and Falbo’s findings, which were the result of in-depth analysis of past and current studies, came to the conclusion that singletons and multiples shared much more than we had previously thought. What’s more, they found that the disadvantages of being an only child were, on balance, nonexistent.

Reading the study today, certain details jump out, such as the section on antisocial behavior, one of the traits Hall ascribed to onlies without exception. In previous research, sociability had been measured by self-report, with only children seeing themselves as much less sociable than other children. However, when peers were asked about the sociability of singletons, they were said to be more sociable than children with siblings on average. Another case of cultural truism, perhaps? If you tell a child often enough that he is unsociable, eventually he’ll start to believe it.

More recently, Lauren Sandler’s 2013 book One and Only: The Freedom of Having an Only Child and the Joy of Being One , merges personal stories and anecdotes with up-to-date statistics. Parental happiness, Sandler reports, declines with every child. And in Denmark, women with one child scored far happier than women with no children or women with more than one. Despite this research, the myth of these sad and lonely only children with their desperate and unfulfilled mothers stubbornly persists.

Many studies on the benefits of one-child families, however, seem to feature factors that are irrelevant to many women when they are deciding how many children to have. Most of us probably don’t pay much heed to the fact that only children have higher IQs than those with siblings, or the fact that they often reach higher academic rankings . It certainly wouldn’t be a reason for any woman I know to stop at one. The fact is that modern motherhood and a working life are often incompatible. Some women excel at juggling careers and multiple children—either through hard work, having the money for childcare, living near family members who can look after their children for free, or any combination of these factors. Others simply can’t do it. We stop at one because we don’t have the money, the time, or the love for another child. Our financial and emotional resources, we feel, are only ample enough to nurture one child well. Or perhaps crippling postpartum depression frightens some women away from going through the difficult and lonely years of caring for another baby. That was certainly a factor for me.

One major raison d’être for feminism is to allow women to make informed choices: whether or not to marry, to work, to have children. But the taboo around choosing to have one child persists. I found it shocking that so many people I barely knew felt entitled to point out how selfish I was for not giving my daughter a sibling. But selfishness is closely linked to—and sometimes confused with—self-preservation, a human being’s most deeply ingrained instinct for survival, and a desirable and healthy characteristic for someone raising a child.

Perhaps, in time, as more people choose to stop at one child, the stigma will disappear. This will also make it easier on those who had the decision to have one child thrust upon them through infertility, ill health, the breakup of a relationship, or, in some cases, the death of a child’s sibling. It will also free children without siblings from having to prove to the world that they can be social, generous, and well-adjusted. Negative comments directed at one-child families suggest a view of life where we can all choose what we want, when and how we want it. Even when it comes to having children, the image that people are being sold—and that some are buying—is one of the happy consumer with an array of endless choices. Yet the reality of bearing children is far from this.

Whatever happened to the idea that life cannot be perfectly planned, nor can we always get what we want when it comes to the big decisions facing us. We are all muddling through, doing the best we can. Siblings won’t necessarily make a sad and lonely child happy, nor will not having siblings necessarily make a happy child miserable. Singletons, in other words, are more maligned than maladjusted , and it does them a disservice to perpetuate outdated stereotypes invented by a reactionary Victorian gentleman. G. Stanley Hall has been dead for 90 years. Maybe a burgeoning acceptance toward one-child families is finally starting to creep into society at large, one that will allow modern women and the people around them to stop seeing one child as being “only” one, and to start seeing them for the abundance they really are.

JSTOR is a digital library for scholars, researchers, and students. JSTOR Daily readers can access the original research behind our articles for free on JSTOR.

Get Our Newsletter

Get your fix of JSTOR Daily’s best stories in your inbox each Thursday.

Privacy Policy   Contact Us You may unsubscribe at any time by clicking on the provided link on any marketing message.

More Stories

• Confucius in the European Enlightenment

Watching an Eclipse from Prison

The Alpaca Racket

Make Your Own Poetry Anthology

Recent posts.

• The Art of Impressionism: A Reading List
• Gaslighting, Greek Societies, and the Great Salt Lake
• The Taj Mahal Today
• Beryl Markham, Warrior of the Skies

Support JSTOR Daily

• International edition
• Australia edition
• Europe edition

The highs and lows of being (or having) an only child

Readers respond to Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett’s article about the criticism some parents face for having one child

This was an interesting article by Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett ( ‘One and done’ parents are some of the most thoughtful and compassionate I have met, 31 March ). I remember a fascinating radio programme some years ago, in which researchers asked only children about their experiences. About half reported that being an “only” made it hard to make friends because they had no practice with siblings – they became loners with a lack of good relationships. The other half reported that having no siblings obliged them to become socially skilled, and that they were great at forming relationships.

The researchers concluded that only children are just like the rest of us, displaying the same range of personality traits and resulting life journeys. Alison Carter Lindfield, West Sussex

I was staggered that anyone with only one child would merit criticism for any reason. In my book, that would be a high accolade. I was an only child of an only child, and in youth had always hankered for a sibling. When I decided to follow a different path and had two, they fought and are still, in middle age, not best buddies. When number one had two children, they fought. Number two had one child. She and I have formed an “only child club” and are both highly able to entertain and occupy ourselves when left to our own devices.

Only children can be great, can usually stand on their own two feet, have no one else to live up to or feel threatened by, and are able to cope with singledom when necessary. Name and address supplied

Interesting that Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett’s discussion about the impact of being an only child focuses on their experience as children. Apart from the solidarity that a brother or sister can give you, one important advantage of having siblings is sharing your parents as you, and they, get older.

Siblings can share the burden of parental expectation (whether about careers or grandchildren), but also share support and care for elderly parents as they become frail.

I have been very aware of these issues when I compare my own experience – I have four siblings – with that of my friends who are only children. Whether it is practical support or just someone to discuss options with, that shared responsibility is invaluable. Cath Attlee London

What people fail to mention when questioning someone for choosing to have only one child is that it might not be a choice. I was pregnant three or four times, some pregnancies with traumatic outcomes, before my final successful pregnancy that resulted in our beautiful child. Even with this pregnancy, I spent three months in hospital on bed rest with high blood pressure. So having achieved a healthy child, I could think of no reason to put our little family through such potential trauma again.

Our child has grown up to be kind, caring and all we could wish for. Having been a model, then actress, she is now in her second year’s training to be a midwife – something that she said she always wanted to do despite my horror stories, having been a midwife myself.

So, no, only children are no more likely to be spoiled than any one else. Also, there is no guarantee that you will get on with your siblings. Gabrielle Page Brentwood, Essex

• Parents and parenting

Most viewed

Why Are People Weird About Only Children?

“Onlies” don’t seem to be any worse off than kids with siblings. So why do stereotypes about them persist?

This article was featured in the One Story to Read Today newsletter. Sign up for it here .

When I was a child, my lack of siblings was often a source of bewildered concern. Don’t you get lonely? people would ask. Bet you wish you had someone to play with . Often, my mom was asked when she’d give me a brother or sister. But as I grew up, sympathy was overtaken by suspicion. You’re such an only child became a recurring mantra, whether I’d asserted a strong opinion or played sick to avoid dodgeball. In the cultural consciousness, only children are frequently pegged as weirdos: maladjusted, selfish, spoiled, uncompromising, or just unusually precocious. We are at once pitied for our sibling-less childhood and judged for the supposed eccentricities it left us with.

Research doesn’t support the idea that only children are any worse off than those with siblings, but kids as young as 8 (including “onlies” themselves) have still been found to hold prejudices against only kids. You can hardly blame them: That bias is woven right into our lexicon. The moniker “only child”—rather than, say, “solo” or “individual” child—suggests a sense of deprivation. It’s one consonant away from “lonely child.” People ask one another, “When do you think you’ll have kids?”—plural. Where does this weirdness about only children come from?

The mythic persona of the only child can be traced back as far as 1896, when a Clark University fellow named E. W. Bohannon conducted a study of “Peculiar and Exceptional Children.” After observing more than 1,000 children, he declared of the 46 onlies, “They have imaginary companions, do not go to school regularly, if at all, do not get along with other children well, as a rule, are generally spoiled by indulgence, and have bad health in most cases.” Notably, many of his subjects lived in isolated farmhouses , where they worked long hours; it made sense, then, that kids with siblings would be better-adjusted than those who hardly interacted with other children at all. Still, G. Stanley Hall—the first president of the American Psychological Association, who oversaw the study—said that “to be an only child is a disease in itself.”

Read: Are siblings more important than parents?

Only-child stereotypes proliferated in the following decades. In 1922, the psychologist A. A. Brill wrote , “It would naturally be best for the individual and the [human] race if there were no only children.” In 1968, The New York Times ran an article titled “The Only-Child Syndrome,” advising parents to adopt a second child if they couldn’t give birth to another. In 1979, the writer George Crane urged people not to marry only children: Their irrationality and inflexibility, he claimed, would make divorce more likely. Talk about bad PR.

Depictions of onlies in movies, TV, and literature haven’t helped our case. Eloise, the children’s-book character who lives at the Plaza Hotel, and Veruca Salt, who’s tossed into the garbage chute at Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, are both spoiled brats. Hermione Granger is the annoying know-it-all of the Harry Potter series. Indeed, being an only child is regularly used to convey otherness, whether exceptionally bad or good: Rory Gilmore from Gilmore Girls is such a bookworm that fans have counted more than 400 books referenced on the show. Meanwhile, films such as Cheaper by the Dozen and Yours, Mine and Ours valorize the supersize American family. Both of those movies were remade within the past 25 years, yet they glorify a family model that hasn’t been typical since the 1850s .

Today, only children are much more common than they’ve been in the past. Our World in Data reports that the average number of births per American woman shrank from 3.6 in 1957 to 1.7 in 2021. But the multichild ideal has nevertheless persisted. In 2015, the Pew Research Center reported that 86 percent of people think families should have at least two children; in 2018, Pew reported that 41 percent of adults think three or more is best. According to Toni Falbo, who researches only children at the University of Texas at Austin, financial considerations and career ambitions may take precedence over having multiple children—especially now, with record-high student-loan debt and child-care costs . Women are also having a child later in life than ever before , leaving less time to do it again. Still, Falbo believes that onlies agitate people’s understanding of what a family should look like.

Read: Six books that show no one can hurt you like a sibling

Of course, sibling relationships can be rich and formative; maybe some people can’t imagine growing up without a built-in playmate and confidant. But other relationships can fulfill these functions—and perhaps without the typical sibling conflicts and competitiveness. Research shows that only children tend to be closer to their parents and to regard them with more warmth and respect than people with siblings do. They may feel more at ease interacting with teachers , probably because they speak mostly with adults at home. And unlike Bohannon’s junior farmers, kids today spend most of their waking hours with peers, at school and during playdates and extracurriculars. Growing up as an only, I always had friends who felt like sisters.

Indeed, most contemporary studies don’t find any notable disadvantages for only children. Onlies actually tend to have higher intelligence-test scores and more ambitious educational goals—perhaps in part because they face less competition for their parents’ emotional and financial resources. But these advantages seem to even out in adulthood. 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. A longitudinal study called Project Talent —for which more than 400,000 teenagers were interviewed in 1960, and again one, five, and 11 years after they graduated from high school or were supposed to—concluded that onlies are more interested in solitude and less likely to join group activities. (As a kid, I spent long hours every summer tearing through Scholastic-book-fair hauls, thinking I was in the best possible company among fictional characters, unaware that I was tanking my sociability score.) And in 2016, researchers in China took MRI brain scans and found that, compared with kids with siblings, onlies showed greater flexibility—a measurement of creativity—but lower agreeableness.

Then again, it’s possible that onlies tend to be less sociable because the culture doesn’t embrace them. That’s generally the issue with studying only children: It’s tough to distinguish inherent only-child qualities from those that develop in a sibling-centric world. Bohannon’s stereotype has stuck to the culture like gum to a shoe, and as an only, I’ve spent years trying to pick it off. I wrote this entire essay arguing that only children aren’t self-obsessed or lacking in social skills. But now that I’ve reached the end, I’m not sure whether I’ve proved that idea or undermined it. Detailing how normal only children are is, perhaps, exactly what an only child would do.

Essay about being an only child?

Been on here before asking about essay topics (and thankfully learned to dump a bad essay topic). After having to get rid of my original idea, I’ve been stuck in sort of a “limbo” where I had no earthly idea what to write about. Well, I’m not totally out of this black hole of writer’s block, but I did have a small idea lightbulb faintly flicker. So, I’m an only child, and because of my only child-ness, the way I grew up and grew to look at the world has been vastly different from the majority of my peers. Basically, my idea is to explain how my “background” of being an only child has shaped who I am today/if I wasn’t an only child, I would be completely different. Though that may not touch on the specifics of what I might write about, you get the general gist. Is this a good idea for my Common App essay? Or is it too stereotypical? If it is a somewhat decent idea, I’d appreciate some feedback on how to make the essay stand out. I’ll take all kinds of constructive criticism. Thanks!

Choose something else. You have plenty of time to think about a stronger topic.

I don’t think simply being an only child gives you a “vastly different” outlook from the majority of your peers. Lots of people are only children. Lots of people have circumstances that actually give them a vastly different outlook from the majority of their peers. This is coming from another only child, myself; I suggest you think of something else.

Don’t write about being an only child unless you can inject a lot of humor in it to rescue an otherwise extremely lame-o topic.

Colleges want to learn about you - what makes you unique. My son is an only child and many of his friends are. There is nothing unique about that.

You don’t have to write about something amazing - just look on the essay as your chance to show the schools who you are and what makes your unique. When my son applied to UCLA and Berkeley, the application required two personal statements (they have changed since). Formerly prompt 1 was “Describe your world and how it has shaped you”. My son wrote about his interest in math and science and how his school only had one science related extracurricular, First Robotics. He was hesitant to join because it involved things like power tools, welding and other tech skills he had no aptitude for. He wrote about how he went from only knowing how to hold a wrench to leading the electrical team.

The second prompt was “Tell us about an accomplishment that made you proud and relates to the person you are” (I’m paraphrasing, the actual prompt is not that important and he reconstructed both essays to fit the common application essay). He wrote about how he had played trombone in jazz band for 6 years and how his favorite part was the intellectual and technical challenge. However, this approach became a problem as the more advanced jazz bands expected the players to be able to extemporize and play original solos on the spot. His struggle to translate his proficiency in music theory and technique into emotional and creative musical expression and how he finally achieved this goal was both humorous and a great insight into the person he is.

He was accepted to USC and was awarded the Presidential Scholarship (half-tuition). When he met the scholarship interview committee they said, “Oh, you’re the kid who wrote the great essay about playing trombone”.

Just for practice, pick one unique memory about something simple like food and write an essay about it. You will be surprised how the ideas can start flowing. If you don’t think food can be a great essay topic, my son’s girlfriend got into Stanford (she was a fantastic student in all ways) and her essay was about her memories of making tamales at Xmas with her grandmother, a woman who worked in the fields picking strawberries. I actually cried when I read the essay, it was so thoughtful about her Hispanic background and how it shaped who she is.

I’m going to differ on this. I think it’s fine to write about being an only child IF you can explain how it’s influenced who you are. In other words, you’re not different because you’re an only child, but it may have influenced some part of your world view. If, for example, as a result of being an only child, you ended up doing something with or for your family and had to approach it without there being a “children’s option”, how did that affect you? (Were you “required” to accompany a parent to the symphony, for example, and what did that mean to you? ) Did you “choose” siblings and what was that alternative family like and what did you learn from it? Have you been given opportunities because your parents didn’t have to share their time or resources with other children? @Yomama12 's example is a great one – there are lots of Hispanic students so that wasn’t necessarily what differentiated the writer, but her ability to incorporate that element of her upbringing into her story gave a more complete picture of who she was.

If you’re struggling, have you given thought to a comment someone made to you that changed the way you thought about something? A person who challenged a stereotype you held? For the number of words you have, it is sometimes easier to start with something small.

I come from a family of only children, and maybe you can parlay the circumstances as to why you are an only child and how they shaped who you are. For example, my father is an only child because his mother died in childbirth. He was raised by my grandfather and it was just the two of them. My daughter is an only child because her father and I divorced when she was quite young. Even though she lives with me, her father is still an important part of her life. I am an only child because my parents could never carry another child to term (I’m literally a miracle baby). I grew up with both parents at home. While we’re all onlies, our worlds as children are vastly different, and the aforementioned circumstances have affected the people we have become.

@tutumom2001 @Yomama12 @gardenstategal thank you all for you constructive criticism. To clarify, I do NOT think simply being an only child makes me “unique.” I have a number of friends who are only children. Like @gardenstategal wrote, if I were to take the “only child” approach, I would write about how it has shaped who I am and relay anecdotes and such. Still not highly developed, but it’s still an idea I may toy with. However, I also like what @Yomama12 said about writing about something that’s simple but also a good look into who I am as a person. Still trying to figure out what that would be though. I don’t know, I know I’m a good writer, but I don’t have much guidance for this whole thing outside of CC. I really appreciate everyone’s help.

@thefloridavegan Can I suggest that you ask your English teacher for help with the essay? My son was fortunate to have a retired English teacher neighbor who gave very constructive help, since my son is not a good writer. For instance, he suggested my son write his Robotics essay “in media res”, so it opened with my son helping to build a robot in two days and nights at a state competition. Another team did not have their robot for the competition, it was lost in the delivery. All the other teams came together with materials and skills to help this one team and my son spent hours soldering and wiring. How he found himself with the skills to be able to do this became the subject of the rest of the essay.

I also think that only child is a poor choice. This is not to say it has not been a big factor. Nor does it mean you would not write a great essay. But there is a risk – a big risk – that the only readers who matter, admissions committees, might quickly question the premise. This conscious or unconscious reaction would hurt your chances, which is the point of the essay. I would defer to this possibility and shift gears.

But the shift might not be big. Put the focus on a personal quality, rather than an environmental factor. Describe the evolution of that quality. Use situations to show what and how you learned. Being an only child can be one of those situations. Come up with two more and you will have an awesome essay that will be impossible to ignore.

Hope this is helpful.

@Chris63 interesting ideas and perspective. Thank you!

POPULAR STATES

Search sat scores, search act scores, search gpa’s, subscribe to our newsletter.

Stay informed with the latest from the CC community, delivered to you, for free.

CONNECT WITH US

© 2023 College Confidential, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Forgotten password

Please enter the email address that you use to login to TeenInk.com, and we'll email you instructions to reset your password.

