growing up as an only child essay

Pros and Cons of Growing Up as an Only Child Essay (Critical Writing)

Introduction.

Not many people know what the term pros and cons mean and how it affects a child and the parents. The word pros mean that the child is being raised alone in the family hence has no one to share resources with or fight for things in the home. Cons mean loneliness or boredom.

Children born alone in the family have advantages and disadvantages. The grandparents in such families seem to love these children so much although even in a family with many siblings the grandparents also seem to love them with a single child, the love is not divided. The attitude of grandparents may be affected by traditional believes since they have different beliefs according to their background.

A lone child enjoys all the benefits of the family alone since he/she has no one else to share with. There are no economic constraints in such a family although even if the family has many children they usually have a way to care for their family since they planned for them again nowadays there are many methods of family planning so it is the role of the couple to choose the number of children they want although there is the aspect of God being in control of children to the believers.

Just as Rhoda M. in her article in www. Helium says; she grew alone so she had more cons than pros. she says that she had no one to play with & her life was spoilt I tend to believe her and this from experience with my own cousin.

A child raised alone can be spoilt and is hard for such a child to be independent although in school most of them do very well because the parents have a lot of attention in his/her homework or school work to be more specific. Let me once more revisit the story of my cousin. She was born and grew alone with her parents in an environment where they were no children even nearby the village with whom she could play. The only person she could play with was the parents. She was over pampered by the parents and the grandparents. She had all kinds of toys to play with but she was never contented because not all the time the parents were available for her to play with and again not all kinds of games she could play hence making her life in the home more miserable despite the fact that she had all that she needed. She lacked nothing that she needed. When she went to school after work the parents made sure that they had looked at her books and knew her progress in school and also her studies at home. I admired the way she was living and wished I could also be alone little did I knew that she did not enjoy much being alone. She was so solitary and bored at times for she had no one to play with. I evidenced this during the holidays because she was coming to our home and when the schools re-opened she could cry her heart out refusing to back to their home until she could be beaten up at times. I was wondering why she was behaving like that since she lacked nothing and ate the best foods. It’s later I came to realize that the cons were outweighing her and came to accept the saying of the late Pope John Paul II who said that “the only gift parents can give their children are sisters and brothers”.

Being the only child of the parent is enjoyable only at the tender age but when a time reaches when you have to be independent live starts being tough or when you have to live with other people especially in boarding schools where you seem to share everything and that is a life that you have never been introduced to.

Just as my cousin was living with her parents being provided with everything now things have taken another trend she is spoilt and might remain the same way for the rest of her life as Rhoda was saying in her article that she was spoilt. Now my cousin is married and keeps on bothering her husband every now and then. When they have a grudge and disagrees about an issue she runs home to her parents who have nothing else to do apart from regretting why they did not limit their love to her. The parents have no choice but to talk to her and sometimes she even doesn’t heed to whatever they say and they have no other option apart from giving her whatever she needs.

In China, there is a policy that governs the number of children one has to have and this policy was started in 1980. According to Chinese by James Reynolds BBC News, the national policy is for couples to have a single child and law has to be taken for anyone who violates that rule. In China, if a woman gets pregnant the second time she is allowed to take an abortion. Some of the reasons that make this country be so strict on the number of children are scarcity of land and poverty so raising many siblings becomes a problem. I read in a daily nation in 2006 that there was a couple in China who got many siblings and had to give out some of them to the relatives because they were unable to raise them. This policy can work well in the US because as the Chinese sterilize women and accept abortion the US government also accepts the same and their basic aim is to control the population. An American writer McFann, Carolyn says that there are pros and cons about a single child in the family although he advises couples to have one child. The American’s prefer just a single child either being adopted or born for the sake of heirs. The few numbers of siblings in the US enable them to control the population and this is one of the reasons that it remains a developed country. The fact that the country has few people there is no limited space and resources and the rate of pollution is low despite the fact that there are many industries. The benefit of and liabilities are the activities which children engage in. these benefits are realized by a child who is alone since there is no competition. Doreen Nagle says that all these benefits such as gifts, picnics, and the like are a result of the parents having no other child hence can afford to provide each and every other thing that the child needs.

