If you have an only child you’ve heard it all before. “You wouldn’t do that to your child,” a stranger cautioned me on the subway last week, shifting quickly from approval to scorn after hearing that I’ve no intention to have another kid. For those of us who have just one, whether by choice or by circumstance, our tight smiles in the face of these encounters become a matter of habit. Random acts of derision on the subway is one thing; still I hadn’t anticipated, after presenting scores of data on the relative advantages of an only childhood at a recent conference, the first response from an academic in the audience. This was her surly snarl, “I believe you expect us to buy that only children might be better off.” It’s a lot of public scrutiny for such a private choice.

Everyone seems to think they know who only children are. We are the loners, the misfits, and always, always, the selfish ones. But after investigating the whole matter, I don’t buy it. In other words, I’m here to say, if you — by dint of will or biology — have an only child, it’s okay. Because here’s the stunningly banal truth: only children are not really all that different than anyone else.

Don’t take my word for it, consider the data. In over 500 studies over the past several decades, examining 16 traits, including leadership, maturity, extraversion, social participation, peer popularity, generosity, cooperativeness, flexibility, emotional stability, contentment, only children do just as well as siblings. In only two categories is there a marked difference between singletons and sibs: achievement motivation and self-esteem. And in those traits, onlies fare far better. In tests measuring 32 different kinds of intelligence, onlies scored higher in 25 tests, and equal in four. In a meta-analysis of 115 studies comparing only children with siblings, examining surveys that were both self-reported and measuring the perceptions of others, onlies score no higher on loneliness than anyone else. When 13,000 kids were asked to name their close friends, onlies named just as many pals as siblings did. And in studies of narcissism, only children rank no higher than kids with siblings.

And yet only three per cent of Americans today think the single child family is ideal. Compare that to the 1970s when 17 per cent of American women said they’d be just fine stopping at one kid. Most people say they have their first child for themselves, and their second child for the benefit of the first. That’s a hell of a commitment to keeping your kid from being an only child — as though by dint of fertility you can prevent yourself from screwing up your kids. Three quarters of Americans tell Gallup pollsters they thought that being an only child was a serious disadvantage in life, responsible for everything from gutting loneliness to major character defects. And though our numbers are rapidly rising, that sentiment only grows.

But here’s a stunningly simple concept: each child dilutes parents’ resources. More kids get less. Such resources can be time, money, attention — everything from funds available for college to the number of words spoken directly from a parent to a child. It’s thanks to such undiluted resources that only child families tend to have higher educational and occupational achievement, whether our parents stay together or not, and whether we are from rich families or poor ones.

I’ve watched most of my friends tread into the tunnel of second children, few of them to emerge as how I remember their former engaged selves — there’s hardly the time to even consider maintaining a self, they tell me. “You don’t have any idea how hard it is — it’s more than twice as hard,” many of them say repeatedly, impatient and dazed. It’s true. Our family life, busy with plentiful travel, the delights of urban living, indulgent late-night dinner parties, and the frequent freedom to binge on a novel over a weekend, allows as much freedom and pleasure as parenting without a trust fund could possibly offer.

Parenting used to be just one part of adulthood. But today it is considered nearly all that matters. It seems the more of a parent you are, the less you are of anything else. Meanwhile, over the past century, adulthood has come to promise more than just duty, but pleasure. We search for a partner who will satisfy our desires, develop a career that reflects our strengths, build a life that suits not just our needs, but our wants. We envision a liberated existence, one of satisfaction and fulfilment, a life built upon intentionality and individualism rather than obligation and role filling. This liberated adulthood exists at odds with parenting. It does not take forced population control to raise the number of a country’s only children — the relative incompatibility of parenthood and modernity has well taken care of that.

And yet as desires and identities evolve, we continue to deify old myths about only children and their parents. We delay childbirth in our classrooms and boardrooms, working and wishing, dating and dishing. Our bodies get older. Our lives get crazier. By the time we’re ready to admit that we’ll never be ready, it’s tougher to conceive. And even if it’s not, it’s tough to conceive of doing it again.

When our internal desires clash dramatically with accepted wisdom, it’s incumbent upon us to wonder why. We need to be more assertive in questioning why exactly all our children need siblings. Because if I’m going to choose to have another one, while billions of other people do the same, I should be able to know the reason. And if it’s not because I want to — I mean really want to — have another child, there’s a body of supposed knowledge I need to start questioning. For myself. For my daughter. And for the world I brought her into. Instead of making the choice to fulfil whatever breeding assignment we have been given, we can instead make our most profound choice our most purely independent one. It might even feel like something people rarely associate with parenting: it might feel like freedom.

( Edited excerpts from One and Only )

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