• Poetry All Poetry Free Verse Song Lyrics Sonnet Haiku Limerick Ballad
• Fiction All Fiction Action-Adventure Fan Fiction Historical Fiction Realistic Fiction Romance Sci-fi/Fantasy Scripts & Plays Thriller/Mystery All Novels Action-Adventure Fan Fiction Historical Fiction Realistic Fiction Romance Sci-fi/Fantasy Thriller/Mystery Other
• Nonfiction All Nonfiction Bullying Books Academic Author Interviews Celebrity interviews College Articles College Essays Educator of the Year Heroes Interviews Memoir Personal Experience Sports Travel & Culture All Opinions Bullying Current Events / Politics Discrimination Drugs / Alcohol / Smoking Entertainment / Celebrities Environment Love / Relationships Movies / Music / TV Pop Culture / Trends School / College Social Issues / Civics Spirituality / Religion Sports / Hobbies All Hot Topics Bullying Community Service Environment Health Letters to the Editor Pride & Prejudice What Matters
• Reviews All Reviews Hot New Books Book Reviews Music Reviews Movie Reviews TV Show Reviews Video Game Reviews Summer Program Reviews College Reviews
• Art/Photo Art Photo Videos
• Summer Guide Program Links Program Reviews
• College Guide College Links College Reviews College Essays College Articles

Summer Guide

College guide.

• Song Lyrics

All Fiction

• Action-Adventure
• Fan Fiction
• Historical Fiction
• Realistic Fiction
• Sci-fi/Fantasy
• Scripts & Plays
• Thriller/Mystery

All Nonfiction

• Author Interviews
• Celebrity interviews
• College Articles
• College Essays
• Educator of the Year
• Personal Experience
• Travel & Culture

All Opinions

• Current Events / Politics
• Discrimination
• Drugs / Alcohol / Smoking
• Entertainment / Celebrities
• Environment
• Love / Relationships
• Movies / Music / TV
• Pop Culture / Trends
• School / College
• Social Issues / Civics
• Spirituality / Religion
• Sports / Hobbies

All Hot Topics

• Community Service
• Letters to the Editor
• Pride & Prejudice
• What Matters

All Reviews

• Hot New Books
• Book Reviews
• Music Reviews
• Movie Reviews
• TV Show Reviews
• Video Game Reviews

Summer Program Reviews

• College Reviews
• Writers Workshop
• Regular Forums
• Program Links
• Program Reviews
• College Links
• On Being an Only Child

On Being an Only Child MAG

     Change is unavoidable. People’s lives are constantly changing. But for me, one thing will never change: I am, and will always be, an only child. My parents did not actually decide not to have another child, but after I was born, life got busier and busier for them, and another child simply did not fit into their schedules. Ever since I was little, I have noticed that I was the only one I knew who didn’t have siblings. I never will really understand sibling rivalry or the special bond between siblings. I can somewhat grasp the meaning, but only conceptually. That, however, is not one of the main problems of being an only child. From time to time, the loneliness of being an only child is simply beyond my endurance. I often get into arguments with my parents, and there is never anyone to take my side. Sometimes I have a joke, a secret or a problem, and there is no one there to tell. And every now and then, I feel like I need a nice, relaxing conversation with someone other than my mom (who always wants to know every detail of my life). Luckily I have many good friends who are always there when I need to chat, and they often erase my loneliness. As much as I appreciate my friends, there are some things they just cannot help with. Everyone knows the myth about only children being lavished with attention and not having any discipline. This could not be more wrong in my case. It is true that I have my parents’ complete attention, but with that comes all of their hopes and dreams and, of course, endless expectations. My parents say what they give me is love and care, but that comes with pressure and stress. It can get pretty intense at times. I really wish I had someone to share all this unbearable love with because it is crushing me. The one thing I do not lack is discipline, or I would have already been flattened by the weight of my parents’ expectations. I can hardly call this being lavished with attention. Everything has a positive side, and so does being an only child. It has offered me something that I value greatly - independence. Because I grew up with all the adults around me being so busy all the time, I leaned more on myself and less on others to solve my problems, to fight my battles, or to rescue me from my own dilemmas. At a very early age, I learned that the only person you can always count on is you. Other than independence, I have also been given the choice of not having to share. Everything that is mine is mine alone. I know that makes me sound like the stereotypical spoiled only child, but it is reality. I never really appreciated this, and often took it for granted, until I heard about my friends fighting with siblings over everything, or when my cousins come over and start rummaging through my things, I guess that is the good part of being an only child; I do not have to share most of my thoughts and feelings, but I also do not have to share my possessions. I suppose that is fair. After 17 years of being an only child, I finally stopped complaining long enough to think about it. I should enjoy my freedom from sibling rivalry, since I know about it from my cousins’ experiences. I actually prefer being alone because I like its peacefulness. And I find that my parents’ expectations are not so suffocating if I just work hard to meet them. Also, I am thankful for everything I have learned: to cherish good friends and be independent. The fact is, if I cannot tolerate my cousins most of the time, could I really handle siblings? I guess being an only child is not so bad after all.

Similar Articles

Join the discussion.

This article has 3 comments.

• Subscribe to Teen Ink magazine
• Submit to Teen Ink
• Find A College
• Find a Summer Program

Share this on

Send to a friend.

Thank you for sharing this page with a friend!

Tell my friends

Choose what to email.

Which of your works would you like to tell your friends about? (These links will automatically appear in your email.)

Send your email

Delete my account, we hate to see you go please note as per our terms and conditions, you agreed that all materials submitted become the property of teen ink. going forward, your work will remain on teenink.com submitted “by anonymous.”, delete this, change anonymous status, send us site feedback.

If you have a suggestion about this website or are experiencing a problem with it, or if you need to report abuse on the site, please let us know. We try to make TeenInk.com the best site it can be, and we take your feedback very seriously. Please note that while we value your input, we cannot respond to every message. Also, if you have a comment about a particular piece of work on this website, please go to the page where that work is displayed and post a comment on it. Thank you!

Pardon Our Dust

Teen Ink is currently undergoing repairs to our image server. In addition to being unable to display images, we cannot currently accept image submissions. All other parts of the website are functioning normally. Please check back to submit your art and photography and to enjoy work from teen artists around the world!

From the Eyes of an Only Child: What It’s Like to Have No Siblings

• by Gretchen Gatan Fragada
• March 2, 2023

Pauline Vitug, an only child in her mid-20s, shares her thoughts as well as the pros and cons of having no siblings.

We’ve seen a rise in modern-day parents choosing to only have one child—hence the saying, “ One and Done !” There are many reasons why—with financial and emotional stability as the top two. But while we’ve seen things from a parent’s point of view , what is it like from an only child’s perspective? Modern Parenting sat down with Pauline Vitug, an animator in her 20s, and the unica hija of Chris and Luchie.

“Growing up as an only child was not as lonely as others would think, especially since people kept telling my parents to give me a sibling. It makes me a lot closer to them since I was the only focus of attention,” Pauline starts. “I had a great childhood. My parents raised me to be close to my cousins, so I was never physically alone. I also enjoyed my alone time whenever I’d play with my toys. Although now being 25 years old, I realized there were a lot of things and qualities I lacked that only people who grew up with siblings learn.”

The family dynamics of three

As a small family, Pauline and her parents, Chris and Luchie, value quality time. “We’re a tight-knit family that always spends time together. Our quality time involves going to malls, eating out, and watching movies—both at home and in the cinema. Gift-giving is a love language of ours as well. My parents and I have always been thoughtful. We always bring home food or sweets whenever we come from other places,” she shares.

Though she admits that they aren’t perfect, just like every other family, they try their best to communicate as much as possible. “We’re more vocal than most families. Sometimes, we exchange painful words when fighting. But because of this rather aggressive approach, we get to resolve fights faster. Honesty and trust are very important to us, too. My parents like to know the people I surround myself with.”

Being alone is not the same as being lonely

Despite being an only child, Pauline never felt alone. “I’m very close with my parents and never saw a problem bonding and spending almost all of my time with them. In fact, I choose to spend most of my time with them. I also learned to love being alone.”

But does being an only child get lonely at times? “Yes,” Pauline answers. “I’ve always craved that sibling connection and relationship. I’d see how my cousins and friends could rely on their siblings, and still be there for each other no matter what, even during a fight. I would also see how they’re aware that they would do anything for each other. I may have great friends, and cousins I’m close to. But the fact is that at the end of the day, I am not siblings with any of them. Boundaries still exist and it just isn’t the same.”

“If I mess up, it’s not the same kind of forgiveness as when a sibling messes up. I can’t rely on anyone else as well or expect others to do what I would do for them. And when the day comes that my parents leave this world, I’ll have nobody but myself. Unlike how siblings will always have each other.”

The pros of being an only child

Pauline is quick to list the pros of having no siblings. For one, her parents were always focused on her as she was growing up. “I have no other sibling to divide their attention, so they were always tutok with me. They got to correct certain behaviors right away, invest in my extracurriculars, and be present whenever I needed them. They would also hatid-sundo me to all my events and meetings—to ensure my safety and because they always support me.”

Being an only child taught Pauline at an early age to be comfortable with being alone. “I enjoy downtime days when I have no plans. I don’t need to rely on seeing people regularly to stay sane.”

Additionally, her parents could afford to give her the best education and equipment. “They worked hard and saved a lot to make sure I would have quality things in life.”

Pauline is proud of her close relationship with her parents as well. “Some people would be surprised about the things I share with them. But honesty just allows an even deeper trust and respect for us. Plus, I have no choice but to share whatever stories and thoughts I have with them because I have no siblings to talk to at home,” she laughs.

Lastly, having no brothers or sisters means no one to fight with. “I’ve heard and seen siblings fight, especially about money. My dad would always tell me that he purposely wanted just one child so that we could live in peace and without conflict. He didn’t want children whose relationships would be strained because of money,” she points out.

The cons of being an only child

On the flip side, Pauline is just as aware of her fears and concerns as an only child. “A fellow only child friend and I both have this fear that once we move out and get married, our parents will be left alone. There will be no one to watch out for them. My parents never asked nor obliged me to take care of them. They’ve always been supportive of me even going abroad to pursue my career. But it is a personal thing—the need to make sure they’re okay, healthy, safe, and taken care of. Because they’re all I have in this world and they mean so much to me, I want to cherish the time I have with them.”

Another fear that Pauline has is being left alone once her parents pass on. “It’s one thing to enjoy being physically alone. It’s another to hold all the precious memories of our families when they are no longer present. I fear the day that no one will be able to remember and laugh at random memories that happened at home. Siblings will have each other to remind, remember, and laugh about those memories.”

One other con is that there’s a tendency for Pauline to be compared to people outside their family unit. “The notion is that it’s usually siblings who are compared to each other. I suppose our parents can’t help but sometimes compare us to other people. So it hurts more when I’m being compared to someone outside our family.”

Having her parents’ undivided attention can be a con, too. “Since it’s just me, they’re extra protective. My parents want me to learn from their mistakes and for me to avoid making mistakes. They were very strict and didn’t always allow me to certain events and especially out-of-town trips. They always say that if they lose me, that’s it.”

Sharing attention can be tricky for Pauline. “Especially with attention,” she admits. “I do get jealous when my parents give more attention to other people my age. It has shown up in my relationships with friends and other people. I get envious easily and want what they have. Whether it’s material, or the attention, or the deeper relationship that others have.”

Lastly, without having any siblings to banter with, Pauline feels she has become sensitive, fragile, and extremely conscious. “I’m not 100% used to teasing, bullying, and fighting. I lack some qualities that people have picked up from growing up with siblings.”

Advice to only children

If given the chance to talk to fellow only children, Pauline has a lot to advise. “It’s easy to want what others have—especially siblings and the relationships they have. But the people who will always have your back are your parents. Never take them for granted. And always listen to them! It’s true when they say our parents know best. They are also the people we can trust the most. Their love for us knows no boundaries. And every decision they make is for us.”

“Some days may be tough like when we get into fights with them. But know that they just love us so much. Love them and cherish them. They are our best friends. Being an only child, our parents become our best friends, siblings, confidants, and advisors in one. There will come a time when they might say, ‘ Papunta ka pa lang. Pabalik na kami .’ And it’s true. They only want to protect us, and to see us succeed and reach our dreams.”

“You will come across people with different parenting styles, too. Some that might be more appealing to you. But always appreciate, respect, and be grateful for your parents. They know what’s best for us, and only they will have our backs when things get difficult.”

“Lastly, always express your love for your parents. Take every chance you get to tell them you’re grateful for them, and that you love them. Some may think it’s a lonely thing to be an only child. But I think it’s a blessing to be able to have the chance to have such a deep-rooted bond with my parents.”

Read more stories about raising only children:

Why This Family Decided to Only Have One Child

Dr. Lia Bernardo: Raising a Child in Self-Love

One and Done: Why Modern-Day Parents Are Happy With One Kid

Order your Modern Parenting magazine's print copy:

Download this month's Modern Parenting magazine digital copy from:

Subscribe via [email protected]

Why I'm Glad I Grew Up an Only Child

Updated on 7/23/2018 at 10:03 AM

The most common question I was asked as an only child growing up was, not surprisingly, "Don't you wish you had a brother or sister?" And for as long as I can remember, I've always answered "no" without any hesitation. "You'll always have someone to play with, you'll have a lifetime support system ," they said. Although enticing, I never longed for a sibling and I'm sure my parents were thrilled I never asked. (Mom and Dad, you're welcome.)

In my current early adult years, it's not unusual for people to be surprised at my sibling-less life. I'm told that I don't seem like a single child, which is most often defined when I ask as spoiled, attention-hungry, self-centered, and dependent. I guess it's better than getting the reaction, "Oh, that makes sense," but the fact is, I believe that growing up alone contributed to the absence of those traits.

It was never about the attention nor not having to share — those weren't the reasons I never cared for a brother or sister. I kept busy with neighbors and friends and I didn't mind the moments I was alone. I always had quite the imagination so it wasn't hard to get creative and I think I've always been able to appreciate time to myself — even as a child. My tripod of a family was fulfilling enough and I would cringe inside when others criticized or questioned my mother's decision to stick with one . Yes, an older sibling would have been able to watch over me and my future children would have aunts and/or uncles like the loving ones I grew up around. But I believe that my strong independence today can easily be attributed to me growing up as an only child.

I like that I was able to forge my own path rather than live in the shadows of someone else, and that I had to learn things on my own as I went. Plus due to some fantastic parenting, I learned to be self-sufficient at a very young age, which has made me totally fine as a now-22-year-old, still pretty-fresh-out-of-college woman who lives alone in a new city.

I was always fascinated by the fact that those with siblings had a unique bond with somebody else in their family other than a parent, cousin, or relative; a blood relationship with a peer almost — something that I will never be able to experience myself. I've never really been envious of my friends for that, but I do understand the many joys and perks that come with having a brother or sister . I probably wouldn't have gotten as bored at times and would've always had a readily available confidant. However, I'm thankful for my solo upbringing.

So next time someone pressures you to have more children or gives you crap about being an only child yourself, tell them that I turned out just fine — and your child will too!

• Family Relationships
• Personal Essay

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Who benefits from being an only child a study of parent–child relationship among chinese junior high school students.

• Institute for Population and Development Studies, School of Public Policy and Administration, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, China

After more than three decades of implementation, China’s one-child policy has generated a large number of only children. Although extensive research has documented the developmental outcomes of being an only child, research on the parent–child relational quality of the only child is somewhat limited. Using China Education Panel Survey (2014), this study examined whether the only child status was associated with parent–child relationships among Chinese junior high school students. It further explored whether children’s gender moderated the association between the only child status and parent–child relationships. Two-level ordered logit models suggested that only children were more likely to report a close relationship with their mothers and fathers compared to children from multiple-child families (including two-child families). Taking birth order into consideration, we found that, only children were more likely to have close parent–child relationships than firstborns, whereas no significant differences were found between only children and lastborns. Interaction analyses further suggested that the only child advantages were gender-specific: the positive effects of the only child status were stronger for daughters than for sons, that is, daughters benefited more from being only children. Our findings highlight the importance of considering children’s gender and birth order in exploring the only child effects in the Chinese context. Additional analyses about sibling-gender composition indicated female children were more likely to be disadvantaged with the presence of younger brothers, whereas male children benefited more from having older sisters. This reveals that the son preference culture is still deep-rooted in the Chinese multiple-child families.

Introduction

In 1979, China implemented the highly controversial One-Child Policy (OCP) which required the number of children for each couple to be limited to only one Child ( Falbo and Hooper, 2015 ). Exceptions existed in a few cases. For example, couples who were ethnic minorities, whose first child had disabilities, or whose (from rural areas) first child was a girl could get the chance to have a second child with permission ( Li et al., 2015 ). The One-Child Policy, coupled with the socio-economic development, made China’s fertility sharply fall from 6 in the 1970s to 1.5 in 2010 ( Cai, 2013 ). Although this policy ended on January 1, 2016 and was replaced by a universal Two-Child Policy ( Qian and Jin, 2018 ), the profound impacts of this policy on Chinese society still persist ( Chi et al., 2020 ).

One of the impacts is the generation of large numbers of one-child families. In 2010, the total number of only children rose to 145 million ( Wang, 2013 ). This special group has attracted the attention of many scholars ( Chi et al., 2020 ). A growing body of literature has documented the developmental outcomes of being an only child. Generally speaking, two views exist in academia with regard to the welfare of growing up as an only child ( Liu et al., 2010 ). One view supports the negative side. The notion “being an only child is a disease in itself,” remarked by Fenton (1928) , has provided a base for the popular thinking that only children tend to be spoiled by their parents and grandparents ( Mancillas, 2006 ; Liu et al., 2010 ). This idea argues the adults in the families tend to prioritize the needs of the only child, which could result in adverse developmental outcomes of this child, such as dependence, self-centeredness, and indifference ( Roberts and Blanton, 2001 ; Mancillas, 2006 ). In addition, because only children have no siblings to interact with, they perhaps lack proper interpersonal skills to efficiently negotiate their relationships with their peers ( Downey and Condron, 2004 ). Based on this idea, the popular media usually referred to Chinese only children as “little emperors” ( Fong, 2004 ; Falbo, 2012 ).