Although having one child is important it is good for the parent to take caution on how they bring up the child to avoid spoiling her and her life just as my cousin was spoilt. Parents should love these lone children but should have limitations because even the bible(to the believers) in proverbs states it clearly that ‘spare the rod spoil he child’ parents should be very cautious on how they handle their kids for them to grow up with good manners although there are few who are too hard to handle.

In cultural perspectives, there are different views of lone siblings depending on the locality and the tribe and their beliefs. In history, there are those who had superstations and in the traditional setting, the number of children determined the amount of wealth one had.

In my culture, they believe that having one child there are more cons than pros just as Rhoda M was believing. This child has most of the time to be with adults although this might create good closeness with the parents hence the parents can be in a good position to guide and counsel their child and also help him/her out of peer pressure. Even if the children fight when they are at a tender age and lack toys, gifts, and the like at times it is better to have at least two or three siblings because when they grow up they become cooperative and live in harmony helping each other, sharing and a less weight to cater for the parents in their old age although not all children can live this way.

According to Aronson, J.Z book, parents should have a single child so that they can be able to recruit him/her in academics because education is the only key to success and it’s the responsibility of a parent to do so.

In my opinion, one child is better than having multiple of them although two are better than one for socialization, playing, and deep connection. A one-child family is attractive and the couple does not need to worry much after they retire about how their child will survive since they take care of him/her with the few resources that they have. The only thing I find a nuisance is an overindulgence in the love for the child because this might spoil the child. I would prefer parents to have one child due to the current economical constraints and the fact that modern technology is so high hence people are more involved in other issues rather than large families.

Aronson, J.Z (1996). How schools can recruit hard-to-reach parents. Educational leadership.

Berger, K.S (2001). The developing person through the lifespan. New yolk: Worth. James Reynolds BBC news, Henan province, central China.

McFann, Carolyn. (2007). When planning your family, consider the pros and cons of being an only child. Ezinearticles.

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IvyPanda. (2021, August 27). Pros and Cons of Growing Up as an Only Child. https://ivypanda.com/essays/pros-and-cons-of-growing-up-as-an-only-child/

"Pros and Cons of Growing Up as an Only Child." IvyPanda , 27 Aug. 2021, ivypanda.com/essays/pros-and-cons-of-growing-up-as-an-only-child/.

IvyPanda . (2021) 'Pros and Cons of Growing Up as an Only Child'. 27 August.

IvyPanda . 2021. "Pros and Cons of Growing Up as an Only Child." August 27, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/pros-and-cons-of-growing-up-as-an-only-child/.

1. IvyPanda . "Pros and Cons of Growing Up as an Only Child." August 27, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/pros-and-cons-of-growing-up-as-an-only-child/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Pros and Cons of Growing Up as an Only Child." August 27, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/pros-and-cons-of-growing-up-as-an-only-child/.

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Not So Lonely: Busting the Myth of the Only Child

A burgeoning acceptance toward families with only one child is finally starting to creep into society at large, eliminating the mythical stereotype.

Bill and Hillary have one. Franklin D. Roosevelt was one. And the chances are you probably know one or two. Even I have one of the selfish, lonely, and maladjusted creatures said to be populating America in greater numbers every year. I am referring to the “only child,” also known as singletons or onlies.

Despite the only child being a growing demographic, having one still attracts a surprising amount of criticism. At a playground in London, one mother told me she thought having an only child was tantamount to child abuse as she watched my daughter toddle alone in the sandbox. When I told my mother that I probably wouldn’t have any more children, she exclaimed disparagingly that one child was “simply not a family.” My husband, on the other hand, has not had any of these accusations leveled against him. The shaming of mothers of singletons is yet another arena in which guilt, scorn, and impossibly high expectations are heaped upon women, encouraged by society’s biased views.

