To love being an only child?

[NotTheLemonGumDrops]

I see so many posts on here where people feel guilty that they can't 'give' their child a sibling.

I just wanted to say that I am really happy as the only child. I had a really good childhood and I don't think it affected me at all, nor has it affected me as an adult.

Are there any other only children on here that were /are perfectly happy not to have siblings and don't understand why it's seen as so awful?

I'm not in any way suggesting it's better, but I don't really understand why it's seen as worse than or having multiple brothers/sisters or something for people to feel guilty about. It has never bothered me at all.

[Halloweenbabyy]

I am NOT an only child, however i feel like one. I have an older sister, she is an absolute nightmare of a person. Shes cruel, manipulative, a liar, an abusive toxic person. We have minimal contact and i like it that way. Because of how awful she is its almost as if i am an only child. I cope just fine without knowing what it was like to have a loving sibling.

[LostSapphire]

Same as Halloweenbabyy - not an only child, have a brother who made my childhood a misery and I steer well clear of as an adult. He is abusive to our parents and I already know I will take full care of them in old age / infirmity.

If I'd been an only child I would probably have said I missed out on having a sibling, because of course I'd be imagining the best case scenario of a lovely close bond. Not this.

Someone wise posted on here once that unhappy families come in all sizes - it's just that if there is an unusual number of children (less than 2 or more than 3) the unhappiness gets attributed to that.

[SallyWD]

I can see both sides. I have 2 siblings and I love it. I feel very close to them. Connected and "in tune" with them in a way that's different to a normal friendship. However looking at DC1 I can't help thinking they're life would have been much easier without the arrival of very demanding DC2!

[rosiejaune]

I am one of three, but my siblings are 7 & 8 years older than me, so they were always at a different life stage and not close as children. More so now we're adults.

My daughter is an only child (and likely to stay that way), but she has a friend a few doors away she plays with every day, and I moved to be nearer my sisters so she sees her cousins regularly (I didn't grow up knowing mine).

[Dixiechickonhols]

My only is 14. She is happy and when we talk about it has never said she wished for a sibling she is happy as an only. She has the dog I treat like a toddler and she calls him her brother.
She knows why she is an only (my health related)
Materially she has advantages and can see that eg her own bathroom and my time. So many children are only children these days or perhaphs only one and then step siblings. I remember at school only 2 out of my class of 30 were only children.

[Settle59]

LostSapphire

I TOTALLY agree with your last sentence that unhappiness in a family gets (wrongly) attributed to family size. I'm an only child and have had a lot of unwanted comments about it - my friend who is one of 6 also has suffered unfair criticism.
Personally I think the problem in families arises when the parents are maybe narrow minded and attempt to 'hem in' the child in some way - this can happen to a child whatever the family size

[Coughsyrupsucks]

I love being an only child, always have done. I don’t ever remember being lonely as a child. My Mum wasn’t maternal at all, Dad was rarely around because of work so I have lots of benign neglect, which left me pretty independent. Lots of my friends I’ve kept throughout my life, and we are all still very close.

I now have an only child, DH would have liked more children but having DD nearly killed me, and I didn’t see the point of having a second purely to provide a sibling for DD when it might leave her without a mother. She’s pretty happy with it too, I think she finds it a little harder than I did with friends because she has autism but she does enjoy the peace and quiet of a small household after the noise stimulation of school.

Having lots of siblings doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll have a good relationship with them. DH doesn’t have any sort of relationship with his three siblings. Even if they are all in the same room with each other (about once a year), none of them directly speak to each other, they all talk to their parents but not each other which I just find bizarre. There’s no family BBQ’s, Christmases or Birthday lunches, or even a text or phone call tbh. It’s not that they hate each other, they just have nothing in common other than having the same parents and therefore make little effort. I doubt we’ll ever see them again once his parents pass away.

[MarieQueenofScots]

Having siblings is certainly no guarantee of support with ageing parents.

