Households with a single child now outnumber those with two (by more than half a million) and make up 46 per cent of all families. An article in the The Daily Mail stated that recent research concluded only children were happier than sibling children: Why an only child is happier than those who have brothers and sisters. Similarly the Observer article: An only child is a happy child claimed, from the same research: that because children with siblings encounter sibling rivalry and reduced parental attention, and worse still sibling bullying, an only child must be happier simply because they do not have a sibling. More recently “The Week” also published a similar article: Are Only Children Happier? Is this true? First of all, the research as far as I have read, is based on a large scale survey conducted in Britain by the Economic and Social Research Council. It does [...]
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An only child is a happy child, says research? The more siblings children have, the unhappier they become, due to bullying and competition by Anushka Asthana, The Observer, Sunday 14 November 2010 In an interview with Rolling Stone magazine, Natalie Portman once said: “I would never have been an actress if I weren’t an only child, because my parents would never have let me be the star of the family at the expense of another child.” It turns out that when it comes to the advantages of life without brothers and sisters, she was on to something. One of the widest-ranging research projects on family life conducted in Britain has revealed that the fewer siblings children have, the happier they are – and that only children are the most contented. The findings, shared exclusively with the Observer, suggest that “sibling bullying” could be part of the problem, with 31% of [...]
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