A year ago, the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs estimated the world’s population at 7.2 billion. At the same time, natural resources like clean air and water are dwindling. Yet to talk of restricting the number of children people choose to have smacks of coercive policy-making or, worse, genetic engineering. In developed countries, though, a limit on family size seems to be occurring organically, without the need for legislation or encouragement from campaigners. If you had asked American women in the 1930s how many children they wanted, 64 percent would have said they wanted at least three. Today, most women feel that 2.5 is ideal. Many of us, however, don’t manage more than one. In fact, 23 percent of Americans have only one child; in New York City, as in a lot of urban centers, the figure is 30 percent.

For many, the rationale for stopping at one child is financial. The cost of raising a kid in the U.S.—before he even gets to college—is $245,300. For others, there simply aren’t enough childbearing years left to have another. And, for a very small minority, the environment and overpopulation are factors. But there is something else at work here: Society is moving away from seeing only children as disadvantaged—though the shift is happening painfully slowly.

Just more than a hundred years ago, the psychologist G. Stanley Hall declared that being an only child was a disease in itself. He was responsible for putting forth the stereotype of the singleton as deficient, indulged, and spoiled. His theories—which he promoted around the same time that psychoanalysis was beginning to blossom—firmly took root. Hall has since undergone some scrutiny, and many of his theories have been rejected within the realm of academia, but popular opinion has yet to catch up. Hall’s words continue to reverberate around playgrounds and kitchen tables all over the country. We hear so often that only children are self-centered, antisocial, and unable to share, that the stereotype has become a self-fulfilling prophecy, or at the very least, what is known as a “ cultural truism .”

In her essay “ G. Stanley Hall: Male Chauvinist Educator ,” the scholar Gill Schofer accuses Hall—the father of child psychology—of being outdated. In Hall’s eyes, women were born solely to be mothers and wives. They were not to engage in any pursuits that might be mentally taxing, such as learning Latin, Greek, or mathematics. If women were to roam outside the realm of the house, society would crumble.

In fairness to Hall, who was born in 1844 and lived the life of a Victorian gentleman, these views were not uncommon for the time. He wrote at length about his mother , whom he worshipped. He described her as the epitome of the Angel in the House, selflessly devoted to her children, her husband, and God. For society to function, Hall believed, all women needed to model themselves on her.

Some of Hall’s opinions were quaint, while others were dangerous. For instance, he advocated something called “retarding,” a process by which a girl’s education was designed to prevent her from engaging in analytical or cerebral pursuits—any curiosity about important subjects such as science, history, or politics was to be repressed in order for her untainted maternal intuition to come to the fore. To Hall, “a purely intellectual woman is…a biological deformity .” And “to a man, wedlock is an incident, but for women, it is destiny.”

So why have Hall’s views on only children held such a grip on our culture when we have shed every one of his opinions on gender roles? In the 1980s, when more women were heading for the workplace and delaying having children, articles in academic journals with titles like “ Negative Stereotypes About Only Children Unfounded; They Do Well on Any Measure ” finally started to appear. These articles helped balance the established preconceptions about only children with careful research. And then, in 1987, Denise F. Polit and Toni Falbo undertook the first large-scale attempt to understand the effects of not having siblings on children.

Polit and Falbo’s findings, which were the result of in-depth analysis of past and current studies, came to the conclusion that singletons and multiples shared much more than we had previously thought. What’s more, they found that the disadvantages of being an only child were, on balance, nonexistent.

Reading the study today, certain details jump out, such as the section on antisocial behavior, one of the traits Hall ascribed to onlies without exception. In previous research, sociability had been measured by self-report, with only children seeing themselves as much less sociable than other children. However, when peers were asked about the sociability of singletons, they were said to be more sociable than children with siblings on average. Another case of cultural truism, perhaps? If you tell a child often enough that he is unsociable, eventually he’ll start to believe it.

