July 2013

A perspective from the 1990′s

I’m 15 years old and all my life I have hated being an only child.  I only had time to skim through a couple of your stories in the research section and the first two I read definitely stood out to me.  People always think I’m spoiled, but it’s not true at all and I often envy other people with siblings.  I think one time I was at the grocery store and I saw these two siblings fighting over something.  It was so cute how the little girl admired her brother so much and wanted to be just like him but at the same time was so mad at him for pushing her.  The next time I looked over she was holding his hand and he was pushing her away out of “embarrassment”.  I think I almost started crying right there and I’m not a very emotional person.  I knew [...]

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A perspective from the 1960′s

I hated being an only child and can remember asking every year if I could have a brother or sister for birthday or Christmas.  I was tired of always having all the latest games and toys but no-one to share them with, what is the point of having such wonderful things as they were perceived by other children if there was no-one to play them with?  I hated it I had a lonely and miserable experience as an only child.  Always over anxious to share or give my things away to others for to me they were but meaningless objects with no fun attached. Even now that I am 43 I will give someone my last penny share anything and everything and let people have what they want for the joy of sharing it with others.  I never enjoy activities on my own because all I remember was as a child being forced to experience everything alone.  So [...]

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A perspective from the 1980′s

Hello, I am an only child, now 22 year old adult. I hated being an only child and I struggled a lot with loneliness and grief. What extenuated the loneliness I felt was my dysfunctional family. Early Life: My mom more or less destroyed every shred of a relationship with her siblings, so I didn’t even have the ability to connect well with my extended family. I always longed for a sibling but because of my mother’s mental health issues, I wasn’t even allowed to own a pet, which broke my heart. I am a very social person by nature and the pain and isolation caused by my upbringing still haunts me to this day. I remember daydreaming and creating my own “dream family” complete with all kinds of siblings and pets. It was my way of trying to survive. To this day, I feel as though I have a difficult time relating to small children because I did not have [...]

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