Stories from the research interviews
Alice had a sister but her journey is similar to the imaginative journeys of all children The stories can also be seen at www.onlychildadult.comonly child counselling in west dorset
The following stories are extracts from the interviews carried out over a period of a year. You may find the material surprising, even shocking. My participants are also co-researchers. We are all on a voyage of discovery. The interviews were unstructured as I wanted a sense of how other people saw their experience of being an only child. My first surprise was that most people had not really thought much about it! However as the interviews progressed, a great deal of rich material emerged. As my co-researchers built trust, they were able to explore deeper and deeper into their feelings, opening doors which some had never opened before.
Only Child Stories: Extracts from the interviews
No-one to play with
I suppose when I was quite small really
certainly before I was at school…
I was suddenly aware
because there was a family next door where there were four children…
people playing together in the garden
I’d be in our garden and think -
‘Well there wasn’t anybody playing with me!’
I was kind of on my own
I use to sort of resent that
I didn’t have anybody and I use to think…
when they go to bed at night –
they’ll have other people there
When I go to bed at night there’s just sort of me -
I haven’t got any one to talk to.
Being special and responsible
The two do go together in a way. I had huge responsibility, there were my parents my grandparents, I was the only grandchild, and the only child. There was a feeling I think of being special, which was so important, and with that went responsibility
I lost my specialness at about eleven or twelve. I felt I lost my specialness -I rebelled I went completely off the rails for a while
But what’s happened in my adult years to create that specialness? - I’ve again made myself responsible for being a certain way in a relationship. I don’t think I’ve ever really come to grips with that, and a friend of mine says - It always feels that you’re trying to sort of make things right for everybody, give so much otherwise you feel you’ll be rejected
I mean that’s something he said to me, may be that is the whole thing. I am responsible; otherwise, I’ll never be special. There is a part of me that wants to be very special, has a right to be very special, but the other part of me, the shadow part of me is saying no. The other part of me is saying; you’re just a member of this world, you don’t have a right to be anything, you’re just on your own mate, you’re just you. The bad bits out weigh the good bits, you don’t have a right to have a special place in anybody’s heart, that’s what it feels like.
I’m not saying I have that with me all the time. That’s my conflict isn’t it?
I want to be special to somebody or I don’t feel that I’m special. It’s not with everybody that I want to be special. Part of me feels that I want to be special to one person or to certain people, a few people, but the other part of me thinks why should I? I don’t have that right, so there is the conflict.
I swing backwards and forwards from this person who wants to have all this validation, wants to have the relationship. Yet the other part of me thinks: I’m being selfish, I’m being like a typical only child who is selfish indulged in a way
It feels like the child in me, the little me is saying, I want to be special, the adult part is saying: but actually that’s really selfish you’re being really indulgent. So there’s again this sort of conflict, that’s what comes out again. I’m always trying to recreate that specialness aren’t I?
Why do I have to be an only child?
Why can’t I have one?
Why does my mother have to be different?
All these mothers must have had lots of children
or at least two!
So why does she have to be different?
Why can’t she have another baby because that’s what I want!
I want to have a brother or a sister!
I think - I thought she was really selfish…
I don’t think I actually thought it was like to spite me
or anything like that –
I just kind of felt
Why do I have to be different?
and she was making me different.
Spoiling
Mum used to say: You’re an only child, everybody’s going to say you’re spoilt!
Well you’re not going to be spoilt. Just because you’re an only child, don’t think you’re going to get anything more. And it almost felt as if – because I was an only child I was going to be deprived. I wasn’t going to get anything. I didn’t get anything. It was like there was an over compensation there was that assumption you’d be spoilt.
Well I was spoilt, not in the way, not in the way that they meant!
Making a stand
When I stood up to my mother a year ago by saying: I can’t look after you any more! Well I remember her first reaction was to beat her fists on the bed and say - You’ve won! You’ve won! You’ve won! And it felt terrifying, really terrifying, a confirmation of my experience, my terror of our relationship being a power battle, that we couldn’t both exist. It either had to be me or her. It has felt like in living my own life some how she has to be sacrificed. And may be that’s why it was so difficult to do that before. It’s that particular those particular parents – but being their only child has just made it so intense and so focused that when I was in my teens or in my twenties and thirties, I couldn’t fully live my own life because it was so different to theirs. Because… then they wouldn’t exist. I mean I do feel since I made that stand a year ago, my mother has been living in a rest home since then. I did feel that we had the possibility for a different relationship. I do now feel very separate from her but I still at times feel guilt. I suppose I think: Does she now feel she has to die? and I think well that’s ok, she is eighty-nine, but I do feel, I also feel guilty. It’s like I’m still taking responsibility by saying - If I’m fully going to live my life then she has to lose hers I’m responsible for that!