More recently, Lauren Sandler’s 2013 book One and Only: The Freedom of Having an Only Child and the Joy of Being One , merges personal stories and anecdotes with up-to-date statistics. Parental happiness, Sandler reports, declines with every child. And in Denmark, women with one child scored far happier than women with no children or women with more than one. Despite this research, the myth of these sad and lonely only children with their desperate and unfulfilled mothers stubbornly persists.

Many studies on the benefits of one-child families, however, seem to feature factors that are irrelevant to many women when they are deciding how many children to have. Most of us probably don’t pay much heed to the fact that only children have higher IQs than those with siblings, or the fact that they often reach higher academic rankings . It certainly wouldn’t be a reason for any woman I know to stop at one. The fact is that modern motherhood and a working life are often incompatible. Some women excel at juggling careers and multiple children—either through hard work, having the money for childcare, living near family members who can look after their children for free, or any combination of these factors. Others simply can’t do it. We stop at one because we don’t have the money, the time, or the love for another child. Our financial and emotional resources, we feel, are only ample enough to nurture one child well. Or perhaps crippling postpartum depression frightens some women away from going through the difficult and lonely years of caring for another baby. That was certainly a factor for me.

One major raison d’être for feminism is to allow women to make informed choices: whether or not to marry, to work, to have children. But the taboo around choosing to have one child persists. I found it shocking that so many people I barely knew felt entitled to point out how selfish I was for not giving my daughter a sibling. But selfishness is closely linked to—and sometimes confused with—self-preservation, a human being’s most deeply ingrained instinct for survival, and a desirable and healthy characteristic for someone raising a child.

Perhaps, in time, as more people choose to stop at one child, the stigma will disappear. This will also make it easier on those who had the decision to have one child thrust upon them through infertility, ill health, the breakup of a relationship, or, in some cases, the death of a child’s sibling. It will also free children without siblings from having to prove to the world that they can be social, generous, and well-adjusted. Negative comments directed at one-child families suggest a view of life where we can all choose what we want, when and how we want it. Even when it comes to having children, the image that people are being sold—and that some are buying—is one of the happy consumer with an array of endless choices. Yet the reality of bearing children is far from this.

Whatever happened to the idea that life cannot be perfectly planned, nor can we always get what we want when it comes to the big decisions facing us. We are all muddling through, doing the best we can. Siblings won’t necessarily make a sad and lonely child happy, nor will not having siblings necessarily make a happy child miserable. Singletons, in other words, are more maligned than maladjusted , and it does them a disservice to perpetuate outdated stereotypes invented by a reactionary Victorian gentleman. G. Stanley Hall has been dead for 90 years. Maybe a burgeoning acceptance toward one-child families is finally starting to creep into society at large, one that will allow modern women and the people around them to stop seeing one child as being “only” one, and to start seeing them for the abundance they really are.

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Why I'm Glad I Grew Up an Only Child

Updated on 7/23/2018 at 10:03 AM

The most common question I was asked as an only child growing up was, not surprisingly, "Don't you wish you had a brother or sister?" And for as long as I can remember, I've always answered "no" without any hesitation. "You'll always have someone to play with, you'll have a lifetime support system ," they said. Although enticing, I never longed for a sibling and I'm sure my parents were thrilled I never asked. (Mom and Dad, you're welcome.)

In my current early adult years, it's not unusual for people to be surprised at my sibling-less life. I'm told that I don't seem like a single child, which is most often defined when I ask as spoiled, attention-hungry, self-centered, and dependent. I guess it's better than getting the reaction, "Oh, that makes sense," but the fact is, I believe that growing up alone contributed to the absence of those traits.

It was never about the attention nor not having to share — those weren't the reasons I never cared for a brother or sister. I kept busy with neighbors and friends and I didn't mind the moments I was alone. I always had quite the imagination so it wasn't hard to get creative and I think I've always been able to appreciate time to myself — even as a child. My tripod of a family was fulfilling enough and I would cringe inside when others criticized or questioned my mother's decision to stick with one . Yes, an older sibling would have been able to watch over me and my future children would have aunts and/or uncles like the loving ones I grew up around. But I believe that my strong independence today can easily be attributed to me growing up as an only child.

