In defence of the only child—why we need to rethink our outdated prejudices

When my daughter was born, a writer friend sent her a copy of Kay Thompson’s 1955 classic, Eloise. It hasn’t taken long for her to grow into it. Not yet four, I’ll find her poring over its images with studious intensity. Its eponymous heroine is herself all of six years old. Thrillingly for readers of any age, she lives in Manhattan’s Plaza Hotel. With her mother off swanning round the French Riviera and no mention of a father, she’s cared for by a British nanny. A manual for mischief-making, the book follows its wild-haired protagonist as she turns that stuffy grown-up oasis into an exotic playground for one.

She is, of course, an only child, the sophisticated antithesis of all those jolly brothers and sisters who conga through the stories of writers from Enid Blyton to Louisa May Alcott. In fact, precocious, solitary, spoiled—downright obnoxious some might say—Eloise has come to epitomise characteristics that predate the book and its author.

Like Eloise, my daughter is an only child. Every firstborn starts off this way but for those of us to whom children come late, the chance that they’ll remain so is high. In truth, I’d always hazily envisaged having “just” the one, but with motherhood came the desire for a whole tribe.

I tried, which as a single mother by choice (a curious term, that) meant a considerable amount of poking and prodding, and one especially farcical customs imbroglio (“What do you mean the cryotank can’t be released until tomorrow? I’m ovulating!”). Three fruitless attempts were enough, I decided, but even so, it took me a long time to throw away the box of unused fertility drugs that sat in the bottom of the fridge, keeping company with a dormant sourdough starter.

To the extent that she craves a sibling at all, my child wishes for a big sister, which is a whole other project for this dating-averse mum. Meanwhile, unique though she is in our family, she is one of a growing number out in the wider world.

Here in the UK we’ve been becoming a one-child nation for over a decade, making us leaders in what may become a trend across the secular world, powered by the indelible link between rising gender equality and falling fertility. Over 40 per cent of married couples in Britain have only one child, and the share is even higher among single parents and unmarried couples. But as my daughter’s friends acquire baby brothers and sisters, I find myself having to push back against the single-child stereotypes.

About those. According to One and Only: The Freedom of Having an Only Child and the Joy of Being One by Lauren Sandler, many are rooted in a study dating back to 1896. Granville Stanley Hall’s “Of Peculiar and Exceptional Children” notoriously proclaimed that “being an only child is a disease in itself,” insisting that a child lacking siblings could not possibly progress through life with the same ease as those from larger families. Around about the same time, other self-declared psychologists also labelled “onlies” anxious, indulged, selfish, inconsiderate, plain “odd.”

Research has been debunking these suspect theories since the 1970s. For instance, only children have the same number of friends as their peers while the number of children in a household is of no consequence in determining loneliness. “One-child” China is naturally a powerhouse in the field. A recent study from there reported that only children are more creative than those with siblings and also showed higher levels of flexibility. Where they scored less well—and this will make all parents snort, regardless of family size—was on “agreeableness.”

And yet still the negative associations persist, still we talk of having “children,” plural. According to a 2010 Pew survey on motherhood, only 3 per cent of Americans believed one child to be the ideal number—the same percentage who responded zero. Pop culture has hardly helped: The Omen, The Bad Seed.

In our rapidly changing world, aren’t some of the supposed drawbacks to being an only child actually positives? The ability to talk to grown-ups and to consider the viewpoints of other generations, or to spend time alone and the chance to learn who you really are: these all seem like pluses to me. As to those accusations of parental selfishness, they feel ever more bizarre given the state of our beleaguered planet. As a 2017 study found, by having one fewer child, a family in the developed world could save some 58.6 tons of carbon annually.

Lower fertility poses many questions, a lot of them economic, but along with other recent developments in family life—gay parenting, blended families, solo mothers by choice—the rise of the single-child family is already changing how we define family.

The ersatz brothers and aunts that an only child will find for themselves or their own only child won’t be the same as a sibling or an aunt by blood, but who’s to say that’s a bad thing? Just ask anyone who’s ever looked at the person with whom they share more DNA than any other and felt them to be utterly alien.