However, the above popular thinking was deemed a stereotype for only children ( Mancillas, 2006 ) because it was not supported by most empirical studies both in the West ( Falbo and Polit, 1986 ; Mellor, 1990 ; Falbo, 2012 ) and in China ( Poston and Falbo, 1990 ; Falbo and Poston, 1993 ; Guo et al., 2018 ). Therefore, the other perspective about only children was more positive in its nature: only children tend to be either normal or more advantaged compared to those with siblings in many developmental dimensions ( Falbo and Polit, 1986 ; Polit and Falbo, 1987 ; Mellor, 1990 ; Falbo, 2012 ; Chen and Liu, 2014 ). In China, studies of only children have focused on a variety of outcomes. Concerning academic outcomes, Chinese children without siblings appear to have higher academic achievements and cognitive abilities than children with siblings ( Poston and Falbo, 1990 ; Falbo and Poston, 1993 ; Jiao et al., 1996 ). With regard to psychological outcomes and character features, some studies observed no significant differences between Chinese only children and non-only children ( Poston and Falbo, 1990 ; Guo et al., 2015 ; Wang et al., 2020 ), and others reported better outcomes of only children ( Liu et al., 2010 ; Falbo and Hooper, 2015 ; Guo et al., 2018 ). In terms of the traditional virtues, research demonstrated that although Chinese only children did not differ from their non-only counterparts in the sense of family obligation or filial piety ( Fuligni and Zhang, 2004 ; Deutsch, 2006 ), they are more motivated to have higher achievements in order to assume the responsibility supporting their aging parents ( Fong, 2002 , 2004 ).

Even though an extensive body of literature has made comparisons between the Chinese only, and non-only children on a variety of developmental outcomes (such as academic, psychological, and behavioral outcomes), only a few studies have focused on the comparison of the parent–child relationships between the two groups. According to Western research, the variations in parent–child relationships could explain the differences in developmental outcomes between only children and non-only children ( Falbo and Polit, 1986 ; Polit and Falbo, 1988 ; Mellor, 1990 ; Falbo, 2012 ). Meta-analyses conducted by Falbo and Polit (1986) suggested that the different developmental outcomes between only children and non-only children is because the former group have a special parent–child relationship characterized by increased parental anxiety and attention ( Falbo and Polit, 1986 ; Falbo, 2012 ). Specifically, parents of only children tend to be more anxious than their multiple-child counterparts because of their inexperience in rearing children ( Falbo and Polit, 1986 ). In this case, parents of only children would be more careful and responsive in the child-rearing activities than parents of more children, leading to high-quality parent–child relationships ( Falbo and Polit, 1986 ). Further, the high-quality parent–child relationships would encourage children to interact more with their parents, thereby resulting in a stimulating home environment which was beneficial for only children’s developments ( Polit and Falbo, 1988 ). However, such parent–child relational pattern of only children is observed based on Western literature ( Falbo, 2012 ). Whether the parent–child relationships in Chinese families vary with the sibling status? Are Chinese only children more likely to have a close relationship with their parents than their non-only counterparts? Whether the only child effects, if any, differ based on children’s characteristics? This study is designed to answer the above questions.

The Only Child Status and Parent–Child Relationships in Chinese Families

According to attachment theory, parent–child relationship plays an important role in shaping children’s development ( Videon, 2005 ; Levin et al., 2012 ; Ma et al., 2020 ). Studies have consistently documented the significant impacts of relationship with caregivers on children’s developmental outcomes in China and other cultures ( Dmitrieva et al., 2004 ; Chen, 2017 ; Li et al., 2018 ; Xu et al., 2019 ). A harmonious parent–child relationship provides children a sense of security, which is fundamental for their well-being ( Li et al., 2018 ). For example, in a study conducted among Shanghai public school students (age = 15.3 years), children’s attachment to mothers as well as fathers was found to predict their academic engagement ( Chen, 2017 ). Another study using nationally representative data demonstrated that, in addition to academic achievement, parent–child relationships (together with parental presence) also influenced Chinese children’s cognitive and psychological outcomes ( Xu et al., 2019 ).

The nature of parent–child relationships is highly influenced by culture and social structure ( Chow and Zhao, 1996 ). In Chinese families characterized by Confucian culture, parents have greater authority and power in the hierarchical parent–child relationship than their Western counterparts ( Chow and Zhao, 1996 ; Lu and Chang, 2013 ). Therefore, Chinese children are required to obey their parents on any child-related issues and filial piety is regarded as a necessary virtue a person should have ( Chow and Zhao, 1996 ). However, influenced by the Western culture emphasizing individualism, Chinese parent–child relationship is becoming more egalitarian in recent years ( Sun, 2011 ). Meanwhile, with the development of social economy, the children’s economic value drops while their emotional value increases ( Goh and Kuczynski, 2010 ; Sun, 2011 ). A child-centered culture has gradually risen in Chinese families ( Tsui and Rich, 2002 ). In this situation, Chinese parents are becoming emotionally closer to their children than before ( Tsui and Rich, 2002 ; Sun, 2011 ). Therefore, considering the dramatic changes taking place in Chinese families as well as the shifts in parent–child relational pattern in recent years, it is particularly important to gain insight into parent–child relationship in modern Chinese families.

According to family systems theory, many factors determine the quality of parent–child relationship, such as marital relationship of parents ( Li et al., 2018 ). In the present study, we mainly focus on the effects of only child status (family size) on parent–child relationship. A negative association between family size and parent–child relationship is widely reported in the Western literature ( Falbo and Polit, 1986 ). For example, studies of Western families have demonstrated that the parent–child relational quality was higher in one-child families than in larger families ( Falbo and Polit, 1986 ; Falbo, 2012 ). In Lewis and Feiring (1982) ’s study, family members were observed more likely to be involved in conversations including more frequent parent–child discussions during family meals in one-child families than in multiple-child families. Some studies focusing on the comparisons between only children and non-only children also took birth order into consideration ( Falbo and Polit, 1986 ; Mellor, 1990 ; Falbo, 2012 ). Meta-analyses of Western literature showed that, although only children have better relationships with their parents than non-only children in general, they are not significantly different from firstborns or children from two-child families ( Falbo and Polit, 1986 ; Falbo, 2012 ). The Largest differences usually came from the comparisons between only children and children with more than one sibling or children of later born ( Haan, 2010 ; Falbo, 2012 ). As discussed above, this is because parents of only children, firstborns, or children with only one sibling have greater anxiety about parenting (more responsive to children’s needs) and more attention in child rearing activities ( Falbo and Polit, 1986 ; Falbo, 2012 ).

The resource dilution model could explain the link between sibship size and parent–child relationships. The term “resource dilution” is first used by Blake (1981) to describe the relationship between family size and the quality of children. Resource dilution model argues that parental resources are not infinite and with the increase in the number of children, the resources invested in each child decrease ( Blake, 1981 ). Parental resources can take many forms, such as those providing a supportive home environment, opportunities to engage with the outside world, and direct treatments, such as attention ( Polit and Falbo, 1988 ; Gibbs et al., 2016 ). The parent–child relationship is also a kind of parental resource because it is closely related to parental time (attention) spent on children or parent–child interactions: the more time parents devote to their children, the closer the parent–child relationship is ( Li et al., 2015 ).

Although limited, there are still a few studies analyzing how sibship size influences Chinese parent–child relationships. Most of the existing research suggested a more positive parent–child relationship of only children compared to their sibling counterparts. Using data of Beijing schools, Chow and Zhao (1996) showed that parents of only children spent a greater proportion of their leisure and total time on their singleton children than did parents of non-only children. The author also compared other parental resources invested in only children and non-only children and found that the only children were generally in a more advantaged position ( Chow and Zhao, 1996 ). Hao and Feng (2002) used data collected from Hubei Province and found that parents of only children interacted more frequently on both verbal and physical activities with their children than did parents of non-only children. Wei et al. (2016) observed an only child advantage in maternal educational involvement in Chinese families. In a qualitative study by Deutsch (2006) , compared to children with siblings, children without siblings were found to be more concerned with the parent–child relationship and have closer emotional bonds with their parents. By analyzing the social behaviors of Beijing kindergarteners, Li et al. (2015) found that non-only children had slightly closer mother–child relationship than did only children. This pattern is not in line with the resource dilution model perhaps because the sampled families were highly selected and the multiple-child families in Beijing had more resources: the mothers of non-only children did not have to work. In this case, non-only children might have more time to interact with their mothers than only children whose mothers working outside the home ( Li et al., 2015 ).

In sum, existing studies were limited and findings were mainly based on regional data. More representative national-scale data are needed to further examine how only children and non-only children are emotionally attached to their parents and whether there are significant differences between the two groups. Western studies have detected the birth-order effects that only children were no different from firstborns but significantly different from laterborns in terms of parent–child relationships ( Falbo and Polit, 1986 ). Does this pattern apply to Chinese children? Studies of Chinese only children failed to do the comparisons between only children and children of different birth order regarding parent–child relationship. Therefore, this study also aims to fill in the research gap by considering the birth order of children.

The Role of Children’s Gender

Influenced by Confucianism culture, children’s gender plays important role in Chinese parenting strategies. Due to the patriarchal, patrilineal, and patrilocal structure, women are subordinate to men and young women are in the lowest strata of the family hierarchy ( Shu, 2004 ). In this system, daughters are traditionally devalued because they would eventually marry into another family and would have to contribute to that family. Natal families could not see benefits in investing in daughters ( Xie, 2013 ). However, this is not true for sons. Sons are not only expected to support their elderly parents but also responsible for carrying on the family lines ( Sun, 2002 ). Therefore, investments in sons was deemed more rewarding than investments in daughters. As a result, Chinese parenting strategies have been characterized by a son preference for a long time ( Guo et al., 2018 ). The female infanticide in Chinese history is a proof of that ( Das Gupta et al., 2003 ). However, as discussed above, with the implementation of the One-Child Policy and socio-economic development, a child-centered phenomenon is emerging in Chinese families ( Tsui and Rich, 2002 ). By having fewer children or only one child, parents would not show gender preference in their parenting strategies ( Tsui and Rich, 2002 ). Empirical studies have found a narrowing male-favorable gender gap in education ( Ye and Wu, 2011 ) or even a reversed educational gender gap among the Chinese only child group ( Lee, 2012 ). For example, Ye and Wu (2011) found that gender inequality in education among younger cohorts was less prominent than among older cohorts due to the fertility decline in China. This implies that the daughter benefits more from having fewer siblings or being an only child in intra-household resources allocation than does the son ( Lee, 2012 ).

Parent–child relationship is a reflection of emotional and time resources parents invest in children. Therefore, when applying the resource dilution model to analyzing the link between sibship size and parent–child relationship in Chinese families, children’s gender needs to be given special attention ( Chu et al., 2007 ). To the best of our knowledge, little research has examined the role of children’s gender in the association between sibship size and parent–child relationship. To fill in the important research gap, this study will gain an insight into whether the only child advantages (in parent–child relationship), if any, are more prominent among daughters than sons. Previous studies also paid attention to the gender of siblings ( Chu et al., 2007 ; Zheng, 2015 ; Guo et al., 2018 ). Due to the strong son preference, having brothers (especially younger brothers) would reduce one’s opportunities in obtaining family resources, whereas having sisters (especially older sisters) would generally improve one’s well-being ( Chu et al., 2007 ; Zheng, 2015 ). For example, a study in Taiwanese families indicated that parents tended to discontinue the older daughters’ education and further encouraged them to make economic contributions to the whole family and their younger siblings (usually brothers) ( Chu et al., 2007 ). This led to more education of those with older sisters. For the well-being of children, brother(s) presence is an unfavorable factor, while sister(s) presence is a favorable factor ( Zheng, 2015 ). Considering the importance of siblings’ gender, this study also compared only children to children with siblings of different gender.

The Present Study

This study is designed to explore whether Chinese only children are more advantaged in emotional relationship with their parents compared to non-only children. Meanwhile, we also aim to compare only children with the firstborns, the middleborns, and the lastborns from multiple-child families to identify the birth-order effects. Furthermore, considering the gendered characteristics of family relationships in China, we will analyze whether children’s gender plays a moderating role in the association between the only child status and children’s parent–child relationship. Finally, we will compare only children to children with siblings of different gender (sibling-gender composition) regarding parent–child relationships.

The data used in this study derived from a national survey of school-going adolescents (junior high school students, 48.66% female, age range: 12 – 18; average age = 14.5 years). We used this dataset — China Education Panel Survey (2014) — based on the following reasons. First, adolescence is a period when people are undergoing critical changes in psychological, physical, and social development ( Ruhl et al., 2015 ). Influenced by these changes, during this period, children are more vulnerable to their social relationships with parent–child relationships being the most important. The quality of parent–child relationships during adolescence has been found to influence the adolescents’ developmental outcomes ( Ruhl et al., 2015 ; Chen, 2017 ; Li et al., 2018 ; Xu et al., 2019 ), with the influences persisting well into adulthood and later life ( Hair et al., 2008 ; Raudino et al., 2013 ). Second, the increased autonomy and shared-decision making with parents during adolescence enable adolescents to be more objective in their evaluations of their relationships with parents ( Ruhl et al., 2015 ). Third, the sampled adolescents in our study had a mean age of 14.5 years at 2014 meaning that they were born around 2000 when the one-child policy had been in force for almost 30 years. The phenomenon of one-child families had become a social norm ( Falbo and Hooper, 2015 ; Falbo, 2018 ) and a child-centered culture had taken shape in Chinese society. Parenting strategies were thus unique for this generation (the one-child policy began to be relaxed around 2013, see Jiang and Liu, 2016 ). Therefore, it is interesting to explore the only child effects on parenting strategies for this generation. Lastly, because Chinese culture continues to value education highly ( Huang and Gove, 2015 ), junior high school education, which plays an important role in transitioning to high school education, is emphasized by Chinese parents. Due to the highly competitive nature of attaining entrance to high schools in China, there is much stress placed on junior high school students to prepare for the graduation examination—that allows them to enter high-quality high schools ( Wu, 2015 ). In this process, parents also make their own contributions to their children such as providing harmonious family relationships. Furthermore, a junior high sample is more representative of Chinese adolescents in general because this educational stage is covered by the Nine-Year Compulsory Education ( Guo et al., 2019 ). Many adolescents could not go to high schools due to a lack of family resources ( Loyalka et al., 2013 ). The website of China’s Ministry of Education shows that in 2012, around 98% of primary graduates entered junior high schools, whereas only 88% of junior high graduates entered high schools [ MEPRC (Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China), 2019 ]. Based on this, it is important to analyze parent–child relationships among junior high school students.

The following content of the paper is divided into four parts: (1) an introduction of materials and methods used in the study; (2) a report of the results from the descriptive analyses and the multilevel models; (3) a discussion of the empirical findings; (4) a summary of the study.

Materials and Methods

We used data from the baseline of China Education Panel Survey (CEPS 2014). CEPS is a nationally representative survey aiming at investigating how individual educational outputs are impacted by family, school, and community. Conducted by Renmin University of China, the data were gathered with a fourth-stage probability sampling design that randomly selected 19,487 students of grade 7 and grade 9 from 438 classes across 112 junior high schools in 28 counties (districts) of mainland China. Students along with their parents (19,487), teachers (438), and school faculty (112) constituted the final survey sample.

Five types of major questionnaires were used in the survey to collect information on students, their parents, homeroom teachers, main subject teachers (Chinese, Math, and English), and school administrators. The student questionnaires were completed by students collectively in the classroom and the parent questionnaires were completed by their corresponding parents or their main caregivers at home (copies of the parent questionnaires were taken home by the students). The study variables in this paper were mainly derived from the student questionnaires. All the survey data were collected using a paper/pencil measure. The data had a response rate of 98.7%.

We merged students’ data and parents’ data and 19,487 parent–child pairs were generated. One hundred and sixty five (0.85%) observations were deleted due to the missing information on dependent variables. In the remaining sample, most of our explanatory variables had a very low level of missing in formation (ranging from 0 to 2.5%) with parental age at birth of the respondent child (around 25% missing) and gender of siblings (around 10% missing) being the exceptions. Apart from parental age at birth and gender of siblings, the missing percentage for the whole sample were 5.35%. To avoid losing too many observations, we created a “missing” category for the variables with high rate of missing information (will elaborate later in the “measure” part). Thus, the final analytical sample was 18,445.

Dependent Variables

Parent–child relationship.

Research has measured parent–child relationships in a variety of ways. Some studies employed parental verbal and physical interactions with children, parental control, and prenatal supportiveness through specific and multi-dimensional items to measure parent–child relationships ( Pritchett et al., 2011 ; Li et al., 2015 ; Chen et al., 2018 ; Xu et al., 2019 ; Ma et al., 2020 ). Others utilized a single and general item measuring parent–child relationships ( Videon, 2005 ; Damsgaard et al., 2014 ). For example, Videon (2005) operationalized parent–child relationship using a single question: “Overall, are you satisfied with your relationship with your mother (father)?” Damsgaard et al. (2014) employed the question: “how easy is it for you to talk to your mother/father about things that really bother you?” In our study, we employed the later practice: capturing the quality of parent–child relationship with a single general question. Meanwhile, because mothers and fathers tend to play different roles in parenting activities ( Liu, 2020 ), and the child’s development is usually influenced by his/her same-sex parent ( Ohannessian, 2012 ), it is necessary to measure father–child and mother–child relationship separately.

In the present study, parent–child relationships were assessed with one item about each parent. On the student questionnaire, children were asked to rate the relationship with their parents: how is the general relationship with your mother/father? Responses included “not close (2.4% for mother–child relationship and 4.3% for father–child relationship),” “moderate (24.21% for mother–child relationship and 33.28% for father–child relationship),” and “close (73.40% for mother–child relationship and 62.42% for father–child relationship).” We created a three-category ordinal variable for mother–child closeness and father–child closeness (0–2, a higher value indicates closer parent–child relationship), respectively. See Table 1 for the measurements of dependent variables.

Table 1. Definitions and measurements of the study variables.

Key Independent Variables

Our key independent variable is the sibling status. Based on our research objectives, various sibling-related variables were produced. To compare only children with children having siblings, we created a three-category variable named sibship size with only children as the reference group and children having one sibling and children having two or more siblings as the other two groups. We combined the children with two siblings and more into one category (2 + siblings) because there were only five percent of the students having three or more siblings. In addition, to compare only children with children of different birth order from multiple-child families, we created a four-category variable named birth order. Specifically, only children were coded as 0 (reference category); firstborns, middleborns, and lastborns from multiple-child families were coded as 1, 2, and 3, respectively. To be clear, firstborns, middleborns, and lastborns were defined by the birth order of children from multiple-child families: firstborns were children with only younger siblings; middleborns were children who had both younger siblings and older siblings; lastborns were children with only older siblings. See Table 1 for the definitions and measurements of the study variables. At last, to compare only children with children having siblings of different gender, we created another four variables with each having four categories. For example, the variable “younger brothers” indicated whether the child had younger brothers (0 = only child, 1 = without younger brothers, 2 = with younger brothers, 3 = younger brothers missing). The creations of the other three variables (“younger sisters,” “older brothers,” and “older sisters”) followed the same pattern.

Potential Moderator

To test whether the effects of only child status on parent–child relationship depend on children’s gender, this study set children’s gender as the moderating variable (0 = son, 1 = daughter).