I like that I was able to forge my own path rather than live in the shadows of someone else, and that I had to learn things on my own as I went. Plus due to some fantastic parenting, I learned to be self-sufficient at a very young age, which has made me totally fine as a now-22-year-old, still pretty-fresh-out-of-college woman who lives alone in a new city.

I was always fascinated by the fact that those with siblings had a unique bond with somebody else in their family other than a parent, cousin, or relative; a blood relationship with a peer almost — something that I will never be able to experience myself. I've never really been envious of my friends for that, but I do understand the many joys and perks that come with having a brother or sister . I probably wouldn't have gotten as bored at times and would've always had a readily available confidant. However, I'm thankful for my solo upbringing.

So next time someone pressures you to have more children or gives you crap about being an only child yourself, tell them that I turned out just fine — and your child will too!

• Family Relationships
• Personal Essay

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The highs and lows of being (or having) an only child

Readers respond to Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett’s article about the criticism some parents face for having one child

This was an interesting article by Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett ( ‘One and done’ parents are some of the most thoughtful and compassionate I have met, 31 March ). I remember a fascinating radio programme some years ago, in which researchers asked only children about their experiences. About half reported that being an “only” made it hard to make friends because they had no practice with siblings – they became loners with a lack of good relationships. The other half reported that having no siblings obliged them to become socially skilled, and that they were great at forming relationships.

The researchers concluded that only children are just like the rest of us, displaying the same range of personality traits and resulting life journeys. Alison Carter Lindfield, West Sussex

I was staggered that anyone with only one child would merit criticism for any reason. In my book, that would be a high accolade. I was an only child of an only child, and in youth had always hankered for a sibling. When I decided to follow a different path and had two, they fought and are still, in middle age, not best buddies. When number one had two children, they fought. Number two had one child. She and I have formed an “only child club” and are both highly able to entertain and occupy ourselves when left to our own devices.

Only children can be great, can usually stand on their own two feet, have no one else to live up to or feel threatened by, and are able to cope with singledom when necessary. Name and address supplied

Interesting that Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett’s discussion about the impact of being an only child focuses on their experience as children. Apart from the solidarity that a brother or sister can give you, one important advantage of having siblings is sharing your parents as you, and they, get older.

Siblings can share the burden of parental expectation (whether about careers or grandchildren), but also share support and care for elderly parents as they become frail.

I have been very aware of these issues when I compare my own experience – I have four siblings – with that of my friends who are only children. Whether it is practical support or just someone to discuss options with, that shared responsibility is invaluable. Cath Attlee London

What people fail to mention when questioning someone for choosing to have only one child is that it might not be a choice. I was pregnant three or four times, some pregnancies with traumatic outcomes, before my final successful pregnancy that resulted in our beautiful child. Even with this pregnancy, I spent three months in hospital on bed rest with high blood pressure. So having achieved a healthy child, I could think of no reason to put our little family through such potential trauma again.

Our child has grown up to be kind, caring and all we could wish for. Having been a model, then actress, she is now in her second year’s training to be a midwife – something that she said she always wanted to do despite my horror stories, having been a midwife myself.

So, no, only children are no more likely to be spoiled than any one else. Also, there is no guarantee that you will get on with your siblings. Gabrielle Page Brentwood, Essex

• Parents and parenting

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Growing up, I didn't mind being an only child. Now as an adult, I hate it.

• My mom recently asked me if I dreaded being an only child when I was little, which I didn't. 
• I didn't tell her that being an adult with no siblings puts a lot of weight on my shoulders. 
• Having siblings doesn't guarantee a good relationship, but I wish I had someone else to help. 

When I was born, my parents were considered " old " parents . They were 37 and 38, and their plan had never been to have me so late in their lives. They had been married for 12 years and unexplained infertility led to them being childless while everyone around them had babies. 

