[quote youvegottenminuteslynn]@Elisemum
It’s not negotiable really and it’s been proven.
Actual data disagrees with you:
"What about the awkward only child? The data has largely rejected that idea for decades. A review article which summaries 140 studies found some evidence of more “academic motivation” among only children, but no differences on personality traits like extroversion. In other words, although you might expect a built-in playmate makes a kid more social, the data doesn’t bear that out.
*
Other studies have looked at children in China, where the one-child policy effectively created a generation of children with no siblings. Comparing only children to those in China with siblings (since some families do have two children), it’s hard to see any systematic personality differenceses_ between siblings and only children in things like extroversion.
One thing this literature shows us is that birth order matters. First born children — regardless of whether they have sibling or not — perform slightly betterer_ on I.Q. tests, get more schooling and have higher earnings later in life. They also score higher on personality measures of academic motivation than later born children. It’s not clear why this is, although one reason may be the amount of time parents can dedicate to a child early in life. For example, more time reading or talking to your child encourages language development.*
Pulling all of this data together, it would seem that siblings do not have a large impact on most characteristics we can measure. In the end, neither the deprived younger sibling idea nor the awkward only child one hold much water. Parents argue about these ideas across the internet, saying that having or lacking siblings is key to making your child the best they can be. The evidence disagrees. Your decision about how many children to have should be just that: your decision about what works best for your family."
In fact another study even revealed only children in the UK are the most contented:
"One of the widest-ranging research projects on family life conducted in Britain has revealed that the fewer siblings children have, the happier they are – and that only children are the most contented.
The findings, shared exclusively with the Observer, suggest that "sibling bullying" could be part of the problem, with 31% of children saying they are hit, kicked or pushed by a brother or sister "quite a lot" or "a lot". Others complain of belongings being stolen by siblings and being called hurtful names.
The figures are the first to emerge from Understanding Society, a study tracking the lives of 100,000 people in 40,000 British households.
While the findings seem surprising, experts say there are clear reasons why more siblings could reduce happiness. Dr Ruth Coppard, a child psychologist, said: "In an average home the more children, the less privacy for each child. Some love sharing a bedroom with a sibling but they would rather choose to do it than have to do it. There is competition for parental time."[/quote]
Text glitches thanks to copy and paste!