November 2015

The Idyllic Life of an only child (part 2)

I have received a number of emails as a result of my post last year “The Idyllic Life of an only child” which I would like to share, although the emails were posted as a response on the webpage above. I particularly wanted to share this post  as it very balanced and makes useful points, specially around the impact of emotionally distant parents, in a thoughtful fashion. Hello everyone, I am an adult only and as I reflect on my childhood and teenage life with emotionally distant parents – who, in all honesty I believe didn’t plan for a baby, had no real solid careers each, and therefore probably didn’t really want one; in my father’s words “She (mother) wasn’t doing anything so she thought she would have you” – I can truly say that being ‘only’ HAS affected me negatively. I do not care (but am willing to listen [...]

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Are you a parent of an only-child teenager?

I wonder if anyone would be willing to help Ameerah Khadaroo with his Doctoral research? I think it is great when people want to research the lives and aspects of only-children, so if you are a parent of an only-child teenager, please read! Bernice Ameerah Khadaroo  writes: I am a PhD Psychology student at Warwick University and I am currently researching parenting of single-child and two-child families in the UK. This research will help to find out more about how families withonly children differ from those with more than one child during the teenage years. With growing numbers of couples having only one child, this would be important and relevant not just for parents and academics, but for all those who work with children. I am looking for families with children aged 11-14 to take part by both the adolescent and the parents completing some online questionnaires. At a later date, some [...]

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