We controlled for a variety of covariates in the models. Covariates included adolescents’ demographics (grade and ethnicity), academic characteristics (cognitive score and academic performance), family dynamics (boarding school attendance, parental co-residence, and parental marital quality), family SES (family economic condition, parental education, hukou type), and parental age at birth of the respondent child. Children’s grade (grade 7 and grade 9) is a reflection of both children’s age and birth cohort which could influence parent–child closeness as well as sibship size. Children’s academic characteristics were also found to predict parent–child relationship ( Sharma and Vaid, 2005 ), especially in the Chinese culture highly valuing children’s education ( Huang and Gove, 2015 ). According to family systems theory, family structure (boarding school attendance and parental co-residence) and marital relationships were strong predictors of parent–child relationship ( Dinisman et al., 2017 ; Yoo, 2020 ). Children’s ethnicity and family SES could affect not only parent–child closeness but also sibship size ( Zhang, 2012 ; Piotrowski and Tong, 2016 ; Weng et al., 2019 ). The one-child policy were implemented more rigorously in the Han ethnicity than in minority ethnicities and in urban families than in rural families, we therefore included ethnicity and the hukou type ( Weng et al., 2019 ). Research has consistently found that with the increase of parental education, the number of children declines ( Piotrowski and Tong, 2016 ) and the parent–child relationship improves ( Zhang, 2012 ). We also controlled for parental age at birth of the surveyed child because it was expected to influence both parent–child relationship and sibship size. Because parental age at birth had a high proportion of missing values (24.61%), we included “age missing” along with other values in the model. Refer to Table 1 for the specific measurements.

Analytical Strategy

We started the analyses by reporting the sibling information of the analytical sample ( Table 2 ) and the sample characteristics in the full, only child, and non-only child sample ( Table 3 ). Meanwhile, we displayed the percent of “close” mother–child and father–child relationships by children’s sibship size and birth order ( Figures 1 , 2 ). In the next step, given the ordinal nature of the dependent variables, we employed two-level ordered logistic models to estimate mother–child closeness and father–child closeness ( Tables 4 , 5 ). Two-level models were used due to the nested structure of the data (students were nested in schools).

Table 2. Sibling information.

Table 3. Sample characteristics (Percent or Mean/SD).

Figure 1. Percent of a “close” mother–child relationship by sibship size and birth order (firstborns do not consist of only children).

Figure 2. Percent of a “close” father–child relationship by sibship size and birth order (firstborns do not consist of only children).

Table 4. Two-level ordered logistic models estimating mother–child closeness ( N = 18445).

Table 5. Two-level ordered logistic models estimating father–child closeness ( N = 18,445).

Descriptive Analyses

Table 2 reports the sibling information of our analytical sample. Information in Table 2 indicates that modern Chinese families have a very small family size with one-child and two-child families accounting for a large proportion (more than 80%). Specifically, only children accounted for almost half of the sampled children (44.25%); children with only one sibling accounted for 42% of the full sample; children with two or more siblings held a very low proportion of 14%. Of the analytical children, around 27% were firstborns, 5% were middleborns, and 23% were lastborns. Among our sampled children, those having younger brothers held the largest proportion (21.66%) and those having older sisters accounted for the second largest proportion (20.24%). Only 10.77% of the children had older brothers. This is perhaps because most rural parents were subject to the one-and-a-half-child policy: rural couples whose first child was a daughter were allowed to have a second child, whereas those with a son as the first child were not allowed to have another child ( Jiang and Liu, 2016 ). The mean number of children for each household in our sample was only 1.74.

Table 3 reports the sample characteristics. In addition to showing the sample characteristics in the full sample, Table 3 also displays the characteristics by children’s only child status. Meanwhile, the chi-squared test (for categorical variables) or t -test (for continuous variables) was employed to decide if the difference between only children and non-only children were significant. As shown in Table 3 , most junior-high-school students had a close parent–child relationship (73.40% for mother–child relationship and 62.42% for father–child relationship). Chi-squared tests show that only children were significantly different from non-only children in three levels of mother–child relationship (χ 2 = 52.23, df = 2, p = 0.000) and father–child relationship (χ 2 = 27.47, df = 2, p = 0.000). To test whether only children were significantly different from non-only children in reporting “close” parent–child relationships, we combined “not close” and “moderate” into one category. After the combination, chi-squared tests of the two levels of parent–child relationships (“not close-moderate combination” and “close”) show that compared to non-only children (71.30%), only children (76.03%) were more likely to report “close” relationships with their mothers (χ 2 = 52.08, df = 1, p = 0.000); compared to non-only children (60.82%), only children (64.44%) were also more likely to report “close” relationships with their fathers (χ 2 = 25.39, df = 1, p = 0.000). In addition, only children had significantly higher cognitive score (0.23 for only children and −0.15 for non-only children, t = 30.90, df = 18,443, p = 0.000) and reported better academic performance (2.16 for only children and 1.99 for non-only children, t = 10.25, df = 18,443, p = 0.000) than did non-only children. Non-only children were more likely to attend a boarding school than only children (χ 2 = 1,800, df = 1, p = 0.000). Regarding family background, only children were more likely to be born in high-income families (χ 2 = 46.19, df = 1, p = 0.000), having parents of more educated (maternal education: χ 2 = 2,500, df = 1, p = 0.000; paternal education: χ 2 = 2,100, df = 1, p = 0.000), and having higher probability of living with both parents (χ 2 = 219.06, df = 1, p = 0.000). Finally, due to the more rigorous implementation of the OCP and the more modern culture in urban areas than in rural areas, only children were significantly different from non-only children in hukou type (urban hukou accounted for 66.73% among only children and only 28.72% among non-only children, χ 2 = 2,700, df = 1, p = 0.000). Overall, only children were more advantaged in terms of both parent–child relationship and background characteristics than non-only children.

Figures 1 , 2 show the percent of “close” mother–child relationship and “close” father–child relationship, respectively, by sibship size and birth order. For “close” mother–child relationship ( Figure 1 ), significant difference was not only found between only children and children with two or more siblings (only children: 76.03%, children with two or more siblings: 68.28%, χ 2 = 60.73, df = 1, p = 0.000) but also found between only children and children having only one sibling (only children: 76.03%, children with 1 sibling: 72.30%; χ 2 = 29.00, df = 1, p = 0.000). Further, only children were also significantly more likely to report “close” mother–child relationships than firstborns (firstborns: 68.87%, χ 2 = 81.10, df = 1, p = 0.000) and middleborns (middleborns: 65.78%, χ 2 = 49.01, df = 1, p = 0.000), but no significant difference was observed between only children and lastborns (lastborns: 75.37%, χ 2 = 0.67, df = 1, p = 0.412). For “close” father–child relationship ( Figure 2 ), the pattern was similar. First, only children were significantly more likely to report “close” father–child relationship than children with one sibling (only children: 64.44%, children with 1 sibling: 61.66%; χ 2 = 13.22, df = 1, p = 0.000) and children with two or more siblings (only children: 64.44%, children with two or more siblings: 58.27%; χ 2 = 31.57, df = 1, p = 0.000). Turing to birth order, only children were also more likely to report “close” father–child relationship than firstborns (firstborns: 57.46%, χ 2 = 63.87, df = 1, p = 0.000) and middleborns (middleborns: 55.91%, χ 2 = 27.55, df = 1, p = 0.000). However, no significant difference was detected between only children and lastborns (lastborns: 65.82%, χ 2 = 2.38, df = 1, p = 0.123).

Multivariate Analyses

Mother–child closeness.

Table 4 shows the coefficients of two-level ordered logistic models estimating mother–child closeness. Model a1 and Model b1 were designed to test the effects of children’s sibship size and birth order on mother–child closeness without controlling for covariates, respectively. Sibship size and birth order were not included in the models simultaneously in order to avoid multi-collinearity because the two variables shared a same reference group (only children). Model a2 and Model b2 were models estimating the net effects of sibship size and birth order, respectively, with other things being equal (all the covariates were controlled). It is worth noting that, in the birth order model (Model b2), we controlled for the total number of children in the family to capture the net effects of birth order. Model a3 and Model b3 were interaction models designed to test the moderating effects of children’s gender on the effects of sibship size and birth order, respectively.

In Model a1, the significantly negative coefficients of one-sibling child and two-or-more-sibling child indicate that the presence of sibling(s) was disadvantaged for children. We then successively added the control variables. In Model a2, with all the covariates being controlled, the negative effects of sibship size dropped in the magnitude but still remained significant. We found that the sibship size effects were largely confounded by family SES (results not shown). Other things being equal, compared to only children, children with one sibling were 10% [1- exp (−0.11), p = 0.016] less likely to report a close relationship with their mothers; Children with two or more siblings were 16.5% [1- exp (−0.18), p = 0.004] less likely to report a close mother–child relationship. In addition, the significantly positive coefficient of children’s gender (β = 0.11, p = 0.001) implied that daughters were more likely to report a close mother–child relationship than sons. Moving to Model a3, the coefficients of the interaction terms are significantly negative (β 1 sibling × daughter = −0.34, p = 0.000; β 2 + siblings × daughter = −0.64, p = 0.000) indicating that the effects of sibship size were significantly different between daughters and sons. We visually displayed the interaction effects in the form of predicted probabilities (for “close” mother–child closeness) in Figure 3 . Figure 3 clearly shows that, the changing directions of the solid line (representing daughter) and the dash line (representing son) were different. Larger sibship size reduced daughters’ probabilities of having a close relationship with mothers by a great degree whereas slightly increased sons’ probabilities of attaining such relationship. In other words, the benefits of being an only child is mainly reflected on daughters in the Chinese context.

Figure 3. Predicted probabilities of a “close” mother–child relationship by sibship size and children’s gender (MCR: mother-child relationship).

Turning to the birth-order models. In Model b1, without controlling for other variables, firstborns were found to be less likely to form a close mother–child relationship compared to only children. In Model b2, net of all the other factors, compared to only children, firstborns and middleborns were 25% [1- exp (−0.29), p = 0.000] and 24% [1- exp (−0.27), p = 0.041] less likely, respectively, to have a close mother–child relationship. Finally, the coefficient of lastborns is positive and marginally significant (β = 0.15; p = 0.052) suggesting lastborns were not disadvantaged compared to only children in mother–child closeness. Turning to Model b3 with interaction terms, we found a significant joint effects of birth order with children’s gender. Figure 4 clearly shows the interaction information of Model b5: daughters as only children had a significantly higher probability to enjoy a close mother–child relationship than sons as only children. Last daughters and sons had the same probability to enjoy a close mother–child relationship. Firstborns and middleborns (both daughters and sons) were least likely to have a close mother–child relationship.

Figure 4. Predicted probabilities of a “close” mother–child relationship by birth order and children’s gender (MCR: mother-child relationship).

Father–Child Closeness

Table 5 shows the coefficients of two-level logistic regression estimating father–child closeness. Model a1 and Model b1 were designed to test the sibship-size effects and birth-order effects on father–child closeness without controlling for other variables, respectively. Model a2 and Model b2 were models testing the net effects of sibship size and birth order (all covariates were controlled). Similar to the estimates of mother–child relationship, sibship size and birth order were not included simultaneously to avoid multi-collinearity. Model a3 and Model b3 were interaction models testing whether children’s gender moderated the sibship-size effects and birth-order effects, respectively.

In Model a1, the coefficients of sibship size were significantly negative suggesting that compared to only children, children with siblings experienced a declined odds of having a close father–child relationship. We then successively added covariates in the model with Model a2 including all variables. Holding other things consistent, having one sibling and two or more siblings reduced the odds of enjoying a close father–child relationship by 14% [1-exp (−0.15), p = 0.000] and 16% [1-exp (−0.18), p = 0.002], respectively. It is worth noting the coefficient of children’s gender: although daughters were more likely (β = 0.11, p = 0.001) to have a close mother–child relationship than sons (see Model a2 in Table 4 ), they were less likely (β = −0.13, p = 0.000) to have a close father–child relationship. Turning to Model a3, the significant coefficients of the interaction terms suggest that children’s gender and sibship size jointly influenced father–child relationship (β 1 sibling × daughter = −0.26, p = 0.000; β 2 + siblings × daughter = −0.61, p = 0.000). We visually displayed the interaction information of Model a3 in Figure 5 . Figure 5 clearly shows that daughters’ probabilities of having a “close” father–child relation declined with the increase of sibship size and only daughters have the highest probabilities. Sons, on the contrary, experienced a slightly increase in father-son closeness as their sibship size rose. Among non-only children (children with 1 sibling or 2+ siblings), sons had higher probabilities of reporting a close father–child relationship than did daughters, whereas among children without siblings, daughters had higher probabilities in reporting a close relationship with their fathers than did sons. Figure 5 suggests that daughters, rather than sons, benefit from being only children.

Figure 5. Predicted probabilities of a “close” father–child relationship by sibship size and children’s gender (FCR: father-child relationship).

Model b1 (only including birth order) suggests that only children were significantly more likely to have close father–child relationships than did firstborns. In Model b2, with all the covariates being controlled, firstborns were 25% [1-exp (−0.29), p = 0.000] less likely to report a close father–child relationship. However, there was no significant difference between only children and middleborns or lastborns. Model b3 includes the interactions of children’s gender and birth order to test whether birth order influenced father–child relationships differently for daughters and sons. The coefficients of the interactions were significantly negative suggesting daughters and sons showed different patterns in the association between birth order and father–child relationship. We displayed the interaction information of Model 4 in Figure 6 . Figure 6 clearly shows that, for sons, being the lastborns of multiple-child families was most beneficial. This is probably due to the son preference: the youngest sons in the families were usually born in the situation that fathers were dissatisfied with the number of sons and their births would make up for it ( Basu and De Jong, 2010 ). Therefore, the births of younger sons would bring about more satisfactions than that of older sons. However, for daughters, the situation is distinct: being the only child was most beneficial. This is also an indirect reflection of son preference: only when there were no siblings to compete for family resources will daughters receive more attention from parents in the Chinese families.

Figure 6. Predicted probabilities of a “close” father–child relationship by birth order and children’s gender (FCR: father-child relationship).

The Presence of Siblings of Different Gender

To compare only children with children having siblings of different gender, we ran a series of additional models. See Table 6 .

Table 6. Effects of younger brothers, younger sisters, older brothers, and older sisters.

The models shown in the left part of Table 6 estimate mother–child closeness. In the main-effects models, having younger brothers and having younger sisters reduced the odds of involving in a close mother–child relationship by 33% [1-exp (−0.40), p = 0.000] and 17% [1-exp (−0.19), p = 0.015], respectively, whereas having older sisters were a favorable factor [increasing the odds by 34%, exp (0.29)-1, p = 0.000]. Moving to the interaction models of younger brother(s) and younger sister(s), the coefficients of the interaction terms “with younger brother(s) × daughter” and “with younger sister(s) × daughter” were both significantly negative [β with younger  brother(s) × daughter = −0.30, p = 0.001; β with  younger  sister(s) × daughter = −0.33, p = 0.002] suggesting having younger siblings exerted stronger negative impacts on daughters than on sons. In the interaction model of older brother(s), the main effects of older brother(s) was significantly positive [β with  older  brother(s) = 0.21, p = 0.044] suggesting that for sons, older brother(s) presence was an advantageous factor in mother–child closeness, whereas the interaction effects was significantly negative [β with  older  brother(s) × daughter = −0.37, p = 0.002] suggesting having older brothers was an unfavorable factor for daughters. Coefficients of the interaction term in the interaction model of older sister(s) suggested that the positive effect of having older sisters was stronger for sons than for daughters [β with  older  sister(s) = 0.42, p = 0.000; β with  older  sister(s) × daughter = −0.41, p = 0.000].

The models shown in the right part of Table 6 predict father–child closeness. The main-effects analyses revealed that having younger siblings was an unfavorable factor for children to have a close father–child relationship, compared to only children [β with  younger  brother(s) = −0.34, p = 0.000; β with  younger  sister(s) = −0.29, p = 0.000]. Meanwhile, the effects of having older siblings were insignificant. Turning to the interaction models. Interaction analyses of younger siblings suggested that the negative effects of having younger siblings were stronger for daughters than for sons [β with  younger  brother(s) × daughter = −0.29, p = 0.001; β with  younger  sister(s) × daughter = −0.29, p = 0.002]. Interaction analyses of older siblings suggested that although having older siblings did not matter for the overall children, interesting patterns emerged when we included interaction terms: the presence of older siblings was positively associated with sons’ closeness to fathers [β with  older  brother(s) = 0.22, p = 0.024; β with  older  sister(s) = 0.22, p = 0.004], whereas negatively linked to daughters’ closeness to fathers [β with  older  brother(s) × daughter = −0.42, p = 0.000; β with  older  sister(s) × daughter = −0.35, p = 0.000].

In summary, influenced by son preference, the associations between the presence of siblings and parent–child closeness were based on different sibling-gender compositions. Specifically, having younger brothers was an unfavorable factor for children regarding parent-child relationship, especially for female children. By comparison, having older sisters was a favorable factor for male children in terms of parent-child relationship.

After more than three decades of implementation, the one-child policy created a large number of families with just one child and this family size became the social norm in Chinese society ( Falbo and Hooper, 2015 ; Falbo, 2018 ). A growing body of research has documented the developmental outcomes of being an only child ( Liu et al., 2010 ; Falbo, 2012 ; Falbo and Hooper, 2015 ; Guo et al., 2015 , 2018 ; Wang et al., 2020 ). However, few studies examined whether only children have different parent–child emotional relationships compared with non-only children. As an emotional resource, the parent–child relationship plays an important role in shaping adolescents’ psychological, social, and academic development ( Li et al., 2018 ; Xu et al., 2019 ). Thus, it is essential to gain insight into only children’s relationships with their parents. Western research has reported that although only children are generally more advantaged in the parent–child relationship compared to non-only children, only children are no different from firstborns or those from two-child families ( Falbo and Polit, 1986 ). Therefore, in addition to exploring the sibship-size effects on parent–child relationships, the birth-order effects should also be tested in the Chinese context. Considering the gender stratification in Chinese culture ( Guo et al., 2018 ), this study further examined whether the sibship-size effects and birth-order effects depended on children’s gender. Finally, comparisons between only children and children with siblings of different gender were also made. The findings of this study are as follows.