After trying all the fertility treatments available at the time, without any results, my parents started the process of adoption. Shortly after my mom found out she was pregnant, she was put on bed rest  and the adoption agency paused their search because they wanted my parents to focus on their miracle: me. 

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Throughout my entire life, my mom has joked that I could've had a sibling the same age as me had the agency not been so old school. Growing up I really didn't feel like I needed a sibling , but now as an adult, I wish I had one. 

My childhood was amazing

Only children are often asked if they were bored or lonely growing up. The truth is that I wasn't at all. In true Gemini form, I make friends wherever I go, so I kept a busy schedule hanging out with friends all the time. Those friends are still, to this day, like my family. 

We also moved a lot because of my dad's job, which meant we got to travel the world and explore new cultures. I know that if my parents had had more children, this wouldn't have happened because of school schedules, the cost of living, and the logistics of a big family. 

I could always bring a friend when we went on summer trips, so my parents could have adult time while I had someone to play with.

They were also incredibly involved in my life. I have vivid memories of my mom going tubing with me in Mexico because we needed two people. She didn't really want to ride it, but also didn't want to deprive me of the fun. She lost her bikini top on that ride, and decades later, we still laugh about it. 

Now, as an adult, I wish I had someone to help me out

I'm still incredibly close to my parents; we talk almost every day on the phone and text around the clock. While I don't consider them my best friends, I have a more open relationship with them than most of my friends have with theirs. I also live on the other side of the world to them, and not seeing each other as often as we'd want to means we communicate frequently to make up the difference.  

Recently, my mom shared that my dad had lost three of his friends in one week and was feeling sad. A wave of emotions engulfed me: On one hand I wanted to hug my dad, and on the other, I was full of dread over what would be coming up for me. 

Though I didn't mind being an only child as a kid, now as an adult, I'm filled with fear of being the only one to take care of my parents. And while I fully know — from seeing how my own aunts and uncles didn't take care of my grandparents — that a sibling does not equal more help with aging parents, I don't even have someone to talk to about it. It helps that my husband is incredibly supportive, but he has his own dad to take care of, so I feel guilty throwing even more onto him when I know he's already dealing with so much. 

I also carry immense guilt for having left my home country to chase my dream career. If anything were to happen to them, I am over 15 hours away by plane. I bounce between wanting my own life and wanting to be there for them as they become older and need more help.

Recently my mom asked me if I ever had wanted siblings . I told her, "No." She said I had just removed the biggest weight from her shoulder; I didn't have the courage to tell her all of this. 

• Main content

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Who benefits from being an only child a study of parent–child relationship among chinese junior high school students.

• Institute for Population and Development Studies, School of Public Policy and Administration, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, China

After more than three decades of implementation, China’s one-child policy has generated a large number of only children. Although extensive research has documented the developmental outcomes of being an only child, research on the parent–child relational quality of the only child is somewhat limited. Using China Education Panel Survey (2014), this study examined whether the only child status was associated with parent–child relationships among Chinese junior high school students. It further explored whether children’s gender moderated the association between the only child status and parent–child relationships. Two-level ordered logit models suggested that only children were more likely to report a close relationship with their mothers and fathers compared to children from multiple-child families (including two-child families). Taking birth order into consideration, we found that, only children were more likely to have close parent–child relationships than firstborns, whereas no significant differences were found between only children and lastborns. Interaction analyses further suggested that the only child advantages were gender-specific: the positive effects of the only child status were stronger for daughters than for sons, that is, daughters benefited more from being only children. Our findings highlight the importance of considering children’s gender and birth order in exploring the only child effects in the Chinese context. Additional analyses about sibling-gender composition indicated female children were more likely to be disadvantaged with the presence of younger brothers, whereas male children benefited more from having older sisters. This reveals that the son preference culture is still deep-rooted in the Chinese multiple-child families.

