May 2012

Trooper: A happy 80 year old only child.

Here is a heart warming story from ‘Trooper’ who celebrates his life as an only child demonstrating the challenges and ways to overcome them. I am now in my eighty third year and I am an “only child”.  I have never married, I have never felt the need to be tied. I walked away from all family ties after my mother passed away in 1982 (my father having pre deceased her) even before this I had little contact with the family at large for a number of years (my choice). It was made very plain to me at the age of six that I would be the only one, there would be no other siblings, so I had best understand I was to be my own man. My father was a professional soldier, and working hard to improve his position, my mother was a senior Civil Servant in the Foreign [...]

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Positive and contented ‘adult-onlies’

Taking note of a previous comment made in response to one of the posts: that the use of only ‘child’ for an ‘adult-only-child’ is rather infantalising, I have  decided in this post to use ‘adult-only’ as suggested. However in my experience when the ‘child’ part is taken out, most people do not associate  ‘adult-only’ with having no siblings. Rather something quite different! Similarly ‘singleton’, another word to substitute only child, is often understood as someone without a partner rather than some one without siblings. So after this post I will probably revert to only child adult! Another comment suggested all the people who I have interviewed or have written to me have come from dysfunctional families. Not true – of course many only children are brought up in functional families but that does not mean they will always have a positive view of their only child status. The recent article [...]

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