First, Chinese only children had closer parent–child relationship than did non-only children. Specifically, compared to children from two-child families or larger families, only children were more likely to describe their relationships with their mothers and fathers as highly close. This result is consistent with the resource dilution theory ( Blake, 1981 ). The quality of the parent–child relationship tends to be a reflection of parental time, energy, and attention devoted to children and such resources are not infinite ( Li et al., 2015 ). Therefore, children with many siblings have to share these resources with their siblings and, in this case, the resources for each child would decrease; on the contrary, only children do not need to compete with their siblings and thus have more access to family resources ( Downey, 1995 ). As a result, only children are more likely to describe their relationships with their parents as close, suggesting that the parent–child relationships for only children are of higher quality than those found among other sibship sizes. This result demonstrates the existence of the child-centered culture in Chinese one-child families ( Tsui and Rich, 2002 ). Previous studies have found that only children have higher educational achievements than non-only children because the former receive more educational resources from parents ( Downey, 1995 ; Lee, 2012 ). This study contributes to the existing literature by including parental emotional resources in the resource-dilution model.

Second, considering birth order, we found that only children had advantages over firstborns (of multiple-child families), but these advantages disappeared when they were compared to lastborns (of multiple-child families). This is inconsistent with findings from Western families ( Falbo and Polit, 1986 ). In the West, only children were found to be indistinguishable from firstborns in terms of parent–child relationships because, before the births of younger siblings, firstborns are the only children of their parents, at least for a while, and have access to all the family resources at that period ( Falbo and Polit, 1986 ; Mellor, 1990 ; Falbo, 2012 ). Therefore, in Western families, only children are more advantaged only when they are compared to laterborns of large families with three or more children ( Falbo, 2012 ). However, our study demonstrates that the situation is different in Chinese families: Chinese only children are more at an advantage than firstborns and they are no different from lastborns. In short, among all children, firstborns as well as middleborns of multiple-child families are the most disadvantaged. The following are some possible explanations for this result.

The first explanation concerns Chinese culture. The traditional Confucian idea that “having many children is a blessing” is embraced by many Chinese parents, especially those from rural areas ( Hillier, 1988 ; Jiao et al., 1996 ). In this case, parents tend to violate the One-Child Policy to have an ideal composition of gender and the number of children ( Jiao et al., 1996 ). As a consequence, the last child is usually the one parents show more affection toward. Another explanation is related to the personality traits of children. According to Sulloway’s (1996) theory about birth order, children of different order usually have different personalities. Firstborns, being the oldest in the family, are expected to act as a leader ( Shao et al., 2013 ). This is particularly true in China: historically, the eldest son is second in authority to his father in Chinese families ( Das Gupta et al., 2003 ). This requires the eldest children to be responsible, independent, and conservative ( Shao et al., 2013 ). The youngest children, on the other hand, were found to be higher in sociability ( Sulloway, 1996 ; Shao et al., 2013 ). Therefore, lastborns tend to be more open than firstborns– this argument has been demonstrated in the Chinese context ( Shao et al., 2013 ). Being more open enables lastborns to be more likely attaining parental attention, which results in a higher parent–child closeness.

Third, the parent–child relationship was significantly associated with children’s gender and such association differed by parental gender: daughters had a significantly more positive relationship with their mothers than sons, whereas sons had a significantly more positive relationship with their fathers than daughters. In short, parents were emotionally closer to their same-sex children. This pattern is consistent with the gendered theory of parenting ( Liu, 2020 ). According to the gendered theory of parenting, the gender of children and parents may simultaneously influence parenting styles as well as parent–child relationships ( Russell and Saebel, 1997 ). This gendered pattern may be reinforced in the Chinese culture characterized by traditional gender stereotypes or gender-specific expectations: the boys should be manliness and hard and the girls should be gentle and soft ( Liu, 2006 ). Encouraged by this notion, fathers usually spend more time with their sons to cultivate their masculinity and mothers tend to spend more time with their daughters to nurture their femininity ( Liu, 2006 ). Therefore, the “same-sex parent–child dyads” phenomenon is popular in Chinese families.

Forth, the only child status influenced the parent–child relationship depending on children’s gender. Specifically, even though having siblings was an obstructive factor for children in general to get a closer parent–child relationship, this negative effect was stronger for daughters than for sons. In short, daughters were more responsive to sibling status and benefited more from being only children. This could again be explained by the patriarchal culture derived from Confucianism ( Das Gupta et al., 2003 ). According to Patriarchy, Chinese families value sons’ roles as providers of old-age-support for their parents while devaluing daughters’ roles because their supports would eventually be channeled to their husband’s families ( Deutsch, 2006 ; Xie, 2013 ). In this case, parents would invest more in sons than in daughters to maximize the benefits of investment ( Jiang et al., 2012 ). Therefore, the more siblings the daughters have, the fewer resources they would receive ( Chu et al., 2007 ). Research has found that the resource dilution model is characterized by a gendered pattern in Chinese families: the negative effects of sibling presence is stronger for daughters than for sons ( Chu et al., 2007 ; Lee, 2012 ). Nevertheless, when the family has only one child, the gender of the child does not matter for the parenting strategies ( Tsui and Rich, 2002 ). This is perhaps because parents of only daughters usually hold more egalitarian gender role attitudes given that they had stopped giving birth in the case of having no sons. Moreover, recent studies have found that it is increasingly becoming common for daughters to transfer money or provide care to their aging parents in both rural and urban China ( Xie and Zhu, 2009 ; Gruijters, 2018 ). Thus, modern parents have economic incentives to invest in their only daughters ( Tsui and Rich, 2002 ). The gender bias weakens in one-child families ( Fong, 2002 ). Furthermore, considering the gender discrimination in the labor market, women may need more skills to compete with men ( Raley and Bianchi, 2006 ). Therefore, to guarantee the future success of their daughters, parents of singleton girls may have higher incentives to invest in their children than parents of singleton boys ( Tsui and Rich, 2002 ). Thus, the advantages of singleton daughters could be considered a proactive strategy to prepare for discrimination against women in the job market.

At last, our additional analyses found that the sibling effects on parent–child closeness differed by sibling-gender composition: female children were more likely to be disadvantaged due to the presence of younger brothers, whereas male children could benefit more from having older sisters. Previous studies, based on the son preference culture, has developed the resource dilution theory in China by introducing gender of siblings ( Chu et al., 2007 ; Zheng, 2015 ). These studies found that siblings were not equally associated with one’s educational resources: brothers reduced educational opportunities, while sisters increased one’s educational opportunities ( Chu et al., 2007 ; Zheng, 2015 ). Therefore, the resource dilution is gender asymmetric in the Chinese culture ( Zheng, 2015 ). Our study has developed the theory by examining the parent–child relationship: besides educational opportunities, the gender asymmetric pattern was also found for parent–child closeness. Under the son preference culture of Asian countries, parents, especially rural parents, would stop giving birth only when the desired number of sons was achieved (“male-preferring stopping rules”) ( Basu and De Jong, 2010 ). In this situation, families with only daughters were usually unsatisfied with the gender composition and would continue to give birth in their unrelenting search for a son—leading daughters usually being born at earlier parities within families ( Basu and De Jong, 2010 ). This could also be reflected in our data that children having younger brothers or older sisters accounted for the largest proportions, whereas children having older brothers were the least. This idea was again reinforced by Chinese national policy (the one-and-a-half-child policy which allowed rural couples to have a second child if the first child was a girl, see Jiang and Liu, 2016 ). As a result, parents are more likely to value their youngest male children who have older sisters and devalue their eldest female children who have younger brothers. Our findings suggest that despite daughters’ status has been improved in one-child families, son preference and daughter discrimination still persist in multiple-child families in modern China.

As with any study, the current study has some limitations. First, due to the cross-sectional nature of the dataset, one should be very cautious to conclude a causal relationship between only child status and parent–child relationship. Both children’s only child status and parental relationship with children are determined by parental characteristics that were not fully captured by our data. Second, due to data limitation, we used children’s subjective reported closeness with parents to measure the parent–child relationship and the views of parents and other family members were neglected. Although this practice has been employed by previous studies ( Videon, 2005 ; Damsgaard et al., 2014 ), a more objective way to reporting the parent–child relationship may be necessary for the future to ensure the validity of measurement.

Our study observed an only child advantage in the parent–child emotional relationship. Only children were not only more favored compared to non-only children in general, they were also more favored in comparison with children from two-child families and firstborns of multiple-child families. Furthermore, we found that the sibship-size and birth-order effects were gender-specific: daughters benefited more from being only children. We also found the gender asymmetric sibling effects that daughters were disadvantaged by having younger brothers, whereas sons benefited more from having older sisters. Our findings highlighted the importance to consider children’s gender when exploring the only child effects.

A large body of literature has documented various developmental outcomes of only children. However, relatively limited research has focused on the family relationships of only children in the Chinese context. Our study contributed to the current knowledge of only children by exploring their parent–child relationships. In addition to comparing only children to children with siblings, we also took another step forward by exploring the birth-order effects and gender-composition effects. Our study has important policy implications. Policy-makers should be highly aware of the persistence of “valuing sons but devaluing daughters” culture in the Chinese multiple-child families and formulate some policies to weaken this idea, especially in the universal two-child policy era.

Data Availability Statement

The datasets presented in this study can be found in online repositories. The names of the repository/repositories and accession number(s) can be found below: http://cnsda.ruc.edu.cn/index.php?r=projects/view&id=72810330 .

Ethics Statement

The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by the ethics committee of Renmin University of China. Written informed consent to participate in this study was provided by the participants’ legal guardian/next of kin.

Author Contributions

YL designed the study, processed the data, and drafted the original manuscript. QJ provided the data and revised the manuscript. Both the authors critically reviewed and approved the final manuscript.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Basu, D., and De Jong, R. (2010). Son targeting fertility behavior: some consequences and determinants. Demography 47, 521–536. doi: 10.1353/dem.0.0110

PubMed Abstract | CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

Blake, J. (1981). Family size and the quality of children. Demography 18, 421–442. doi: 10.2307/2060941

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

Cai, Y. (2013). China’s new demographic reality: learning from the 2010 census. Population Dev. Rev. 39, 371–396. doi: 10.1111/j.1728-4457.2013.00608.x

Chen, B. B. (2017). Parent–adolescent attachment and academic adjustment: the mediating role of self-worth. J. Child Fam. Stud. 26, 2070–2076. doi: 10.1007/s10826-017-0728-2

Chen, Q., Kong, Y., Gao, W., and Mo, L. (2018). Effects of socioeconomic status, parent–child relationship, and learning motivation on reading ability. Front. Psychol. 9:1297. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01297

Chen, Z., and Liu, R. (2014). Comparing adolescent only children with those who have siblings on academic related outcomes and psychosocial adjustment. Child Dev. 1, 1–10. doi: 10.1155/2014/578289

Chi, X., Huang, L., Wang, J., and Zhang, P. (2020). The prevalence and socio-demographic correlates of depressive symptoms in early adolescents in China: differences in only child and non-only child groups. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 17, 1–14.

Google Scholar

Chow, E., and Zhao, S. (1996). The one-child policy and parent-child relationships: a comparison of one-child with multiple-child families in China. Int. J. Sociol. Soc. Policy 16, 35–62. doi: 10.1108/eb013285

Chu, C., Xie, Y., and Yu, R. (2007). Effects of sibship structure revisited: evidence from intrafamily resource transfer in Taiwan. Sociol. Educ. 80, 91–113. doi: 10.1177/003804070708000201

Damsgaard, M. T., Holstein, B. E., Koushede, V., Madsen, K. R., Meilstrup, C., Nelausen, M. K., et al. (2014). Close relations to parents and emotional symptoms among adolescents: beyond socio-economic impact? Int. J. Public Health 59, 721–726. doi: 10.1007/s00038-014-0600-8

Das Gupta, M., Jiang, Z., Li, B., Xie, Z., Chung, W., and Hwa-Ok, B. (2003). Why is son preference so persistent in East and South Asia? A cross-country study of China, India and the Republic of Korea. J. Dev. Stud. 40, 153–187. doi: 10.1080/00220380412331293807

Deutsch, F. (2006). Filial piety, patrilineality, and China’s one-child policy. J. Fam. Issues 27, 366–389. doi: 10.1177/0192513x05283097

Dinisman, T., Andresen, S., Montserrat, C., Strózik, D., and Strózik, T. (2017). Family structure and family relationship from the child well-being perspective: findings from comparative analysis. Child. Youth Serv. Rev. 80, 105–115. doi: 10.1016/j.childyouth.2017.06.064

Dmitrieva, J., Chen, C., Greenberger, E., and Gil-Rivas, V. (2004). Family relationships and adolescent psychosocial outcomes: converging findings from Eastern and Western cultures. J. Res. Adolesc. 14, 425–447. doi: 10.1111/j.1532-7795.2004.00081.x

Downey, D., and Condron, D. (2004). Playing well with others in kindergarten: the benefit of siblings at home. J. Marr. Fam. 66, 333–350. doi: 10.1111/j.1741-3737.2004.00024.x

Downey, D. B. (1995). When bigger is not better: family size, parental resources, and children’s educational performance. Am. Sociol. Rev. 60, 746–761. doi: 10.2307/2096320

Falbo, T. (2012). Only children: an updated review. J. Individ. Psychol. 68, 38–49.

Falbo, T. (2018). Evaluations of the behavioral attributes of only children in Beijing, China: moderating effects of gender and the one-child policy. Heliyon 4:e00607. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2018.e00607

Falbo, T., and Hooper, S. Y. (2015). China’s only children and psychopathology: a quantitative synthesis. Am. J. Orthopsychiatry 85, 259–274. doi: 10.1037/ort0000058

Falbo, T., and Polit, D. F. (1986). Quantitative review of the only child literature: RESEARCH evidence and theory development. Psychol. Bull. 100, 176–189. doi: 10.1037/0033-2909.100.2.176

Falbo, T., and Poston, D. L. Jr. (1993). The academic, personality, and physical outcomes of only children in China. Child Dev. 64, 18–35. doi: 10.2307/1131435

Fenton, N. (1928). The only child. J. Genetic Psychol. 35, 546–556.

Fong, V. (2002). China’s one-child policy and the empowerment of urban daughters. Am. Anthropol. 104, 1098–1109. doi: 10.1525/aa.2002.104.4.1098

Fong, V. L. (2004). Only Hope: Coming of Age under China’s One-child Policy. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Fuligni, A., and Zhang, W. (2004). Attitudes toward family obligation among adolescents in contemporary urban and rural China. Child Dev. 75, 180–192. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2004.00662.x

Gibbs, B., Workman, J., and Downey, D. (2016). The (conditional) resource dilution model: State-and community-level modifications. Demography 53, 723–748. doi: 10.1007/s13524-016-0471-0

Goh, E., and Kuczynski, L. (2010). Only children and their coalition of parents: considering grandparents and parents as joint caregivers in urban Xiamen, China. Asian J. Soc. Psychol. 13, 221–231. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-839x.2010.01314.x

Gruijters, R. (2018). Daughters’ and sons’ remittances in rural China: findings from a national survey. J. Fam. Issues 39, 2911–2934. doi: 10.1177/0192513x18755196

Guo, J., Lin, S., and Guo, Y. (2018). Sex, birth order, and creativity in the context of China’s one-child policy and son preference. Creativity Res. J. 30, 361–369.

Guo, Y., Song, Y., and Chen, Q. (2019). Impacts of education policies on intergenerational education mobility in China. China Econ. Rev. 55, 124–142. doi: 10.1016/j.chieco.2019.03.011

Guo, Y., Zhang, J., and Zhang, N. (2015). Character strengths and their influencing factors among nursing students in Changsha, China: the only-child versus non-only-child. Arch. Psychiatric Nurs. 29, 365–371. doi: 10.1016/j.apnu.2015.06.008

Haan, M. (2010). Birth order, family size and educational attainment. Econ. Educ. Rev. 29, 576–588. doi: 10.1016/j.econedurev.2009.10.012

Hair, E. C., Moore, K. A., Garrett, S. B., Ling, T., and Cleveland, K. (2008). The continued importance of quality parent–adolescent relationships during late adolescence. J. Res. Adolesc. 18, 187–200. doi: 10.1111/j.1532-7795.2008.00556.x

Hao, Y., and Feng, X. (2002). The influence of parent–child relations on the growth of the only child. (in Chinese). J. Huazhong Univ. Sci. Technol. (Social Sciences) 16, 109–112.

Hillier, S. (1988). Women and population control in China: issues of sexuality, power and control. Feminist Rev. 29, 101–113. doi: 10.2307/1395152

Huang, G., and Gove, M. (2015). Asian parenting styles and academic achievement: views from eastern and western perspectives. Education 135, 389–397.

Jiang, Q., Li, S., and Feldman, M. W. (2012). China’s missing girls in the three decades from 1980 to 2010. Asian Women 28, 53–73.

Jiang, Q., and Liu, Y. (2016). Low fertility and concurrent birth control policy in China. Hist. Fam. 21, 551–577. doi: 10.1080/1081602X.2016.1213179

Jiao, S., Ji, G., and Jing, Q. (1996). Cognitive development of Chinese urban only children and children with siblings. Child Dev. 67, 387–395. doi: 10.2307/1131821

Lee, M. H. (2012). The one-child policy and gender equality in education in China: evidence from household data. J. Fam. Econ. Issues 33, 41–52. doi: 10.1007/s10834-011-9277-9

Levin, K. A., Dallago, L., and Currie, C. (2012). The association between adolescent life satisfaction, family structure, family affluence and gender differences in parent–child communication. Soc. Indicators Res. 106, 287–305. doi: 10.1007/s11205-011-9804-y

Lewis, M., and Feiring, C. (1982). Some American Families at Dinner. In Families as Learning Environments for Children. Boston, MA: Springer, 115–145.