I do feel uncomfortable with that. I can’t see it in any other way because it’s almost as if - it feels like I was my parents creation. they owned me, in detaching myself from that they can no longer exist. So in a way parting with that makes me hate being an only child
I feel really angry right now. I don’t feel I should talk to anybody because it hurts, it’s like there was no choice. I think that’s why I’ve never had any children actually. And it’s a relief really at another level I feel well I’ve not even lived half a life.
I feel very, very sad, The half life I’ve had has been a self-defeating one in order to maintain my parent’s illusions.
Wanting a sibling
I use to talk to my toys…
It was The Lady and the Tramp at that time
I had the Lady dog as a big soft toy
I use to take her to bed and everywhere with me …
I remember laying there having conservations with her
I can actually remember laying there saying
I wish I had a brother or a sister Lady dog!
Why couldn’t I have one?
I definitely did have a sort of fantasy world of what it would be like
Over-sensitivity
If somebody’s difficult to communicate with I don’t immediately think: Oh they’re difficult to communicate with. I think: Oh they’re not interested in me
they don’t like me. I know that’s the sensitivity that I bring from being an only child. I think the sense of ‘going on being’ with a group of siblings, when they don’t give you attention all the time, you are just all there together. You’ve got a connection I never had.
Learning disappointment
May be as an only child, we haven’t learnt to be disappointed by our siblings.
So we get a shock when we automatically expect that people will be honest and moral. We get a shock if they aren’t.
Resentful and rebellious
I partly became very rebellious, did opposite things ,sort of like I’d leave my jobs without any other jobs to go to. I remember going on the dole. I think I angrily wanted to deprive my parents of the joy of feeling proud of me -because I was theirs so to feel more autonomous I rebelled.
Hostility and envy
I suppose envy comes up. I guess in that original triangle, I think one of the things I felt was being daddy’s special daughter. My mother’s envious attacks were unbearable, so I’ve always anticipated envy, attack and hostility. Not having the capacity to take in anything from what other people might be giving me – that felt too frightening. The only power I’ve had is in the sense of trying to give to others
Parents/value
I never felt that either of them recognised me for who I was, so it’s not surprising in a way, that I have chosen a lot of the time, people who are unequal, who clearly aren’t going to value me for who I am.
Only child stigma
Being an only child felt a stigma, so I didn’t really want to look at it - now it feels safe, quite painful, but I think overall being an only child reverberates on all my relationships.
We were asked to go into different groups, according to the number of siblings we had. I was the only one who was an only child. Quite illogically I actually felt not just awkwardness and embarrassment, but I actually felt ashamed. I felt like I was different, not as good, there must be something wrong with me, my family.
I actually felt ashamed. Something was wrong - I had no brothers or sisters - so I would not be able to relate in the same way as them. They would all relate in a different way to me, my way was not as good as theirs.
Something wrong with me, something wrong with my family – it felt like a stigma that’s what it felt like! I am not sure whether that connected with when I was younger. I felt left out, certainly left out in the family, they were all adults. I was the child in the middle, everyone talking over me. It was the same feeling when my husband was with all his sisters I felt there must be something wrong with me I do not fit in here that’s right I don’t fit in.
It made me connect back to the playground they all had brothers and sisters. They were talking about their brothers and sisters. I felt different not, as good not as, not accepted, hence the stigma! There’s that girl who hasn’t got any brothers or sisters crazy! That poor girl, that’s when the shame came, something about when people are saying poor her, she is an only child, shame comes in there. I felt ashamed when I was younger, deficient.
My parents alliance against me
Typical would be if I’d done something to displease my mother. She’d say -I’ll tell your father and it would be like there was this sort of hostile presence. I would feel cast out really. So I guess I could only feel stronger in the triangle if I was able to make this alliance with my father. I don’t ever remember having an alliance with my mother - may be sometimes, in teenage years, just in the sense that we’re both women sort of thing. But I know I resisted that I didn’t feel that I wanted to be with my mother at all. I didn’t feel akin with her. I felt very angry with her a lot of the time. But in those teenage years, I also lost the alliance with my father because I think he was frightened by my sexuality. So he backed off in a big way and also of course I wanted to experiment. All my experimentation he was very contemptuous about. So I felt very isolated, then as a teenager, completely isolated. They were together and I was cast out
Dethronement/loneliness
I found that very hard - to be dethroned, I was dethroned wasn’t I - in my marriage? I’m dethroned sometimes with friends. I don’t like that part of me. I don’t like that part that is jealous. I am feeling really sad again. I want to cry. I don’t like that part of me, that jealous part of me, that possessive part of me, my real shadow side. I don’t like it but that is what it feels like sometimes to be dethroned. Have I really been dethroned yet? Am I always setting myself up in relationships to be dethroned?
