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My Single Child is Happy and So Are We
Is it really so hard to believe?
“But she’ll be lonely”
She’s just fine. We spend a lot of time with her.
“She needs someone to play with”
She has plenty of friends and close cousins.
“She’ll be spoilt”
We don’t give her everything she wants, whenever she wants. She doesn’t get away with being rude. She’s fine.
“It’s better to have more kids. They’ll look after you when you’re old.”
Are you f*$king kidding me?
This is the line of conversation we get regularly because we have one child.
Yes, just one child.
As if one child isn’t enough.
Seriously. Is it really such an injustice?
Here are 7 grateful reasons we — and other 1 child households — choose to have “only” 1 child:
1. You can form a close bond with your child
It’s easier for single-child parents to spend quality time with our children. Talking to them. Listening to them. Playing with them. Helping them.
When each parent is with our child, we have different conversations. We connect in our own special ways. Our child loves having each parent to herself, just as much as we treasure the time we spend with her.
In research for her book, The Case for the Only Child, Social Psychologist Susan Newman, Ph.D. spoke to “onlies” in their 20s, 40s, 60s, and 70s.
Almost every participant was grateful for not having to compete with siblings or share their parents’ attention:
Study participant Sherry said of her parents, “They’re like my best friends, literally, and I can talk to them about anything.” Another participant Tom, said, “I actually hang out with my parents a lot, whereas most of my other buddies don’t.”
It’s easier to form a close bond with one child.
