Bernice’s Research

Life Stages – Late Adulthood

Bernice continues her discussion of Life Stages from the perspective of the only-child adult. After the  Middle Adult life-stage, when we are actively involved in generativity – that is helping the next generation either through raising children or contributing to the welfare of future generations in paid or voluntary work – we arrive at Late Adulthood. (Erikson 1959) sees Late Adulthood as a time when people come to terms with their lives and reassess what they have done or achieved in the light of what they still would like to do. At this stage people are focused towards the latter years of their lives. This life stage is a time that can be particularly difficult for the adult only child who by now often has very little, if any family. This is a time when some people can feel despair. For the adult only child, a sense of despair can [...]

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Life Stages: Middle Adulthood

Bernice continues her discussion of Life Stages from the perspective of the only-child adult. After the  Young adult life -stage, which is concerned with making relationships and settling down, we move into the middle-adult, life-stage. Middle adulthood is the time when we are actively involved in generativity. This is about helping the next generation and could be through raising children or contributing to the welfare of future generations through paid or voluntary work,  or even perhaps in some other way. However it is also at this stage that many only children and non onlies,  find themselves caring for elderly parents. My research suggests that this phase of caring for elderly parents is particularly challenging for onlies, who often have strong feelings of responsibility toward parents’ and at the same time no siblings to share these feelings with. It also means that for some only-children the projected responsibility of elderly parents [...]

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What exactly is only child syndrome?

  Since I posted Durango’s article on only child syndrome there has been quite a lot of response – so I thought I would  post some of my research and thoughts. The word syndrome taken from the Greek word ‘sundromos’ meaning ‘running together’, is used for a group of symptoms that collectively indicate or characterize a disease or psychological disorder, and can be attributed to a distinctive or characteristic pattern of behaviour. The strong medical connotations and the negative meaning usually attached to the word syndrome makes the word emotive and in many ways derogatory to the experience of the only-child. However I will explore this so called ‘syndrome’ from only child literature, popular ideas and prejudice.  Shil1978 wrote in ‘Pros and Cons of Being The Only Child’: The advantages could be that you get the undivided love and attention of your parents. They would dote on you more and [...]

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One or three types of only-children?

One the both interesting and frustrating aspects of only child research is the conflicting data that emerges. On the one hand there are many like Polit and Falbo who believe their studies have shown little difference between children with siblings and only children, and others who say that only children have greater advantages because of so much parental attention. While others dwell on the popular stereotype of the maladapted, socially inept, lonely only. Looking at the research on only-children over several decades Rosenberg & Hyde (1993) have attempted to account for the conflicting data by suggesting only-children are not a homogeneous group. After summarising the inconsistencies in the previous research they suggest there are two opposing theoretical views: The first  view emphasises the uniqueness of onlies who are never dethroned and have all the parental attention and are advantaged. The second view states onlies suffer deprivation from lack of siblings [...]

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Life Stages: Young adulthood

Here is the next in the series I have written on life stages of the only child. Previous ones are: Infancy; Early School Years and Adolescence. We saw  that adolescence is characterised by forming an identity, separate from parent ideals and expectations. Young adulthood is characterised by achieving some degree of intimacy through relationships, as opposed to remaining in isolation. Children with siblings spend more time together and relatively little time alone, thus giving them many opportunities to be with another human being of a similar age and stage. (it is believed approximately 33% of the day siblings interact with one another). This is very different for the only-child who has probably spent their 33% of time on their own, playing with toys, imaginary friends or pets. Whilst this gives them useful experience of being alone and finding ways to amuse themselves, the detrimental side is that it is not [...]

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Life Stages: Early School Years

In my previous post we saw that having well attuned parents in early childhood and opportunities to mix with other children, can ensure the only child will not be at a disadvantage in social and psychological development. This continues to be true once a child begins school as they will be able to continue to develop trust and autonomy from the first life-stage as well as initiative and industry as they grow older. Whilst children with siblings have learned a good deal of interaction with each other; optimally only children will also have been given similar opportunities. However recent research has estimated that on average siblings spend about 33% of their free time with a sibling (Time Magazine 2006) which the article states is considerable more time than they spend with either parents, friends, and teachers or even alone. As a sibling they have acted as playmate, collaborator, co-conspirator, tormentor, [...]

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Life Stages: Adolescence

In the Early Childhood Stage, we looked at some of the challenges the only child may face when moving into the world of school. We saw these difficulties were by no means inevitable but were common for those only children who had not experienced much peer interaction in their early life, or had parents who found it difficult to separate from their own emotional needs to fulfil the emotional needs of their child. Adolescence is the time when ‘ego identity’ needs to be achieved: this means knowing who you are and how you fit into the rest of society. Peer groups are particularly significant at this stage as they allow for peer identity to emerge through interaction with others and provide the support for the move from childhood to adulthood by separating emotionally from parents. This is why being able to have other children to interact with at an early [...]

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What are the most significant concerns for adult onlies? – Aging and dying parents.

  I have noticed that many adult onlies write emails about the difficulties of managing elderly parents. It is often harder to cope with – when you are the only one. Part of this is the responsibility of care, both emotional and physical, but there is also the realisation of how becoming an orphan will affect us, when our parents die. My own research and a piece of research undertaken in the US by Roberts and White Blanton (2001) concluded that ‘aging parents was the main concern for the young adults interviewed.’  They were also anxious about outliving their parents, and appear to feel a ‘lack of lifespan continuity’. What this means, is the sense that many of us have after our parents’ die that there is no one left to be a witness to our lives. (Sibling adults only experience this later in life if they are the remaining [...]

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Life Stages: Infancy

Life Span Theory has been popular as it shows us what the expectations and challenges are at different stages in our life. The theory is based on the idea that during our lives we go through developmental stages and that each stage has unique characteristics, which serve as the building blocks for the next stage. If the tasks of one stage are not complete we take them into the next. I thought this was an interesting model to adapt to the psychological development of only children who grow up without one of the significant social and emotional resources that help to navigate these crucial developmental stages – that is siblings. Undertaking in-depth interviews with adult only children over several years, the importance of looking at three areas of the only child experience was highlighted.  The first is the internal world of the only-child; the second is the inter-subjective world that [...]

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What else can we learn from only child research?

Part 2 In the previous post: Research in the West and China – are only children different? I discussed the rather contradictory facts from the research carried out by both US and Chinese researchers. Let us look at these contradictions further and see what we may learn. If we look at China: Poston & Falbo’s criticised the Chinese psychologists for holding negative stereotypes of only-children, as they did in their US research. Similarly they conclude that only-children are at a slight advantage over those with siblings, as they stated in the US. But it appears to me, that research, at least in China, has been politically useful with regard to the one-child policy and of course this is publically funded which I image is also the case in the US. What is particularly interesting to me is the cultural bias all research contains. In China where collectivism and achievement is [...]

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