Why We Still Worry About the Only Child
Have one child and the comments arrive on cue: won't they be lonely, spoilt, a bit odd? It turns out that worry has a birthday - 1896 - and a single doctor's name attached to it. Nearly a century of research has been quietly taking it apart.
You have one child, and sooner or later someone says it. Sometimes kindly, sometimes not. "Won't they be lonely?" Or the other version, delivered with a small raised eyebrow: "Aren't only children a bit spoilt?"
It is an odd thing to be warned about your child's personality before they have finished forming one. And notice the trap in it. The same child is meant to be lonely from too little company and spoilt from too much attention, both at once. Nobody ever explains how they manage that.
The warning also lands on more families every year. The fertility rate in England and Wales fell to 1.41 children per woman in 2024, the lowest since records began. There are now around 3.7 million one-child families in the UK. If you are raising a single child, you are in very ordinary company.
So it is worth asking where this worry actually comes from. Because it did not come from watching only children grow up and turn out badly. It came from one man, well over a century ago, who was almost certainly wrong.
Hall decided that a child without brothers or sisters was likely to be spoilt, bossy, over-sensitive and lonely. He is remembered for one brutal line. Being an only child, he wrote, is "a disease in itself."
The problem is how he reached it. Much of his impression came from the children who turned up at his clinic, which is to say children who were already struggling with something. If you build your picture of only children from the ones brought to you because something is wrong, you will conclude something is wrong with all of them. The label stuck anyway, and we have been passing it round kitchen tables and school gates ever since.
It was not there. Only children were no lonelier, no more selfish and no worse at getting along with people. If anything they edged ahead on measures of achievement, and scored a shade higher, on average, on tests of intelligence. A later review of more than 200 studies of personality found only children essentially indistinguishable from children with siblings.
And the loneliness question, the one that gets asked most, has the least behind it. Researchers who have followed only children into adulthood do not find a lonelier group. Some only children do like their own company more than most, which is not the same thing as being lonely. Plenty of people with four siblings grow up feeling unseen, and plenty of only children grow up surrounded by cousins, friends and a full house at the weekend.
The "spoilt" charge has been tested on its own, too. A 2020 study of nearly 8,700 young adults went looking for bigger egos in people raised without siblings and came up empty. No extra entitlement, no inflated self-regard. The little emperor everyone pictures simply did not appear in the data.
It fits, once you see how the stereotype was built. Not on evidence, but on a hunch about what a childhood without a brother or sister must surely do to a person. The hunch felt obvious. It was wrong all the same.
When he studied more than 20,000 children starting school, teachers rated the only children slightly lower on social skills, the everyday business of sharing and patching things up after a fall-out. At five, growing up without a live-in rival seemed to show, just a little.
But here is the part that tends to get dropped. Downey went back to the question with teenagers, more than 13,000 of them, and the gap had gone. By adolescence, only children had as many friends and got on just as well as anyone else. Whatever a brother or sister teaches early, the classroom and a few years seem to teach as well. The head start closes.
Which leaves the old worry hanging in the air with nothing much to grip. The "lonely only" was never a research finding. It was a guess from 1896 that we kept repeating because it sounded true, and because a tidy story about other people's children is hard to give up.
If you are raising one child, the useful questions turn out to be the same ones every parent faces. Do they have other children to play with. Do they feel loved, and get told no often enough. Are they given company, and also left alone sometimes to be bored. The number of children in the house was never the thing doing the work.
It is an odd thing to be warned about your child's personality before they have finished forming one. And notice the trap in it. The same child is meant to be lonely from too little company and spoilt from too much attention, both at once. Nobody ever explains how they manage that.
The warning also lands on more families every year. The fertility rate in England and Wales fell to 1.41 children per woman in 2024, the lowest since records began. There are now around 3.7 million one-child families in the UK. If you are raising a single child, you are in very ordinary company.
So it is worth asking where this worry actually comes from. Because it did not come from watching only children grow up and turn out badly. It came from one man, well over a century ago, who was almost certainly wrong.
A Disease in Itself
In 1896, an American psychologist called G. Stanley Hall published work with a colleague, E. W. Bohannon, under a title that gives away the ending: "A Study of Peculiar and Exceptional Children." Only children sat firmly in the peculiar column.Hall decided that a child without brothers or sisters was likely to be spoilt, bossy, over-sensitive and lonely. He is remembered for one brutal line. Being an only child, he wrote, is "a disease in itself."
The problem is how he reached it. Much of his impression came from the children who turned up at his clinic, which is to say children who were already struggling with something. If you build your picture of only children from the ones brought to you because something is wrong, you will conclude something is wrong with all of them. The label stuck anyway, and we have been passing it round kitchen tables and school gates ever since.
What the Evidence Actually Says
Starting in the 1970s, a researcher called Toni Falbo decided to test the idea properly. In 1986, she and Denise Polit gathered 141 separate studies of only children and went looking for the damage everyone assumed was there.It was not there. Only children were no lonelier, no more selfish and no worse at getting along with people. If anything they edged ahead on measures of achievement, and scored a shade higher, on average, on tests of intelligence. A later review of more than 200 studies of personality found only children essentially indistinguishable from children with siblings.
And the loneliness question, the one that gets asked most, has the least behind it. Researchers who have followed only children into adulthood do not find a lonelier group. Some only children do like their own company more than most, which is not the same thing as being lonely. Plenty of people with four siblings grow up feeling unseen, and plenty of only children grow up surrounded by cousins, friends and a full house at the weekend.
The "spoilt" charge has been tested on its own, too. A 2020 study of nearly 8,700 young adults went looking for bigger egos in people raised without siblings and came up empty. No extra entitlement, no inflated self-regard. The little emperor everyone pictures simply did not appear in the data.
It fits, once you see how the stereotype was built. Not on evidence, but on a hunch about what a childhood without a brother or sister must surely do to a person. The hunch felt obvious. It was wrong all the same.
The One Honest Complication
None of this means a sibling does nothing. There is one finding worth taking seriously, and it comes from Douglas Downey, a sociologist who has spent years on this exact question.When he studied more than 20,000 children starting school, teachers rated the only children slightly lower on social skills, the everyday business of sharing and patching things up after a fall-out. At five, growing up without a live-in rival seemed to show, just a little.
But here is the part that tends to get dropped. Downey went back to the question with teenagers, more than 13,000 of them, and the gap had gone. By adolescence, only children had as many friends and got on just as well as anyone else. Whatever a brother or sister teaches early, the classroom and a few years seem to teach as well. The head start closes.
The Worry With Nothing to Hold
That is the honest shape of it. A young only child may take a little longer to learn how to squabble and make up. Give them time in the ordinary crush of a school, and they get there like everyone else.Which leaves the old worry hanging in the air with nothing much to grip. The "lonely only" was never a research finding. It was a guess from 1896 that we kept repeating because it sounded true, and because a tidy story about other people's children is hard to give up.
If you are raising one child, the useful questions turn out to be the same ones every parent faces. Do they have other children to play with. Do they feel loved, and get told no often enough. Are they given company, and also left alone sometimes to be bored. The number of children in the house was never the thing doing the work.
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