To ask for the positives of only having one child?

@Strawberriesandpears I think you mean existential navel gazing. Your posts continue to display staggering levels of self absorption.

I am one of two, but do not get along with my sibling at all. I am the parent of two girls who get on very well with each other. I cannot pretend I have any experience of the only child upbringing. I do however have a few only child friends in their 50s who seem perfectly content with their lot.

I am posting just to make a comment in my experience of being a consultant psychiatrist for nearly 30 years. I have heard every possible sad story of abuse, trauma and hardship. When I take a history, I have to ask everybody about their childhood.

On quite a few occasions, I have heard about specific problems with siblings which have contributed directly to poor mental health, and also issues with growing up with parents who could not handle the number of kids at home. I can hand on my heart promise when I say that nobody has ever said to me that they have been unhappy because of being an only child.

I accept that it happens of course, as some posters here have indicated. But I think it says something that when patients talk to me about adverse effects in their life, they have never talked about the only child experience. And I have seen hundreds and hundreds of patients over the last few decades. So statistically the chance of serious unhappiness about being an only child is pretty low. (But when it happens, patients deserve to be heard of course and the pain is real).

I just thought it might be worth sharing my experience as a mental health professional OP. There is so much more to a full and content existence than the number of siblings someone has.

I am not actually! I am very well liked and make friends easily 😊

Doesn't take away my existential lonliness, but yeah, nobody in real life would regard me as a horrible person. Quite the opposite. 😊

I know I’m lucky to have one. I always wanted at least two, so they each had a sibling. Sadly separated from DP when ds was 1 and he’s 2.5 now. No new relationship on the horizon and I’m 38 so it’s possible it’s already too late. I feel really down about it tonight. Anyone truly made peace with it or can see any plus points to just having one? I have the money to go it alone but it feels too much when I already have ds.

I am copying the OP here. I feel it would be useful for some posters to re-read and have some tact when responding.

But the discussion was about having an only child and the poster was looking for positives on this. Your views on finding getting older terrfying are completely irrelevant to that. You seem to have some sort of unhealthy obsession around this based on every post you make.

If you'd actually made some sort of positive balanced contribution that would have been fine. Instead you wittered on about catastrophic predictions such as parents funerals and being all alone at Christmas that you have no evidence of being true or not. No one dismisses your view of being an only child but you seem to can't comprehend that other people do not share this view points.

You've made no acknowledgement to the suffering other people have gone through and why they don't have more than one child but instead gone on and on about throwing yourself a one woman pity party.

I sincerely hope you are not this self centred and self pitying in real life, as trust me you may find your prediction of a lonely life come true.

@Strawberriesandpears, people are not criticising you and @StopInhalingRevels because you're "right", and you've touched some imaginary nerve, we're flabbergasted that people like yourselves could selfishly hijack a thread where an OP was already down and looking for support, just so you can take out your unresolved issues with your own parents by bashing strangers online, many of whom have described loss and miscarriage.

The OP didn't title this thread "One child families, good or bad, discuss"? She said she was feeling down about her situation and was looking for some positive stories to help her come to terms with probably not being able to have a second.

All you are doing with your posts on this thread, is coming across as a pair of unhinged narcissists.

Just engaging in discussion on a discussion board. Didn't know I wasn't allowed to have my views.

The conversation has progressed to the point where @StopInhalingRevels and I have been told we are the only ones who feel like this, so I am just providing evidence that we are not.

@Strawberriesandpears what's your point exactly? This thread is about the positives of only children? To be quite frank no one is interested in how terrifying you'll find older age. There's plenty of other threads for that. You do seem to turn every thread you can find into a whole pity party about your own scenario when no one asked for it.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/4830447-to-be-genuinely-afraid-of-my-future-and-spending-it-alone-and-dying-alone

Oh look! Turns out it isn't just me and my 'vile' counterpart @StopInhalingRevels who fear for a future on our own. This poor poster is 'genuinely terrified'. But yeah, you continue to tell us we need 'therapy' and that we are the only two basket cases who feel this way.

I can see that I'm a bit late to the party and this thread has been derailed by a couple of posters but if you're still reading, OP here's my 2 cents anyway! I'm an only child and it never bothered me in the slightest. It just wasn't something I thought about as a child. Sometimes adults would ask me "wouldn't you like a brother or sister?" and I didn't really understand why they were asking me. The answer was "no, not really". If it had happened I'm sure I would have been fine but I wasn't bothered either way. I certainly never felt lonely. I had friends and activities and enjoyed lots of quality time with my parents.

I've never felt I was missing out as an adult either as I've always had plenty of friends and now have a family of my own. Most of my friends aren't particularly close to their siblings as adults. Most have polite but distant relationships with them, some really can't stand them. There are no guarantees that they'll like each other or be a source of support for one another.