Li, C., Jiang, S., Fan, X., and Zhang, Q. (2018). Exploring the impact of marital relationship on the mental health of children: does parent–child relationship matter? J. Health Psychol. 25, 1669–1680. doi: 10.1177/1359105318769348

Li, Y., Liu, L., Lv, Y., Xu, L., Wang, Y., and Huntsinger, C. S. (2015). Mother–child and teacher–child relationships and their influences on Chinese only and non-only children’s early social behaviors: the moderator role of urban–rural status. Child. Youth Serv. Rev. 51, 108–116. doi: 10.1016/j.childyouth.2015.01.023

Liu, F. (2006). Boys as only-children and girls as only-children—parental gendered expectations of the only-child in the nuclear Chinese family in present-day China. Gender Educ. 18, 491–505. doi: 10.1080/09540250600881626

Liu, R. X. (2020). The relative effects of physical and verbal discipline and gender variations on adolescents’ bonds to parents: a case of urban China. J. Fam. Stud. 1–22. doi: 10.1080/13229400.2020.1744471

Liu, R. X., Lin, W., and Chen, Z. (2010). School performance, peer association, psychological and behavioral adjustments: a comparison between Chinese adolescents with and without siblings. J. Adolesc. 33, 411–417. doi: 10.1016/j.adolescence.2009.07.007

Loyalka, P., Liu, C., Song, Y., Yi, H., Huang, X., Wei, J., et al. (2013). Can information and counseling help students from poor rural areas go to high school? Evidence from China. J. Comp. Econ. 41, 1012–1025. doi: 10.1016/j.jce.2013.06.004

Lu, H., and Chang, L. (2013). Parenting and socialization of only children in urban China: An example of authoritative parenting. J. Genetic Psychol. 174, 335–343. doi: 10.1080/00221325.2012.681325

Ma, L., Gao, L., Chiu, D. T., Ding, Y., Wang, W., and Wang, Y. (2020). Depressive symptoms prevalence, associated family factors, and gender differences: a national cohort study of middle school students in China. J. Affect. Disord. 274, 545–552. doi: 10.1016/j.jad.2020.05.128

Mancillas, A. (2006). Challenging the stereotypes about only children: a review of the literature and implications for practice. J. Counsel. Dev. 84, 268–275. doi: 10.1002/j.1556-6678.2006.tb00405.x

Mellor, S. (1990). How do only children differ from other children? J. Genetic Psychol. 151, 221–230. doi: 10.1080/00221325.1990.9914656

MEPRC (Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China) (2019). Promotion Ratio of Graduates of Regular School by Level. Available online at: http://www.moe.gov.cn/s78/A03/moe_560/jytjsj_2019/qg/202006/t20200611_464791.html (accessed December 16, 2020).

Ohannessian, C. M. (2012). Parental problem drinking and adolescent psychosocial adjustment: the mediating role of adolescent–parent communication. J. Res. Adolesc. 22, 498–511. doi: 10.1111/j.1532-7795.2012.00791.x

Piotrowski, M., and Tong, Y. (2016). Education and fertility decline in China during transitional times: a cohort approach. Soc. Sci. Res. 55, 94–110. doi: 10.1016/j.ssresearch.2015.10.001

Polit, D. F., and Falbo, T. (1987). Only children and personality development: a quantitative review. J. Marr. Fam. 49, 309–325. doi: 10.2307/352302

Polit, D. F., and Falbo, T. (1988). The intellectual achievement of only children. J. Biosoc. Sci. 20, 275–285. doi: 10.1017/s0021932000006611

Poston, D. L. Jr., and Falbo, T. (1990). Academic performance and personality traits of Chinese children: “Onlies” versus others. Am. J. Sociol. 96, 433–451. doi: 10.1086/229535

Pritchett, R., Kemp, J., Wilson, P., Minnis, H., Bryce, G., and Gillberg, C. (2011). Quick, simple measures of family relationships for use in clinical practice and research. A systematic review. Family Pract. 28, 172–187. doi: 10.1093/fampra/cmq080

Qian, Y., and Jin, Y. (2018). Women’s fertility autonomy in urban China: the role of couple dynamics under the universal two-child policy. Chin. Sociol. Rev. 50, 275–309. doi: 10.1080/21620555.2018.1428895

Raley, S., and Bianchi, S. (2006). Sons, daughters, and family processes: does gender of children matter? Annu. Rev. Sociol. 32, 401–421. doi: 10.1146/annurev.soc.32.061604.123106

Raudino, A., Fergusson, D. M., and Horwood, L. J. (2013). The quality of parent/child relationships in adolescence is associated with poor adult psychosocial adjustment. J. Adolesc. 36, 331–340. doi: 10.1016/j.adolescence.2012.12.002

Roberts, L. C., and Blanton, P. W. (2001). “I always knew mom and dad loved me best”: experiences of only children. J. Individ. Psychol. 57, 125–140.

Ruhl, H., Dolan, E. A., and Buhrmester, D. (2015). Adolescent attachment trajectories with mothers and fathers: the importance of parent–child relationship experiences and gender. J. Res. Adolesc. 25, 427–442. doi: 10.1111/jora.12144

Russell, A., and Saebel, J. (1997). Mother–son, mother–daughter, father–son, and father–daughter: are they distinct relationships? Dev. Rev. 17, 111–147. doi: 10.1006/drev.1996.0431

Shao, Y., Yao, X., Li, Y., and Huang, Z. (2013). Personality and life satisfaction in China: the birth order effect under the influence of national policy. Pers. Individ. Differ. 54, 536–541. doi: 10.1016/j.paid.2012.11.001

Sharma, N., and Vaid, S. (2005). Role of parents in the social development of adolescents: a comparison of low and middle socio-economic status. J. Hum. Ecol. 18, 109–115. doi: 10.1080/09709274.2005.11905817

Shu, X. (2004). Education and gender egalitarianism: the case of China. Sociol. Educ. 77, 311–336. doi: 10.1177/003804070407700403

Sulloway, F. J. (1996). Born to Rebel: Birth Order, Family Dynamics, and Creative Lives. New York, NY: Pantheon.

Sun, R. (2002). Old age support in contemporary urban china from both parents’ and children’s perspectives. Res. Aging 24, 337–359. doi: 10.1177/0164027502243003

Sun, Y. (2011). Parenting practices and Chinese singleton adults. Ethnology 50, 333–350.

Tsui, M., and Rich, L. (2002). The only child and educational opportunity for girls in urban China. Gender Soc. 16, 74–92. doi: 10.1177/0891243202016001005

Videon, T. M. (2005). Parent-child relations and children’s psychological well-being: do dads matter? J. Fam. Issues 26, 55–78. doi: 10.1177/0192513x04270262

Wang, G. (2013). Only-child-death’ family and its developing trends under the current family planning policy (in Chinese). Chin. J. Population Sci. 33, 57–65.

Wang, W., Zhang, J., Hennessy, D. A., and Yin, W. (2020). Do only-children communicate better than non-only children? A study of medical students in China. J. Comp. Fam. Stud. 51, 84–109. doi: 10.3138/jcfs.51.1.005

Wei, W., Wu, Y., Lv, B., Zhou, H., Han, X., Liu, Z., et al. (2016). The relationship between parental involvement and elementary students’ academic achievement in China: One-only children vs. children with siblings. J. Comp. Fam. Stud. 47, 483–500. doi: 10.3138/jcfs.47.4.483

Weng, Q., Gao, X., He, H., and Li, S. (2019). Family size, birth order and educational attainment: evidence from China. China Econ. Rev. 57, 101346. doi: 10.1016/j.chieco.2019.101346

Wu, Y. (2015). “The examination system in China: the case of Zhongkao mathematics,” in Proceedings of the Selected Regular Lectures from the 12th International Congress on Mathematical Education (Cham: Springer), 897–914. doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-17187-6_50

Xie, Y. (2013). Gender and Family in Contemporary China (No. 13-808). PSC Research Report.

Xie, Y., and Zhu, H. (2009). Do sons or daughters give more money to parents in urban China? J. Marr. Fam. 71, 174–186.

Xu, Y., Xu, D., Simpkins, S., and Warschauer, M. (2019). Does it matter which parent is absent? Labor migration, parenting, and adolescent development in China. J. Child Fam. Stud. 28, 1635–1649. doi: 10.1007/s10826-019-01382-z

Ye, H., and Wu, X. (2011). Fertility decline and the trend in educational gender inequality in China. ( In Chinese ). Sociol. Stud. 5, 153–177.

Yoo, J. (2020). Relationships between Korean parents’ marital satisfaction, parental satisfaction, and parent–child relationship quality. J. Soc. Pers. Relationships 37:026540752092146. doi: 10.1177/0265407520921462

Zhang, X. (2012). The effects of parental education and family income on mother–child relationships, father–child relationships, and family environments in the People’s Republic of China. Fam. Process 51, 483–497. doi: 10.1111/j.1545-5300.2011.01380.x

Zheng, L. (2015). Sibling sex composition, intrahousehold resource allocation, and educational attainment in China. J. Chin. Sociol. 2:2.

Keywords : only children, sibship size, birth order, children’s gender, parent–child relationship, China

Citation: Liu Y and Jiang Q (2021) Who Benefits From Being an Only Child? A Study of Parent–Child Relationship Among Chinese Junior High School Students. Front. Psychol. 11:608995. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.608995

Received: 22 September 2020; Accepted: 07 December 2020; Published: 08 January 2021.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2021 Liu and Jiang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Quanbao Jiang, [email protected]

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer.

To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to  upgrade your browser .

Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link.

• We're Hiring!
• Help Center

Lived Experiences of an Only Child

Birth ranking has been used to describe the personality of the eldest, middle and the youngest child, and how they act the way they do because of the birth order thatthey were born into. This is not the case for an only child. An onlychild’s personality is said to be more complicated compared to those with siblings.Hence, this phenomenological study aimed to understand the self-perception, livedexperiences, issues, and challenges of an only child. Eight participants (five malesand three females) ranging from 15-21 years old were chosen through purposiveand snowball sampling techniques. One-on-one interviews were conductedutilizing a set of semi-structured self-made interview questions, and then the datawere recorded, transcribed, and analyzed through thematic analysis. Six themesemerged for an only child’slived experiences, namely: academically contented,positive interpersonal relationship, emotionally satisfied, inclined to sports, lack ofspiritual convictions, and feels compensate...

Related Papers

Jaime Chandra

The topic was undertaken to explore the personality dimensions of adults who experienced childhood as an only child. For decades, popular opinion and research have negatively portrayed this particular birth order, leaving only children unfairly stigmatized as selfish, spoiled, and problematic. Contemporary empirical data establishes positive advantages to the birth order position and no greater occurrence of negative features than their counterparts with siblings. This paper summarizes many academic articles exploring various facets of human existence, some directly related to only children and some more targeted to birth order in general. Topics covered include multidimensional perfectionism, relationship trends, political leadership, Type A tendencies, different types of onlies, cross-cultural data, parental interaction, and real life experiences of only children. In this paper, the data collected serves to generalize expected behaviors, trends, and adult implications of belonging...

Caroline josh Fletcher

Ruut Veenhoven

ABSTRACT< br/> Being an only child is generally considered to be a disadvantage. Absence of siblings is thought to involve the deprivation of critical learning experiences, while the exclusive attention of parents is said to result in overindulgence and overprotection. According to such beliefs, only children develop into selfish, maladjusted and unhappy adults. Various empirical studies have contradicted these beliefs, at least where American adults are concerned.

Psychological Bulletin

Denise Polit

International journal of Indian psychology

International Journal of Indian Psychology

Nowadays in India, a social and family structure is changing rapidly. Society is shifting from its traditional joint family structure to nuclear families. In last few years, it is observed that couples prefer to keep their family smaller and many of them even prefer to have only one child. The current study tries to explore the effect of being single or having a sibling on the personality of children. Following the OCEAN model of personality, NEO-FFI was administered on 200 college students. 50 girls and 50 boys without a sibling and 50 girls and 50 boys with one sibling were selected from senior colleges in Pune city. By using ‘t’ test the mean differences were statistically computed. Results showed that there are no significant differences between only children and children with a sibling on all five factors of personality (Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism).

International Journal of Advanced Research

Noemi Formaran

Child abuse research in South Africa

Issie Jacobs

The aim of this qualitative case study was to explore and describe the experience of an only-child adolescent&#39;s lived experience of parental divorce. Gestalt field and phenomenological theory in conjunction with current literature provided an overview of the theoretical underpinnings pertaining to the study. Data was obtained and thematically analysed by means of two one-on-one, in depth interviews. Findings showed that the participant experienced feelings associated with grief, bereavement and pressure due to being an only-child. These feelings included anger towards a loss of childhood, fear of losing loved ones and repeated patterns of loss in the adolescent&#39;s life, which all added to a loss of identity and control. Loneliness and a longing for a sibling to share this experience with were significantly present. The participant suffered from stress due to the unrealistic expectations from the parents as divorce seemed to have been their main focus. To cope with this pressu...

Winnie Jose

RELATED PAPERS

Enfermedades Infecciosas y Microbiología Clínica

Marcelo Corti

Atmospheric Environment

Xinbin Feng

fernanda macrae

Shafikul Islam

PLoS genetics

Daryl Waggott

ali tahvili

Forensic science international. Genetics

Veronika Lipphardt

sultani slim

ahmad cahyo

JURNAL REKAYASA DAN MANAJEMEN AGROINDUSTRI

Prof. Dr. Ir. G.P. Ganda Putra, MP.

Pediatric Health, Medicine and Therapeutics

md. amanur rahman

Journal of Oral Science

Rosnah Zain

Chintan Patel

Anti-Inflammatory &amp; Anti-Allergy Agents in Medicinal Chemistry

amina ahamed

European Journal of Neuroscience

Federica Pimpinelli

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL ENGINEERING

MUKESH KUMAR Garg

Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money

Carlos Ulibarri

Indian Journal of Psychiatry

Rohan Mendonsa

Amazônia: Revista de Educação em Ciências e Matemáticas

Franck Bellemain

Oktay Demirdağ

Computer Vision and Image Understanding

JORGE LUIS CASTANEDA MARTINEZ

Religionsvidenskabelig Skriftrække

Marianne Schleicher

Maria Jose Roibon

Ideas Y Valores

José Luis vargas mena

dwiana pujiasih

American Journal of Plant Sciences

See More Documents Like This

RELATED TOPICS

•   We're Hiring!
•   Help Center
• Find new research papers in:
• Health Sciences
• Earth Sciences
• Cognitive Science
• Mathematics
• Computer Science
• Academia ©2024

Being only child is better than having siblings. Do you agree or disagree?

Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Writing9 with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

• Check your IELTS essay »
• Find essays with the same topic
• View collections of IELTS Writing Samples
• Show IELTS Writing Task 2 Topics

Some people say that the articular species of plants and animals. Others say that there are more important main environmental problem of our time is the loss of p environmental problems. Discuss both these views and give your own opinion. Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from nowledge or experience. Write at least 250 words.

Some people believe that key to healthy life is exercise. some believe that food is the key. discuss both sides and give your opinion, the government should ban smoking in all public places, even though this would restrict some other people's freedoms., ome countries are struggling with an increase in the rate of crime. many people think that having more police on the streets is the only way to reduce crimes. to what extent do you agree or disagree, some people believe that there should be fixed punishment for each type of crime. others, however, argue that the circumstances of an individual crime, and the motivation for commiting it, should always be taken into account when deciding on the punishment. discuss both these views and give your own opinion.

The Zen Parent

Only Child Syndrome: What Being An Only Child Says About You

Posted: February 6, 2024 | Last updated: February 6, 2024

1. Sensitivity to Criticism

2. Self-reliance

3. Entitled

4. Maturity

5. High Academic Achievements

6. Perfectionism

7. Strong Parental Bonds

8. Difficulty with Peer Socialization

9. Leadership Skills

10. Coddled

11. Resourcefulness

12. High Expectations for Themselves and Others

13. Financial Stability

14. Comfort with Solitude

15. Adaptability

16. Pressure to Succeed

17. Innovative Thinking

18. Preference for Adult Approval

19. Social Selectivity

20. Appreciation for Privacy

More for you.

Illinois Democrat: Speaker Johnson ‘should not be punished for doing the right thing’ on Ukraine

'Joker' pairs up with Gaga as sequel hype hits CinemaCon

‘War on women': Marine veteran shares her experience on needing an abortion during service

3,273 Miles: A Look At The World's New 3rd Longest Airbus A320 Route

Seattle pastor claims newspaper canceled church's Easter service ads last minute after CEO objected

His 'funk is contagious.' This L.A. glassblower breaks the rules with his stunning vessels

13 Awesome Facts To Absolutely Liven Up A Boring Party

Irish castles and ancient Greek rites show culture's role in regional regeneration

UN nuclear watchdog's board sets emergency meeting after Zaporizhzhia attacks

Why were shadows left behind after the Hiroshima atomic bomb?

The little-known disaster paralysing both the US and Royal Navies

‘Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead' Review: A Remake That Remarkably Refashions Secondhand Goods

GOP squeezes Dems on Mayorkas: ‘I would not want to be them’

Inside the $5 billion floating theme park built on an offshore oil rig

These Are The World’s Best Nude Beaches

18 Unwritten Rules: What Not to Do in America

US Marine Corps Begins 'Comprehensive' Revamp of Retired Fighter Jets

Biden holds 4 point lead over Trump, Reuters/Ipsos poll shows

New 'Beetlejuice Beetlejuice' Footage Introduces Jenna Ortega's New Character

It was a popular national monument, until it was robbed to extinction

Understanding Childhood Trauma Can Help Us Be More Resilient

I n 2022, the World Health Organization estimated that 1 billion children were maltreated each year around the globe. Maltreatment such as neglect and abuse are types of adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs . But they often say little about how children respond, which can either be traumatic or resilient. Now, revolutionary new findings in the sciences help us understand how different dimensions of adversity can leave different signatures of trauma and how we can use this knowledge to help children recover and build resilience against future harms.

Consider Ethan and Kevin (their names are pseudonyms to protect their privacy), two children that I worked with as an educator and researcher of trauma in schools. Ethan was abandoned by his mother at birth and placed in an orphanage in Eastern Europe, his home for the next six years. He was deprived of the fundamental needs of safety, nutrition, and human contact. He had books, but there was no one to read to him. He had caretakers, but they rarely comforted him when he was upset.

Kevin, on the other hand, witnessed his father physically and emotionally abusing his mother for the first ten years of his life. Around his sixth birthday, Kevin directly experienced his father's abuse. For entertainment, and to teach him that life is tough, Dad put Kevin and his older sister Joani into the outdoor dog cage, threw food in, and forced them to compete for their nightly dinner. If they refused, he beat them until they entered the dinner arena.

Ethan and Kevin were both traumatized by their maltreatment, but that doesn't capture what was happening inside of them. Ethan had no motivation, was numb to rewards, struggled with school and couldn't maintain social relationships. Kevin was an emotional maelstrom, frightened, hypervigilant, running away from unfamiliar men and hurting himself when he heard noises. Ethan and Kevin presented different traumatic responses or “signatures”—unique identifiers of the mental distortions created by their adverse experiences. Identifying these traumatic signatures enables caretakers, teachers, doctors, and counselors to sculpt a path to resilience that is specific to the child's harms and needs and gives them the best hope for recovery, whether in childhood or later in life.

Read More: How Traumatized Children See the World, According to Their Drawings

The idea of traumatic signatures is only a few years old , but the scientific evidence leading to it is not. We have known for decades that different environmental experiences shape development, including how and when our emotions, thoughts, and actions mature. When the environment is harsh and unpredictable, threatening survival, the timing of development tends to speed up, leading to individuals who mature quickly—recognizing and responding appropriately to danger as youngsters. In contrast, when the environment is impoverished, with individuals deprived of essential experiences and resources, development tends to slow down, resulting in delays in the attainment of independence, dedicated social roles, and sexual behavior.