Introduction

In 1979, China implemented the highly controversial One-Child Policy (OCP) which required the number of children for each couple to be limited to only one Child ( Falbo and Hooper, 2015 ). Exceptions existed in a few cases. For example, couples who were ethnic minorities, whose first child had disabilities, or whose (from rural areas) first child was a girl could get the chance to have a second child with permission ( Li et al., 2015 ). The One-Child Policy, coupled with the socio-economic development, made China’s fertility sharply fall from 6 in the 1970s to 1.5 in 2010 ( Cai, 2013 ). Although this policy ended on January 1, 2016 and was replaced by a universal Two-Child Policy ( Qian and Jin, 2018 ), the profound impacts of this policy on Chinese society still persist ( Chi et al., 2020 ).

One of the impacts is the generation of large numbers of one-child families. In 2010, the total number of only children rose to 145 million ( Wang, 2013 ). This special group has attracted the attention of many scholars ( Chi et al., 2020 ). A growing body of literature has documented the developmental outcomes of being an only child. Generally speaking, two views exist in academia with regard to the welfare of growing up as an only child ( Liu et al., 2010 ). One view supports the negative side. The notion “being an only child is a disease in itself,” remarked by Fenton (1928) , has provided a base for the popular thinking that only children tend to be spoiled by their parents and grandparents ( Mancillas, 2006 ; Liu et al., 2010 ). This idea argues the adults in the families tend to prioritize the needs of the only child, which could result in adverse developmental outcomes of this child, such as dependence, self-centeredness, and indifference ( Roberts and Blanton, 2001 ; Mancillas, 2006 ). In addition, because only children have no siblings to interact with, they perhaps lack proper interpersonal skills to efficiently negotiate their relationships with their peers ( Downey and Condron, 2004 ). Based on this idea, the popular media usually referred to Chinese only children as “little emperors” ( Fong, 2004 ; Falbo, 2012 ).

However, the above popular thinking was deemed a stereotype for only children ( Mancillas, 2006 ) because it was not supported by most empirical studies both in the West ( Falbo and Polit, 1986 ; Mellor, 1990 ; Falbo, 2012 ) and in China ( Poston and Falbo, 1990 ; Falbo and Poston, 1993 ; Guo et al., 2018 ). Therefore, the other perspective about only children was more positive in its nature: only children tend to be either normal or more advantaged compared to those with siblings in many developmental dimensions ( Falbo and Polit, 1986 ; Polit and Falbo, 1987 ; Mellor, 1990 ; Falbo, 2012 ; Chen and Liu, 2014 ). In China, studies of only children have focused on a variety of outcomes. Concerning academic outcomes, Chinese children without siblings appear to have higher academic achievements and cognitive abilities than children with siblings ( Poston and Falbo, 1990 ; Falbo and Poston, 1993 ; Jiao et al., 1996 ). With regard to psychological outcomes and character features, some studies observed no significant differences between Chinese only children and non-only children ( Poston and Falbo, 1990 ; Guo et al., 2015 ; Wang et al., 2020 ), and others reported better outcomes of only children ( Liu et al., 2010 ; Falbo and Hooper, 2015 ; Guo et al., 2018 ). In terms of the traditional virtues, research demonstrated that although Chinese only children did not differ from their non-only counterparts in the sense of family obligation or filial piety ( Fuligni and Zhang, 2004 ; Deutsch, 2006 ), they are more motivated to have higher achievements in order to assume the responsibility supporting their aging parents ( Fong, 2002 , 2004 ).