Both of my poor parents have discovered that and carried the burden solely themselves. My mother would have had a much happier childhood without her brother (despite the very strong efforts of my grandparents to stop him being a cunt)

[NotTheLemonGumDrops]

My DH has a bad relationship with his only brother too. They don't get on at all and tbh he's avoided seeing his parents in the past because of his brother who lived with them.

[BottomleyPottsCoveredInSpots]

I’m an only child and spent (as I remember anyway) much of my childhood longing for a brother or sister – never an older one, but a little one that I could help look after! It’s a pity (this being 50-odd years ago when people weren’t quite so frank) that my parents didn’t explain that their age by then would preclude it, as they were approaching 40 even by the time I was born. I’d have accepted it, then. Fortunately they were very loving parents and we were happy, although the consequence of their age was that they both died in my mid-30s.

It’s true I was quite a lonely child, in that while I had good friends they had their own homes to go to, but that had its upside in that I learnt to occupy myself, and now am extremely content with my own company, while close to my own adult children. Having said that, I was determined never deliberately to have only one child myself. My two played and fought together in equal measure all through childhood. As adults they get on much more peacefully, but aren’t really close, which I regret very much.

[ArgumentativeAardvaark]

I have an only (he’s almost 4) so am very happy to read your post OP. I would have liked more children in theory but I met my husband too late in life and only just managed one by IVF before my eggs dried up completely. I am at peace with it now and often count my blessings in terms of the time and money that I have compared to friends with more kids.

That said, I do think that (as a PP pointed out) having nobody to reminisce with once your parents are gone is quite sad. My parents are both dead and I have a brother, but he nearly died in an accident a couple of years ago and I recall feeling very very weird about the idea of being the only living repository of my family’s whole life, IYSWIM. Fortunately he lived, but I think we talk more about the past now than we ever did before.

For my DS, I think all I can do is to make sure he forms close childhood friendships, hopefully with kids that I will get to know too - maybe some will last him into adulthood and they will be able to say “oh yes, I remember how your Mum used to make really delicious shepherd’s pie when we were kids” or something like that.

[BottomleyPottsCoveredInSpots]

That said, I do think that (as a PP pointed out) having nobody to reminisce with once your parents are gone is quite sad.

This. Although I'm British I didn't grow up in the UK, so when I was a child my cousins were here, and since I've been an adult my childhood friends have been thousands of miles away. As a result there's no one I'm in touch with who knew me as a child or had the same experiences.

[francienolan]

I think there are huge plusses and minuses to either side.

I'm an only child and had a lonely childhood. My parents are wonderful but there weren't other children around except at school etc. I found it difficult, but perhaps because I'm a social person. For example I am not one of those who are quite content just staying in watching Netflix during lockdown. It's what I'm doing, obviously, but I've been miserable.

I did have lots of advantages, like private school, which may or may not have happened with a sibling. I like to think my mom and I would be close regardless. She agrees we would have been either way.

I think there are 2 aspects that bother me the most, and why I want 2 children. One is that being the only one is a lot of pressure, both in practical terms (like caring for them when elderly) and in emotional terms (I am not very successful at work and it feels like such a waste of all their hopes and dreams). The other is that there was no one in my position in my family, so there's never been another person to be yelled at for no reason when one parent is in a bad mood and there's no one now to remember things from my perspective except me.

Overall I do consider myself to have had a happy childhood and I do agree some families should just have one child if it's what they want. But I know that I really do want more than one. No judgment either way though.

[dottiedodah]

I longed for a Sister as a child .However being an Adult I seem to have come to terms with it! Many friends have difficult relationships with their Siblings and My BF (also an only child ) said to me how lucky we were ! My DP wanted more children but it wasnt to be.

[dottiedodah]

I am close to my Cousin ,and she remembers a lot of things we did and places we went so I am lucky in that respect!