It’s strange but I think the main thing, that I was amazed at, being an only child has really affected relationships. I don’t think I have ever really taken that on board. I think I have in my own therapy, a little, bit but not so much as I did when I went back through this and thinking since this whole interview. I’ve been very aware of how I am in relationships, how I am in the world. It was painful because I really got in touch with the loneliness.
Not needing people - being alone
I don’t need you. I don’t need anyone, part of me feels I don’t need anybody part of me says: I can do this alone, I don’t need anybody, that’s the paradox of being alone. There’s part of me that wants to be alone, be able to think I am quite independent, I am quite fine on my own. I can do all this, but the other side of that is I am desperately lonely. I want to have an intimate relationship. The fear is I will be let down. All men leave me, so if I am alone I will be alright
Everything affected by being the only child
I think it’s affected the whole sort of relationship thing -
friends and partners
I think it’s affected my confidence in myself as well
because of the way my mother was. I was so isolated.
Now to actually believe that sometimes what I think is actually right and ok –
I think it’s affected me a lot like that –
I think it’s probably affected me more in kind of doing my own thing
I’d say a sort of quite selfish element - this is how I like things
the way I want to do it
If there had been somebody else they would have interfered with what I was doing. it’s narrowed my experience of being a child
in the way I feel – it doesn’t feel there’s been an opportunity
at a young age to explore relationships with other people
other than adults really,
I very much lived in that adult world –
My aunt, my granny, my mum, my dad, the old man downstairs
and a few children thrown in - but not very many
Thinking about being an only child
My first reaction is one of loneliness. Loneliness as a child, in relationships, in life. It also strikes me that I feel I have always had to cope. There was no-one to share with as a child. Everything fell on my shoulders. This pattern continued. I had to sort everything when Dad died. I have never had anyone I could really rely on in a relationship sense until now. No-one has ever before really been there for me – why should they be now? Consequently I take control when I do not really want to and feel I have to cope with everything all on my own. I desperately do not want my life to be like this (as I type this tears are running down my face). When I have begun to believe people they have eventually let me down. I know if I only rely on myself then I know exactly what is going on and I will not let myself down. I don’t want to live like this anymore – it is a struggle…
Teacher’s little helper
I can remember there was this girl called Barbara
(this was like in the reception class)
who came in and every morning
She use to stand and cry -
the teacher would say to me -
You go and talk to her because you’re really good at cheering her up
So I’d go and talk to her
I have this kind of picture of people saying to me
almost like asking me to take a more adult role
You go and help so and so
I was reasonably able with my work
so there was an element as well of
Oh you go and help them to do that
I remember that more than actually playing on a parallel
Conflict and taking responsibility
I’ve never experienced it myself, it’s been really difficult, if I’ve had an argument with somebody, if I’ve had an argument with a friend, I’ve taken on the responsibility to sort it. It’s not been easy for me to hold the tension, it’s un-natural. I have to sort it - it has to all be right - put right.
May be that’s because I never had that relationship with somebody. I’ve never experienced that relationship where you can be fighting hammer and nails, like I see my girls doing, they can be horrible to each other and the next minute they’re supporting each other and laughing. I’m better now – but I can’t bear there to be friction. I’ve never been able to have it, experience it, go through it really in a family situation
Stating needs and Anger
I was never allowed to be angry, I would be restricted as well. I was never able to say what my needs were, I still don’t think I’m able to really say what my needs are. I don’t feel I have a right. I never talked back, unless I was spoken to, never did then - but I do now! Somebody recently remarked that he thought there was a lot of anger underneath me - that’s what drove me to have so much energy. There’s a lot of anger inside and when I feel really secure in a relationship I can be angry that’s really freeing There’s a few relationships very few that I can be really angry in can really say I’m angry and I know it will be ok - that the relationship will survive.
Being on my own
I love being on my own because nobody’s demanding anything from me. Sometimes I feel like everybody’s demanding I just want them all to go away – clients, kids, husband, friends. Yet the opposite of that, is I feel alone and lonely. I want to be, I suppose with one of two people. I just want to share so much. I think that’s what it is - I want to share so much. I want to talk about me. I don’t give myself permission to do that very much.
Meaning so much to her mother
I suppose I feel it was on her terms…
We could do all those things when she wanted
as she wanted
whereas if I’d sort of said -
Oh I don’t want to go for a walk today
and pick dandelions for a stew
I want to go and play ball with the boy next door
It would have been -
No you can’t because we’re going for walk
to pick dandelions for the stew
She desperately wanted to be with me all the time
She’d really wanted to have a baby and that I meant so much
She would always say that –
right until the day she died
but it was claustrophobic
I couldn’t just do things that I wanted to do
even as a young child
Poppy described her mother’s life as:
she didn’t work,
she didn’t have a career,
she just lived her life
around my father and me.