Ethan and Kevin, like millions of other children, experienced two of the core types of ACEs — deprivation and abuse, respectively — during different time periods of development. These differences in experience shaped their traumatic signatures.

Deprivation is typified by a delay in the development of the brain’s executive functions —attention, short-term working memory, self-regulation, and planning. The executive functions form the bedrock to all learning and decision-making, but they are also essential in supporting more specialized cognitive functions such as language, social thinking, math, music, and morality. Children with weak executive functions fare poorly in school, and are socially and physically unhealthy. Such was Ethan’s traumatic response.

Abuse is characterized by warp speed development of a nervous system that detects threats, accompanied by hypervigilance, emotional turbulence, and out of control behavior. The root cause is a hyperactive amygdala, a brain region that plays an essential role in emotional processing, and its connection to a frontal lobe region that controls our feelings, thoughts, and actions. This constellation of changes to the nervous system leaves the child in a heightened state of fear, either fleeing or fighting to cope with an unsafe world . Such was Kevin's traumatic response.

The signatures penned by these types of adversity are further modified by their timing. In studies of orphans living in austere, institutionalized settings — such as the orphanage that Ethan grew up in—those deprived of essential experiences for more than the first few years of life showed deficits in executive functioning, social relationships, and attachment. In contrast, orphans who were placed in foster care by their second birthday, largely recovered from their deprivation in the years that followed. Children who are abused earlier in life , typically before puberty—such as Kevin—show greater emotional dysregulation, weaker control over their thoughts and actions, and more rapid biological aging.

Read More: How Childhood Trauma Can Cause Premature Aging

Different types of adversity, including different combinations, pen different signatures. But ultimately, they also define how we help children recover and sculpt their resilience. Each child's genetic architecture positions them somewhere on a spectrum of responses to adversity that runs from vulnerable to resilient . Those who land on the resilient end are handed greater immunity to adversity because of stronger executive functions that tamp down emotions and maintain focused attention. Those who land on the vulnerable end are handed greater sensitivity to adversity, dominated by emotional turbulence and inflamed autoimmune systems that heighten illness . Environmental experiences can displace individuals onto different sections of this spectrum, either enhancing their resilience or magnifying their vulnerability.

At age six, Ethan's tenure of deprivation ended and a rich life of loving care started with Julie, his adoring adoptive mother. At age 10, Kevin's father was incarcerated and his parents divorced, thereby ending his tenure of exposure to abuse and starting a more promising life with his mother Kate who desperately tried to provide for him despite her own struggles with mental health. Ethan and Kevin were both on Individualized Education Plans (IEPs) that documented their disabilities and guided the work carried out in their schools. Both of their schools were trauma-informed, meaning that they adhered to the 4Rs : r ealizing that traumatic experiences are common, r ecognizing that traumatic experiences are associated with specific symptoms or signatures, r esponding to a child's trauma by integrating knowledge of what happened with what can be done to help, and r esisting re-traumatizing both students and staff. Both schools were also aware of Ethan's and Kevin's life experiences and recognized that they would require different approaches for aiding recovery and building resilience.

Ethan, like other children who have been deprived of essential experiences in the early years of their lives, required an approach that reassured him of receiving unwavering, predictable care while providing strategies to enhance his ability to learn and develop healthy relationships. His care included access to a visual schedule that showed the timing of activities, including when meals and snacks were provided. Predictable access to meals and snacks, both at home and in school, rapidly helped reduce his obsession and hoarding of food. The unwavering support provided by Julie as well as the school staff, eventually melted away Ethan's distrust of others, enabling healthy relationships to grow. The visual schedule helped reduce the load on his short- term working memory, while helping him prepare and plan for transitions between activities. Stubbornly resistant to change, however, was Ethan’s capacity to associate or link actions with consequences. For Ethan, as for other children who have been severely deprived of experiences early in life, associative learning was heavily compromised, awaiting the addition of new tools to the trauma-informed toolkit.

Kevin’s signature of abuse was initially treated by a psychiatrist with Tenex—a medication for aggression, impulsivity, and hyperactivity—along with cognitive behavioral therapy to help him find alternative ways of thinking about and coping with his trauma. His teachers intervened further, providing him with frequent breaks to manage his frustration and burn off some energy. These approaches reduced Kevin’s outbursts and violent attacks on peers and staff, but he was still highly impulsive and fidgety. Kevin’s team decided to start him on neurofeedback , a method that enabled him to consciously modify the pattern of brain activation, shifting toward greater calm, focus, and control over his emotions. Eventually, Kevin developed good friends, healthy relationships with teachers, and an after-school job where he was learning to be a car mechanic. He also learned to trust other men, including me, one of his teachers, who deeply cared about him and cheered on his successes.

Ethan and Kevin walked off their landscapes of harm and onto paths of hope, equipped with skills to manage future adversity. Both lucked out with relatively resilient genetic architectures that were joined by nurturing environments, ones filled with people who cared for them. Many other children, perhaps the majority of the 1 billion who are maltreated each year, are less fortunate, more vulnerable by nature and nurture. While it is highly unlikely that we will ever flatten the landscape of harm, we can do far more to nurture recovery and build resilience if we recognize how traumatic signatures unfold—and how to create action plans to work through them.

More Must-Reads From TIME

• Exclusive: Google Workers Revolt Over $1.2 Billion Contract With Israel
• Stop Looking for Your Forever Home
• Jane Fonda Champions Climate Action for Every Generation
• Hormonal Birth Control Doesn’t Deserve Its Bad Reputation
• The Sympathizer Counters 50 Years of Hollywood Vietnam War Narratives
• Essay: The Relentless Cost of Chronic Diseases
• The Best TV Shows to Watch on Peacock
• Want Weekly Recs on What to Watch, Read, and More? Sign Up for Worth Your Time

Contact us at [email protected]

You May Also Like

• United Kingdom

Healing From Parentification As A First-Gen Latina

Recovering from parentification hasn’t been easy. but it saved me.

"Parentification is 'the experience of a child being given responsibilities that are beyond their developmental level.'"

"Being a child of immigrant parents feels like being part of a club I never signed up for. I feel an unspoken kinship to other children of immigrants due to our shared experiences of aiding our parents as they navigate the culture and customs of a new country."

"I felt a lot was riding on my completing certain tasks successfully. If I misinterpreted reading a bill, it could result in my parents paying a financial penalty we couldn’t afford. Not properly preparing my mom for her citizenship test could result in her not staying in the country. The stakes felt high."

"I over-empathize with people to the point that I neglect my own feelings. But my empathy has also allowed me to be an active listener, be fully present with people, and cultivate curiosity rather than judgment. For every negative, there has been a positive way parentification has manifested in my adulthood. Both can be true at the same time." 

"To let go of that anger, I had to forgive my parents. And to forgive, I needed to dive deeply into my empathy for them as whole humans and not just as my parents."

"Seeing the disappointment in her eyes never gets easy, but if I truly love myself, I can no longer betray myself for the sake of others. It's part of having self-compassion for myself."

More from Relationships

R29 original series.

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

Guest Essay

The Supreme Court Got It Wrong: Abortion Is Not Settled Law

By Melissa Murray and Kate Shaw

Ms. Murray is a law professor at New York University. Ms. Shaw is a contributing Opinion writer.

In his majority opinion in the case overturning Roe v. Wade, Justice Samuel Alito insisted that the high court was finally settling the vexed abortion debate by returning the “authority to regulate abortion” to the “people and their elected representatives.”

Despite these assurances, less than two years after Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, abortion is back at the Supreme Court. In the next month, the justices will hear arguments in two high-stakes cases that may shape the future of access to medication abortion and to lifesaving care for pregnancy emergencies. These cases make clear that Dobbs did not settle the question of abortion in America — instead, it generated a new slate of questions. One of those questions involves the interaction of existing legal rules with the concept of fetal personhood — the view, held by many in the anti-abortion movement, that a fetus is a person entitled to the same rights and protections as any other person.

The first case , scheduled for argument on Tuesday, F.D.A. v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, is a challenge to the Food and Drug Administration’s protocols for approving and regulating mifepristone, one of the two drugs used for medication abortions. An anti-abortion physicians’ group argues that the F.D.A. acted unlawfully when it relaxed existing restrictions on the use and distribution of mifepristone in 2016 and 2021. In 2016, the agency implemented changes that allowed the use of mifepristone up to 10 weeks of pregnancy, rather than seven; reduced the number of required in-person visits for dispensing the drug from three to one; and allowed the drug to be prescribed by individuals like nurse practitioners. In 2021, it eliminated the in-person visit requirement, clearing the way for the drug to be dispensed by mail. The physicians’ group has urged the court to throw out those regulations and reinstate the previous, more restrictive regulations surrounding the drug — a ruling that could affect access to the drug in every state, regardless of the state’s abortion politics.

The second case, scheduled for argument on April 24, involves the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (known by doctors and health policymakers as EMTALA ), which requires federally funded hospitals to provide patients, including pregnant patients, with stabilizing care or transfer to a hospital that can provide such care. At issue is the law’s interaction with state laws that severely restrict abortion, like an Idaho law that bans abortion except in cases of rape or incest and circumstances where abortion is “necessary to prevent the death of the pregnant woman.”

Although the Idaho law limits the provision of abortion care to circumstances where death is imminent, the federal government argues that under EMTALA and basic principles of federal supremacy, pregnant patients experiencing emergencies at federally funded hospitals in Idaho are entitled to abortion care, even if they are not in danger of imminent death.

These cases may be framed in the technical jargon of administrative law and federal pre-emption doctrine, but both cases involve incredibly high-stakes issues for the lives and health of pregnant persons — and offer the court an opportunity to shape the landscape of abortion access in the post-Roe era.

These two cases may also give the court a chance to seed new ground for fetal personhood. Woven throughout both cases are arguments that gesture toward the view that a fetus is a person.

If that is the case, the legal rules that would typically hold sway in these cases might not apply. If these questions must account for the rights and entitlements of the fetus, the entire calculus is upended.

In this new scenario, the issue is not simply whether EMTALA’s protections for pregnant patients pre-empt Idaho’s abortion ban, but rather which set of interests — the patient’s or the fetus’s — should be prioritized in the contest between state and federal law. Likewise, the analysis of F.D.A. regulatory protocols is entirely different if one of the arguments is that the drug to be regulated may be used to end a life.

Neither case presents the justices with a clear opportunity to endorse the notion of fetal personhood — but such claims are lurking beneath the surface. The Idaho abortion ban is called the Defense of Life Act, and in its first bill introduced in 2024, the Idaho Legislature proposed replacing the term “fetus” with “preborn child” in existing Idaho law. In its briefs before the court, Idaho continues to beat the drum of fetal personhood, insisting that EMTALA protects the unborn — rather than pregnant women who need abortions during health emergencies.

According to the state, nothing in EMTALA imposes an obligation to provide stabilizing abortion care for pregnant women. Rather, the law “actually requires stabilizing treatment for the unborn children of pregnant women.” In the mifepristone case, advocates referred to fetuses as “unborn children,” while the district judge in Texas who invalidated F.D.A. approval of the drug described it as one that “starves the unborn human until death.”

Fetal personhood language is in ascent throughout the country. In a recent decision , the Alabama Supreme Court allowed a wrongful-death suit for the destruction of frozen embryos intended for in vitro fertilization, or I.V.F. — embryos that the court characterized as “extrauterine children.”

Less discussed but as worrisome is a recent oral argument at the Florida Supreme Court concerning a proposed ballot initiative intended to enshrine a right to reproductive freedom in the state’s Constitution. In considering the proposed initiative, the chief justice of the state Supreme Court repeatedly peppered Nathan Forrester, the senior deputy solicitor general who was representing the state, with questions about whether the state recognized the fetus as a person under the Florida Constitution. The point was plain: If the fetus was a person, then the proposed ballot initiative, and its protections for reproductive rights, would change the fetus’s rights under the law, raising constitutional questions.

As these cases make clear, the drive toward fetal personhood goes beyond simply recasting abortion as homicide. If the fetus is a person, any act that involves reproduction may implicate fetal rights. Fetal personhood thus has strong potential to raise questions about access to abortion, contraception and various forms of assisted reproductive technology, including I.V.F.

In response to the shifting landscape of reproductive rights, President Biden has pledged to “restore Roe v. Wade as the law of the land.” Roe and its successor, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, were far from perfect; they afforded states significant leeway to impose onerous restrictions on abortion, making meaningful access an empty promise for many women and families of limited means. But the two decisions reflected a constitutional vision that, at least in theory, protected the liberty to make certain intimate choices — including choices surrounding if, when and how to become a parent.

Under the logic of Roe and Casey, the enforceability of EMTALA, the F.D.A.’s power to regulate mifepristone and access to I.V.F. weren’t in question. But in the post-Dobbs landscape, all bets are off. We no longer live in a world in which a shared conception of constitutional liberty makes a ban on I.V.F. or certain forms of contraception beyond the pale.

Melissa Murray, a law professor at New York University and a host of the Supreme Court podcast “ Strict Scrutiny ,” is a co-author of “ The Trump Indictments : The Historic Charging Documents With Commentary.”

Kate Shaw is a contributing Opinion writer, a professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School and a host of the Supreme Court podcast “Strict Scrutiny.” She served as a law clerk to Justice John Paul Stevens and Judge Richard Posner.

The one thing you'll want to do is the only thing not to do while driving during solar eclipse

The 2024 solar eclipse will shroud much of the United States in darkness on Monday, leaving many people to wonder: Is it safe to drive during the celestial event?

We know Americans should wear certified eclipse glasses when looking directly at the eclipse. And millions of Americans are in the eclipse's path of totality , the moment that occurs when the moon completely blocks the sun's light from reaching us. During totality, the eclipse can be viewed with the naked eye.

The eclipse will begin in Texas at 1:27 p.m. CDT and end in Maine at 3:35 p.m. EDT, but the exact time of the eclipse varies by where you are in its path. If you plan to drive during this time, you may not only have to contend with traffic , but need to take steps to stay safe.

Here's what to know about driving during the eclipse.

Where to get free solar eclipse glasses: Libraries, Warby Parker and more giving glasses away

Is it safe to drive during an eclipse?

It's safe to drive during an eclipse as long as you don't look up at the sky. AAA is telling drivers to be focused on the road if they are operating a car during the total solar eclipse.

"Anyone operating a vehicle should not be attempting to look up at the sky during the eclipse – their eyes should be on the road," said Aixa Diaz, a spokeswoman from AAA.

The automobile insurance company is advising Americans who want to safely view the total eclipse to "find a safe place to park (not on the side of a road or highway) away from other traffic and then wear your eclipse glasses," Diaz said.

Do not wear eclipse glasses while driving

It should go without saying, but authorities are also reminding people to not drive while wearing eclipse glasses .

The Missouri and Texas departments of transportation are both advising drivers to not wear eclipse glasses during the natural phenomenon and to focus on the road.

"Do not wear eclipse glasses while driving," reads a list of safety tips from the Texas department. Thousands people are expected to drive to towns along the path of totality, including Dallas, ahead of the eclipse.

Several state transportation departments  released similar warnings  ahead of the 2017 total solar eclipse. Wyoming's, for example, warned people traveling to the state about how they wouldn't be able to see the road with solar eclipse glasses on.

"When the glasses are worn, a person shouldn’t be able to see anything except the solar eclipse, which is why it is unsafe for a person to wear them when driving," the warning reads.

"Eclipse glasses are for eclipse viewing, not driving. They shouldn’t be treated like normal sunglasses," Diaz said.

Defiant Crumbleys head to prison — 'Not once did they say ... they're not the victims'

In the end, their defiance did them in.

James and Jennifer Crumbley, the embattled parents of the Oxford school shooter who never publicly accepted accountability for their roles in the 2021 massacre, were both sentenced Tuesday to 10-15 years in prison for the deadly rampage that two juries and a judge concluded could have been prevented had the parents made different choices.

While both parents expressed remorse to the families for the loss of their children at the hands of the Crumbleys' son, the prosecutor and the victims' families argued that the Crumbleys did not do one crucial thing: admit they made a mistake.

“Not once did they say, ‘I wished I would have locked the gun up’ and acknowledge that they’re not the victims in this,” Steve St. Juliana, whose 14-year-old daughter Hana died in the shooting, said after a nearly three-hour sentencing hearing that included tears, heartache, anger and frustration.

The judge appeared exasperated as she schooled the Crumbleys on parenting and rejected all their requests for leniency before handing down her sentence. Each parent was convicted of four counts of involuntary manslaughter for failing to stop what two juries decided was a foreseeable consequence of their son's disturbing conduct. Ethan Crumbley, then 15, murdered four classmates and wounded seven other people at Oxford High School on Nov. 30, 2021. His father bought the murder weapon four days earlier as an early Christmas gift for the teen.

Those killed were Tate Myre, 16; Hana St. Juliana, 14; Madisyn Baldwin, 17, and Justin Shilling, 17.

"Parenting is a complex job," Oakland County Circuit Judge Cheryl Matthews said from the bench. "Parents are not expected to be psychic, but these convictions are not about poor parenting. These convictions confirm repeated acts or lack of acts that could have halted an oncoming runaway train, about repeatedly ignoring things that would make a reasonable person feel their hair on the back of their neck stand up."

The judge continued:

"Opportunity knocked over and over again, louder and louder, and was ignored. No one answered. And these two people should have, and sure didn’t," Matthews said.

At both trials, prosecutors argued the Crumbleys ignored a troubled son who was in distress and spiraling downward, but instead of getting him help, they bought him a gun.

'You glorified the use and possession of these weapons'

"Mr. Crumbley … Because of you there was unfettered access to a gun or guns as well as ammunition in your home. You characterized yourself as a martyr and threatened the well-being of the prosecutor," Matthews said, referring to comments that Crumbley made toward Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald in multiple jailhouse phone calls with a relative.

Matthews then turned her attention to the mother."Mrs. Crumbley, you glorified the use and possession of these weapons. Your attitude toward your son and his behaviors was dispassionate and apathetic .... your response to school staff after a 12-minute meeting was, 'Are we done here?' "

Matthews was referring to the pivotal meeting on the morning of the school shooting, when the Crumbleys were summoned to the counselor's office over a violent drawing their son had made of a gun, a human body bleeding, and the words, "The Thoughts won't stop. Help me." The meeting ended with the Crumbleys returning to their jobs and promising to get their son help within 48 hours. School officials concluded the boy was not a threat to himself or anyone else and let him return to class.

Two hours later, he fired his first shot.

James and Jennifer Crumbley are the first parents in America to be held criminally responsible for a school shooting by their child. Their son Ethan pleaded guilty to his crimes and is serving life in prison without parole.