[JumpingAtJackdaws]

My DH is an only, and he has always said it never bothered him in the slightest. The problem he now has is very elderly parents who put enormous pressure on him. It would be good to share the pressure with a sibling or two, but as others have said, that's not always guaranteed. I'm 4th of 6, so the other extreme. We don't all get on now but we did have lots of fun as kids, we could even play our own team games. We also have lots of in jokes that are a mystery to outsiders.

[Redleathertrousers]

@francienolan

I have to agree with you about the emotional pressure. Its hard not to feel that all of your parents' hopes and dreams may not be met by you and your choices. I'm lucky that I've never been made to feel like my Mum isn't proud of me, BUT that doesn't stop the occasional voice in my head that tells me I haven't lived up to her expectations. I imagine this feeling will become stronger as I'm reaching the age where everyone is settling down and having children and I'm still considering whether I want that for myself.

[Puffinhead]

My DH is an only and had a lovely upbringing, His parents divorced when he was quite young and he spent a lot of time with his grandparents (who only had his mum) so he was the only child in the family. He was close to his mum and grandparents - I’m one of 3 (With lots of cousins) and am actually rather envious of that. Money was always tight for my family growing up too.

[vanillandhoney]

I'm an only child - it had good and bad points. As a positive I'm now very independent and quite happy in my own company. But as a young child I found it very lonely and always wanted a playmate. My parents weren't very keen on playdates or having friends over so I was often on my own.

In hindsight I wish I'd had a sibling and I've always wanted at least two children going forward.

[francienolan]

@redleathertrousers

Yes, exactly!! My parents often tell me they are proud of me, which is lovely, but I often feel like they think I am so clever and talented, and no one who is hiring feels the same. I've had a really rough time of it career-wise since moving to Britain a few years ago, so some of that definitely contributes. But honestly even calling the work I've done and the work I'm looking for a career is such a stretch.

[VeryQuaintIrene]

Like many others, it was fine when I was a child, but has been hard in recent years to try to take care of my depressed, anxious and ailing mum from the other side of the Atlantic. She died of Covid 3 weeks ago, and it's been a lot to organize her funeral, start proceedings on her estate etc., but there is a kind of simplicity about being completely in charge, and obviously as others have also said, there's no guarantee of helpful siblings. I don't have much family anyway, so friends have been absolutely crucial. It's been really great to be in a sort of cohort with my uni friends, so that in our 20s and 30s we were doing the career things and now (50s) we are all coping with older parents and their eventual deaths - that feels really solid and supportive in a way that might not be the case if I had to do this with siblings.

[lovepickledlimes]

I do at times really struggle with the pressure of basically my parents having put all their eggs in one baskect as well as grandparents on my father's side. I always feel like I did nothing to earn the status I got with them being 'smart, pretty, kind, wise etc' if I had no competion really to be compared to.

[Cam2020]

My brother is much younger than me, so I had many years as an only child. There were times when I was younger, probably around 5 or 6 where I wanted a sibling, but that was influenced by my peers getting baby brothers or sisters and probably a case of just wanting what others had. I had a lovely relationship with my parents, and still do, and my brother too. My daughter is and will remain an only child and I don't feel any guilt whatsoever.

[ScarfLadysBag]

I loved it too! I had a fantastic childhood and a really close relationship with my mum. I used to beg her never to have another child. I look back fondly on all the opportunities and experiences I had that I doubt I would have had with siblings.

I have my own family now and close friends so I feel like I've got plenty of support from elsewhere too.

DD will be an only too, I believe it will be the best quality of life for her that we can offer.

[ScarfLadysBag]

Also the caring for elderly parents thing... My mum has two brothers and did it all herself anyway, plus one of the brothers then stole a ton of money. Generally one person takes on the majority of care anyway, especially if they're the woman in the family. And there are other issues around arguing over what's the right path, etc v just being able to do what you think is right. So it's definitely not straightforward.