I've often seen people on MN talk about how the burden of caring for elderly parents all falls on only children. But to be honest, IME even where there are siblings the burden seems to disproportionately fall on one person in most families. My DM is one of 5 and it all fell to her. You see this in lots of families. But I do think it's important, if you have an only child, to make sure you have planned financially for your old age and have conversations in advance about what you want to happen.

Maybe it’s because you keep making broad sweeping generalisations about only children and the parents of only children. Then contracting yourself by throwing in the odd “everyone’s experience isn’t the same” it’s bizarre

Oh, gaslighting too. Nice.

But the majority of only children AREN'T happy in childhood and adulthood. Maybe your experience yes. But the research and this thread points otherwise.

Your experience is not a true reflection of society as a whole. To try and paint it as factually correct reflection that the majority of only children is unhappy is wrong and to especially to someone who was looking for reassurance.

I'm not saying it is. YOU are. You are saying that the "majority" of only children are miserable. Others have presented evidence showing that's not the case. You are using "majority" based on your own experience which is not wide.

I'm aware that some only children are unhappy. Some are perfectly happy. Some people with siblings are unhappy and wish they didn't have siblings. Others love their siblings and couldn't imagine life without them.

You're making a blanket statement saying the only children of these parents on the thread are going to be miserable. Trying to guilt trip parents and make them feel bad. You need to deal with your own issues and not lay them on everyone else.

You do seem deeply resentful and unhappy. I hope you find peace.

Not everyone’s experience is the same

By jove, I think they've got it!

But you seem utterly determined to repeatedly hammer home your own

I'm stating my lived experience (and not my perception of my child's on their behalf), do you have a problem with that?

You also asserted that the majority of only children are unhappy in both childhood and adulthood

Yes, as an only child, and with the knowledge of other onlys in my experience, this is the case. Critically, not the parents of only children which is the majority of the trumpeting on this thread. The adult only children themselves. And the fact their parents can't understand that their only children don't voice being unhappy, for fear of affecting the relationship with the only immediate people in their lives, is really sad.

Unhappy is very broad too. Did I have an unhappy childhood? Depends on how you look at it. I did brilliant things. I excelled at school. I did what I wanted (within reason) with no one else to consider, and was given every opportunity. Saw so much of the world. Had loads of stuff. I had no one to share that with but my parents. No one to wake up with, run down on Christmas morning with, play games with. Playdates and hanging round with cousins when convenient to their families is nothing like full time siblings. There's rough with smooth, of course, but on balance the void of never having a sibling is something still present in my life, and many others.

with zero to back that up

Far from it. I have friends and family who "are" exactly what I am referring too. Loads of them. The women I work with, off out with their sisters. Popping round to their brother's for their nephew's birthday. The familial village it takes to raise a child, so to speak. It's the whole infrastructure you lose. And you can definitely try and fill those gaps with other things/people. But that's kind of the point I'm making.

@StopInhalingRevels You come across as incredibly immature, as you seem to have a complete lack of understanding that your parents are also people, and the sole purpose of their lives isn't serving your wants and desires.
Honestly, whining about how material stuff didn't compensate for the sibling you feel that you were owed. A six year old having this view, ok, understandable, but still thinking like this as an adult? Bizarre.

Not everyone's experience of having a sibling is the same either. Your fantasy sibling is like a fantasy boyfriend but most people take a few goes finding their match. With a sibling you get what you're given and have to just get on with it. Academic research says most people are overall unhappier for it. Not that that means people should stick at one necessarily, just that happiness is a complicated thing and isn't based on only one factor. Even if it is a straightforward end in itself which I am not 100% sure it is.

Not everyone’s experience is the same, but you seem utterly determined to repeatedly hammer home your own. You also asserted that the majority of only children are unhappy in both childhood and adulthood with zero to back that up.
Therapy can help.

And we'll go for the seventh time of saying: not everyone's experience is the same.

Any particular reason you can't grasp that bit I'm saying?

Don't. There's only 2 people on this thread being dramatic. Everyone else is more pragmatic. I have very little family (no siblings, NC with dad, no partner) and I'm fine. I've built my own family in my friends.

"Lol" - really?! When their are parents on here posting about the children they have lost?

Well this thread has made me feel crap as a parent to an only child with hardly any family

And you're ignoring me and the other only children on this thread who are fine and happy with it. Because you're miserable you're convinced that everyone else it.

I'm not pretending anything.

It is fact that my parents would say exactly the same on my behalf.

I'm pointing out that what the parents insist their child feels and what the child feels are not the same in a lot of cases.

It's not my issue if those parents don't want to acknowledge that.

And the loss of a child is horrendous. I had presumed that didn't need saying.