After the parents' sentencing, Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald, who early on said this would be a challenging prosecution but that the facts of this rare case warranted charges, stressed that her office is not done trying to prevent gun violence in Oakland County.

“Don’t look away," she said. "These were tragic and awful deaths, what these families have gone through. And it is preventable. It is preventable — that is my message.”

It's a message she also hammered away at during both trials — and at the sentencing hearing.

"Help me. Blood everywhere. The world is dead," she said, referring to the shooter's writings on his math worksheet on the day of the shooting.

'They come here today and act like they're victims'

The Crumbleys saw those words, she said, and did nothing.

In pushing for a stiff sentence, McDonald argued there has been "no remorse or accountability" by the Crumbleys.

"Remorse does not sound like, ‘I feel really bad.’ … I’m sure they do," McDonald said, but added that's not the kind of remorse and accountability that the victims are looking for.

"What that looks like is, 'We messed up.  We should have done this and we didn’t, and we are very sorry' … and that has not happened."

Yet, she said, "They come here today and act like they're victims."

At the parents' sentencing hearing, the victims' families urged the judge to give the Crumbleys the maximum punishment of 15 years, significantly higher than the state's recommendation of 43-86 months.

'You took four beautiful children from this world'

Nicole Beausoleil, the mother of Madisyn Baldwin, was the first to speak, lambasting the Crumbleys over their parenting decisions and their behaviors since the shooting.

"The lack of compassion you have shown is disgusting … shaking your head during a verdict," as James Crumbley did, is the worst sign of disrespect "I have ever witnessed," Beausoleil said, blaming the parents for the loss of her beautiful daughter and the never-ending pain.

"You created all of this. You created your son's life. … You don't get to look away. … You failed as parents. The punishment that you face will never be enough," she said.

Step by step, the grieving mother took the Crumbleys through the countless painful days she has endured: the day she frantically searched for her daughter in the Meijer parking lot after the shooting, how she collapsed and couldn't talk after learning the girl had died, how she had to listen to her other daughter cry for nights on end over her sister's loss.

"From the moment she was born, I promised myself I would be there no matter what … I wouldn't miss a thing I would always protect her."

Then came the shooting.

" Nov. 30, 2021 … made me break my first promise. As her mom, I didn't protect her."

She also asked the shooter's mom to consider the following:

"While your son was hearing voices and asking for help, I was helping Madisyn pick out classes.

"When you were called to the school over his troubling drawing, I was planning an oil change for my daughter.

"When you were on the phone … trying to figure out where the gun was … I was on the phone with her father trying to figure out where she was.

"When you texted 'Ethan don't do it,' I was texting Madysin 'I love you. Please call Mom.

"When you found out about the lives lost that day, I was still waiting for my daughter in the parking lot.

"When you got a chance to speak with your son … When you asked him 'why' … I was waiting for the last bus that never came.

"While you were hiding, I was planning her funeral.

"I was forced to do the worst possible thing a parent could do. I was forced to say goodbye to my Madisyn."

Hana St. Juliana's sister: Instead of quality time, 'you gave him a gun'

Reina St. Juliana brought many in the courtroom to tears as she talked about losing her 14-year-old sister, Hana —how her little sister, best friend and better half would never see prom, graduation or even her 15th, 16th or 17th birthdays.

"I never got to say goodbye," Reina said. "Hana was only 14 … she took her last breath in a school she hadn't even been in for three months."

She looked at the Crumbleys and said: "The fact is, you did fail as a parent, Jennifer. Both of you … Instead of giving quality time … you gave him a gun."

"Your mistakes created our everlasting nightmare."

Steve St. Juliana, Hana's father, also lashed out at the Crumbleys.

“They chose to stay quiet, they chose to ignore the warning signs,” he said. “They continue to choose to blame everyone but themselves.”

The impact on him has been devastating, he said.

“Hana’s murder has destroyed a large portion of my soul," the father said. "… I remain a shell of the person I used to be.”

Justin Shilling's mother: 'If only they had taken him home'

Jill Soave, Justin Shilling’s mother, said her “trauma and devastation is hard to put into words.” She described Justin's achievements in school and said their family would have been celebrating his 20th birthday soon.

Instead, she is in court.

“The ripple effects of both James’ and Jennifer’s failures to act have devastated us all,” she said. “If only, your honor, they had taken their son to get counseling instead of buying a gun. … If only they had checked his backpack, if only they had taken him home or taken him to counseling instead of abandoning him at that school, I wouldn’t be standing here today.”

Justin's father also pleaded for justice, saying: “This is not normal. Living a life like this is not normal.”

“I just can’t get over the fact that this tragedy was completely avoidable,” Craig Shilling said. “They failed across the board … this type of blatant disregard is unacceptable.”

Tate Myre's father: 'It's time to learn from this'

Buck Myre, the father of Tate Myre, focused mostly on what believes should happen after the Crumbleys' sentencing.

“This is the low-hanging fruit,” Myre said. “Now it’s time to turn our focus to Oxford Schools, who played a role in this tragedy.”

He said he wants the government to investigate the shooting, the purchase of the gun and the response to the massacre.

“That’s when real change happens," Myre said. "When we look at something, evaluate it and apply lessons learned.”

No school officials have been charged in the shooting. Multiple civil suits have been filed against the school and various officials, alleging, among other things, that they put students in harm's way. But the lawsuits are on appeal as judges have held that the school is covered by governmental immunity.

Crumbleys address families and judge

James and Jennifer Crumbley also spoke at the hearing, and asked the judge to consider giving them time served for their sentences. Each parent has been jailed on $500,000 bond for almost 2½ years. The Crumbleys have long argued that they never saw any signs that their son would hurt himself or anyone else, or that he was mentally ill, and did not know of his plans to shoot up his school. They also maintain the gun at issue was not really a gift that their son could freely use, but was hidden in their bedroom armoire, unloaded in a gun case, and that the bullets were stored in a separate drawer.

James Crumbley appeared to be close to tears as he apologized to the families who lost their children.

“My heart is really broken for everyone involved,” he said. “ I understand my words are not going to bring any comfort. I understand that they are not going to relieve any pain, and quite frankly, they probably just don’t believe me," Crumbley said. "However, I really want the families of Madisyn Baldwin, Hana St. Juliana, Tate Myre and Justin Shilling to know how truly sorry I am and how devastated I was when I heard what happened to them."

"I have cried for you and the loss of your children more times than I can count."

The father said that if he’d known what was happening with his son, he would have done things differently, while his attorney said he could not have predicted what could have happened.

Crumbley also echoed Buck Myre's call for more transparency and investigation into the school district and officials’ actions surrounding the shooting.

“It is time that we all know the truth. We have been prohibited from telling the whole truth, the whole truth has not been told. I’m with you Mr. Myre, I want the whole truth,” Crumbley said.

As he spoke, some of the victims' families shook their heads.

Madisyn's mom didn't buy it, and said James Crumbley’s mentioning of holding the school accountable was another attempt to play the victim.

“If he wanted the truth," Beausoleil said after sentencing, "he would have been speaking the truth the whole time and had remorse the whole time.”

Craig Shilling echoed that, saying: “The fact that they didn’t show that level of remorse until the end — that half-baked attempt anyway — was too little too late.”

Jennifer Crumbley also addressed the victims' families, saying she has spent "countless nights" lamenting, praying for forgiveness — she told the prosecution "I have hated you" — and praying that "all the victims are in God's mercy and peace." 

"I sit here today to express my deepest sorrows to the victims' families," Jennifer Crumbley said, adding that the "gravity and weight that this has taken on my heart and soul" can never be measured and "nothing I can say will ease" the pain and heartache suffered by the victims' families.

'My husband and I used to say we had a perfect kid'

She also addressed her controversial testimony, during which she said, "I wouldn't have done anything differently." The comment was cited by the jury foreperson in her case and by Oxford High families as callous and showing her lack of remorse.

"I was horrified to learn that my answer had the effect" that it did, she said, explaining that her answer reflected what she knew at the time.

"This was not something I foresaw," Jennifer Crumbley said of the shooting. "With the benefit of hindsight, my answer would be drastically different."

Especially, she added, "if I thought my son was capable of crimes like these."

"The Ethan I knew was a good kid. My husband and I used to say we had a perfect kid … that's who I saw and thought I knew," she said.

Jennifer Crumbley also laid blame on the school, saying it failed to alert her about her son's troubling behavior on several occasions, and when it did summon her over a troubling drawing, "We were led to believe from school officials and Ethan as well that this was an isolated event," she said. "We were never asked to take him home that day."

Jennifer Crumbley suggested that what happened to her and her husband could happen to any parent, attempting to refute the idea that she and James Crumbley were bad parents or missed warning signs.

“We were good parents,” she said. “We were the average family. Everything we strived for was to make sure our son had the best life we could give him. I know we did our best.”

She also urged the public to take away this message: "This could be any parent … your child can make any decision."

Not just with a gun, she said, but with a knife, a vehicle — and the parents could be held responsible.

But she has come to forgive the prosecutors over time, she said, and continues to try to forgive herself for decisions she cannot change.

"To the victims and the families, I stand today not to ask for your forgiveness, but to express my sincere apologies for the pain that has been caused."

"Alone, I grieve … I will be in my own internal prison for the rest of my life."

Contact Tresa Baldas: [email protected]

The Only Child

Are you demanding too much of your only child.

Posted September 29, 2020 | Reviewed by Jessica Schrader

Four-year-old Julie is walking down the street hand-in-hand with her mom and dad. “One, two, three everyone counts,” when they arrive at a curb—and her parents swing her onto the sidewalk. “Did you see how high I jumped?” Julie asks excitedly. “Oh, Julie! That was wonderful,” her parents respond in unison.

As we can see, being the only child has a major benefit. Julie has her parents' undivided attention . She never has to compete with brothers and sisters for their love—she is number one for life. Julie's parents cherish her and are always ready to listen to her, praise her, and shower her with affection.

Parents of an only child have all the time in the world to teach him skills: how to tie his shoe and write his name, so he may be very advanced for his age. Since he constantly communicates with adults, his language skills can be off the charts.

The result of all her parents’ love and attention is that the child can grow up feeling self-confident, and become a high achiever. Only children have become our president and many run corporations.

Along with the positives, however, there are many challenges that an only child faces. Only children can feel very lonely . When the family goes to the beach, the child may spend hours digging alone. Only children often find it harder to socialize with other children, because they may have had very little opportunity to learn social skills, such as sharing and taking turns. Only children can also be very self-centered and expect other kids to be as doting as their parents. They may assume other children will yield to their choice of a game, and even to let them win, when they are upset.

There are other challenges an only child faces. Because the parents are not going to have any more kids, the parents may place high expectations upon her. She is the one who will reflect their parenting abilities. If she returns home with a 98 on a test, her parents might respond, “What happened to the other two points?” Since parents have all the time and attention to focus on the one child, they might also scrutinize her every act, and expect perfection of her. When she's sitting at the table they may constantly comment, “You're squirming too much,” or “You're not sitting tall enough.” As a result of all this pressure, the child can grow up to be a perfectionist , and feel that she will be loved only if she is perfect.

Parents often ask me how to raise their only child to be self-confident and get along with other children. Here are some suggestions.

Make sure to schedule ample play dates for your child, so that he has the opportunity to build positive social skills. Register your child in preschool early on, so he will receive guidance from the teachers as to how to form positive relationships with other children.

Show your child unconditional love. Step back and observe your behavior with her, to make sure that you are not communicating that you expect perfection. Praise her for her accomplishments to give her a positive sense of self.

Set limits. You may want to give him the moon and the stars because he's your only child, but you want him to learn that he can want things, but he cannot have everything he wants. In family relationships, teach him to wait his turn, share, and be concerned about other family members’ feelings.

Encourage her independence. Try not to constantly jump in to do things for her. This can cause her to become dependent upon you, and she will lack the skills to do things on her own. She will learn best from her own attempts through trial and error. It might be hard to let her go off to nursery school, summer camp, or college, creating an undesired empty nest, but she needs to feel that she can go off and manage on her own.

Meri Wallace, LCSW , is a parenting expert and child and family therapist.

• Find a Therapist
• Find a Treatment Center
• Find a Psychiatrist
• Find a Support Group
• Find Teletherapy
• United States
• Brooklyn, NY
• Chicago, IL
• Houston, TX
• Los Angeles, CA
• New York, NY
• Portland, OR
• San Diego, CA
• San Francisco, CA
• Seattle, WA
• Washington, DC
• Asperger's
• Bipolar Disorder
• Chronic Pain
• Eating Disorders
• Passive Aggression
• Personality
• Goal Setting
• Positive Psychology
• Stopping Smoking
• Low Sexual Desire
• Relationships
• Child Development
• Therapy Center NEW
• Diagnosis Dictionary
• Types of Therapy

Understanding what emotional intelligence looks like and the steps needed to improve it could light a path to a more emotionally adept world.

• Coronavirus Disease 2019
• Affective Forecasting
• Neuroscience

• Skip to main content
• Keyboard shortcuts for audio player

Solar eclipse 2024: Follow the path of totality

Solar eclipse myths and rumors bubble up, from radiation to food poisoning.

Bill Chappell

People visit a NASA information booth to grab solar eclipse glasses in Russellville, Arkansas. The space agency has debunked a number of myths about the total solar eclipse — including ideas about food going bad, or unborn babies being harmed. Mario Tama/Getty Images hide caption

People visit a NASA information booth to grab solar eclipse glasses in Russellville, Arkansas. The space agency has debunked a number of myths about the total solar eclipse — including ideas about food going bad, or unborn babies being harmed.

Will a solar eclipse harm a pregnant woman's baby if she looks at it? Does an eclipse emit special radiation that can instantly blind you?

Those are some of the ideas people have been asking about — and that experts have been pooh-poohing — as people in North America anticipated seeing a total eclipse, from Mazatlán to Montreal.

Here's what time the eclipse will be visible in your region

Monday's total solar eclipse begins over Mexico's Pacific Coast at around 11:07 a.m. PT, moving east through Texas and up to Maine, finally leaving the continent on Newfoundland's Atlantic coast.

Solar eclipses have long triggered fanciful explanations and warnings, from religious mythology to modern-day superstition. In recent days, for instance, a message circulated online warning people to turn off their cellphones and other devices before midnight ahead of the eclipse, warning of powerful radiation and cosmic rays.

In reality, a solar eclipse brings a temporary sharp drop in solar radiation — an event that ham radio operators have been eagerly anticipating for months, with competitions and experiments looking to fill the Earth's suddenly radiation-free ionosphere with radio signals.

Persistent but unfounded beliefs even prompted NASA to devote a special page to debunking misconceptions about a solar eclipse.

Total eclipses don't produce rays that cause blindness, NASA says

During totality, electromagnetic radiation from the sun's corona will not harm you. In fact, the only time it's safe to look at the sun without eye protection, as the sun's brightness is fully obscured by the moon and its corona is visible.

But outside of totality, your eyes can be harmed during an eclipse. If the sun is only partially obscured, looking at it will damage your retina. You can look if you have special solar glasses, but don't count on those to protect you if you want to use a telescope or camera lens that doesn't have a solar filter.

As NASA says , "the concentrated solar rays will burn through the filter and cause serious eye injury."

Another thing to remember: Take breaks if you're using a special filter to look at the sun before or after totality. As the space agency says , the sun's infrared radiation can make you uncomfortable, "as it literally warms the eye."

You should look away from the sun periodically, or use an indirect viewer like a pinhole projector to track the eclipse.​

More things NASA says are NOT true about a total solar eclipse

Myth: if you are pregnant you should not watch an eclipse because it can harm your baby..

Another notion that seems to be rooted in concern about radiation. To put people's mind at ease, NASA employs a sort of "you're already soaking in it" example, citing the neutrino particles produced by the sun's nuclear fusion:

"Every second, your body is pelted by trillions of these neutrinos no matter if the sun is above or below the horizon. The only consequence is that every few minutes a few atoms in your body are transmuted into a different isotope by absorbing a neutrino. This is an entirely harmless effect and would not harm you, or if you are pregnant, the developing fetus."

MYTH: Eclipses will poison any food that is prepared during the event.

NASA gives a hypothetical: What if some bad potato salad makes people sick during an eclipse? Food poisoning is very common — and it shouldn't be blamed on a rare celestial event, the agency notes.

"The basic idea is that total solar eclipses are terrifying and their ghostly green coronae look frightening, so it is natural to want to make up fearful stories about them and look for coincidences among events around you."

Other myths have to do with omens and major events

Here are four that NASA singles out for debunking:

MYTH: Eclipses are harbingers of something very bad about to happen.

Myth: solar eclipses foretell major life changes and events about to happen., myth: solar eclipses are a sign of an exceptional celestial event taking place in time and space., myth: solar eclipses six months after your birthday, or on your birthday, are a sign of impending bad health..

NASA ascribes many of these ideas to astrological forecasts being propped up by confirmation bias.

As the agency says, "We tend to remember all the occasions when two things happened together, but forget all of the other times when they did not."

Other myths — such as the idea that the moon turns black during an eclipse, or that the Earth's two poles don't see eclipses — are simply false, the agency says.

Eclipses have deep spiritual meanings

Ideas about an eclipse's potentially powerful effects aren't new. In fact, solar eclipses do also cause some unusual things to happen .

Want to see how a solar eclipse alters colors? Wear red and green on Monday

People in totality can expect to feel a sudden drop in temperature, for instance. Stars and planets become visible in the middle of the day, and humans can experience a range of odd visual effects — from the sharpness of shadows to the movement of "shadow bands" and a change in how we perceive color.

Then there's the eerie effect of the eclipse moving from west to east, adding to the perception that time isn't moving in its normal path.

Many cultures and religions link eclipses to energy, seeing them as events of renewal and promise — or in some cases, of vital energy being drained away.

For the Ojibwe and other Indigenous peoples in the Great Lakes region, a story about a solar eclipse centers on a boy and his sister who trap the sun after it burns him.

In many folktales, magical animals try to eat the sun or the moon. In Hindu mythology, a serpent god, Rahu Ketu, wanted to eat the sun — but then his head was cut off. That created two new entities, Rahu and Ketu, according to the Folklife Today blog from the Library of Congress.

"These are the deities of eclipses and comets. Rahu is fixated on eating the sun and the moon, and will try to catch them and gobble them up," the blog notes. "Fortunately he only succeeds once in a while. Since his head was cut off, the sun or moon just falls out the hole where his neck used to be. This is an eclipse."

As Folklife Today notes, in many cultures, humans take up the duty of ending an eclipse, often by making noise and beating on drums or gongs to dispel the spirit that's attempting to take the sun.