Is it better to be an only child? I couldn’t really answer this question as a child, but it interests me more as a father of an only child.
And the least we can say is that this is not really the direction recommended by society! I’m not saying we don’t have a choice, eh. Of course, you can have as many children as you want, as long as it’s more than one and less than three.
And while we’re at it, a boy and a girl, three years apart. This is what Françoise Dolto recommended, for whom the ideal family could have up to three children!
And all young parents can testify that they have, one day or another, heard this phrase, as soon as their first born started walking: “so, when will the second be?” No, because if you wait too long, they will have too much distance, they will not be able to play together! »
It’s very simple, the only child suffers from prejudices that are as numerous as they are tenacious. He would be selfish, antisocial, tyrannical and solitary. He would be both too brooding and incapable of bonding with others.
What the same Françoise Dolto summed up in these terms: “ When they grow up, only children are hyperverbal and hyposensory; puberty is not possible for them. At 15 or 16 years old, they are elite subjects from an academic point of view but worthless beings from the point of view of human exchanges. » There you go, I hope there are no only children listening to us, otherwise, hello from Dolto!
What does science say about this?
In recent years, it has tended to downplay prejudices. A recent study carried out at University College London showed that only children did not have fewer social skills, specifying: they are “comparable in terms of personality, relationship with their parents, success, motivation and personal adaptation to children who have brothers and sisters. » We are well advanced!
In reality, we repeat it every week, from column to column, childhood is too complex to accept generalizations. To parody Renoir, what is terrible on this Earth is that everyone has their own education. And it would be pointless to compare a priori the situation of an only child whose parents are always absent, the pair of two sisters with a toxic relationship or the infinite variations of large blended families.
There remains a fundamental difference, for the 20% of only children: it is loneliness in the face of the parental couple, regardless of the number of friends they may have elsewhere.
On the other hand, this absence of rivalry for parental attention can undoubtedly be good for building one’s identity and strengthening one’s self-confidence.
But on the other hand, she can turn around when, in adolescence, it is less a question of being seen by her parents than of being forgotten by them.
And when, as an adult, aging parents become a source of worry, a mental and physical burden, it could be soothing to know that we are not alone in carrying it.
I’m not saying that things always go well with siblings at these times, of course. But in the best case scenario, rivalry can then turn into solidarity, into newfound camaraderie. Without the need, as Maxime Le Forestier sang, when everything abandons you, to create a family.
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