Even though an extensive body of literature has made comparisons between the Chinese only, and non-only children on a variety of developmental outcomes (such as academic, psychological, and behavioral outcomes), only a few studies have focused on the comparison of the parent–child relationships between the two groups. According to Western research, the variations in parent–child relationships could explain the differences in developmental outcomes between only children and non-only children ( Falbo and Polit, 1986 ; Polit and Falbo, 1988 ; Mellor, 1990 ; Falbo, 2012 ). Meta-analyses conducted by Falbo and Polit (1986) suggested that the different developmental outcomes between only children and non-only children is because the former group have a special parent–child relationship characterized by increased parental anxiety and attention ( Falbo and Polit, 1986 ; Falbo, 2012 ). Specifically, parents of only children tend to be more anxious than their multiple-child counterparts because of their inexperience in rearing children ( Falbo and Polit, 1986 ). In this case, parents of only children would be more careful and responsive in the child-rearing activities than parents of more children, leading to high-quality parent–child relationships ( Falbo and Polit, 1986 ). Further, the high-quality parent–child relationships would encourage children to interact more with their parents, thereby resulting in a stimulating home environment which was beneficial for only children’s developments ( Polit and Falbo, 1988 ). However, such parent–child relational pattern of only children is observed based on Western literature ( Falbo, 2012 ). Whether the parent–child relationships in Chinese families vary with the sibling status? Are Chinese only children more likely to have a close relationship with their parents than their non-only counterparts? Whether the only child effects, if any, differ based on children’s characteristics? This study is designed to answer the above questions.

The Only Child Status and Parent–Child Relationships in Chinese Families

According to attachment theory, parent–child relationship plays an important role in shaping children’s development ( Videon, 2005 ; Levin et al., 2012 ; Ma et al., 2020 ). Studies have consistently documented the significant impacts of relationship with caregivers on children’s developmental outcomes in China and other cultures ( Dmitrieva et al., 2004 ; Chen, 2017 ; Li et al., 2018 ; Xu et al., 2019 ). A harmonious parent–child relationship provides children a sense of security, which is fundamental for their well-being ( Li et al., 2018 ). For example, in a study conducted among Shanghai public school students (age = 15.3 years), children’s attachment to mothers as well as fathers was found to predict their academic engagement ( Chen, 2017 ). Another study using nationally representative data demonstrated that, in addition to academic achievement, parent–child relationships (together with parental presence) also influenced Chinese children’s cognitive and psychological outcomes ( Xu et al., 2019 ).

The nature of parent–child relationships is highly influenced by culture and social structure ( Chow and Zhao, 1996 ). In Chinese families characterized by Confucian culture, parents have greater authority and power in the hierarchical parent–child relationship than their Western counterparts ( Chow and Zhao, 1996 ; Lu and Chang, 2013 ). Therefore, Chinese children are required to obey their parents on any child-related issues and filial piety is regarded as a necessary virtue a person should have ( Chow and Zhao, 1996 ). However, influenced by the Western culture emphasizing individualism, Chinese parent–child relationship is becoming more egalitarian in recent years ( Sun, 2011 ). Meanwhile, with the development of social economy, the children’s economic value drops while their emotional value increases ( Goh and Kuczynski, 2010 ; Sun, 2011 ). A child-centered culture has gradually risen in Chinese families ( Tsui and Rich, 2002 ). In this situation, Chinese parents are becoming emotionally closer to their children than before ( Tsui and Rich, 2002 ; Sun, 2011 ). Therefore, considering the dramatic changes taking place in Chinese families as well as the shifts in parent–child relational pattern in recent years, it is particularly important to gain insight into parent–child relationship in modern Chinese families.

According to family systems theory, many factors determine the quality of parent–child relationship, such as marital relationship of parents ( Li et al., 2018 ). In the present study, we mainly focus on the effects of only child status (family size) on parent–child relationship. A negative association between family size and parent–child relationship is widely reported in the Western literature ( Falbo and Polit, 1986 ). For example, studies of Western families have demonstrated that the parent–child relational quality was higher in one-child families than in larger families ( Falbo and Polit, 1986 ; Falbo, 2012 ). In Lewis and Feiring (1982) ’s study, family members were observed more likely to be involved in conversations including more frequent parent–child discussions during family meals in one-child families than in multiple-child families. Some studies focusing on the comparisons between only children and non-only children also took birth order into consideration ( Falbo and Polit, 1986 ; Mellor, 1990 ; Falbo, 2012 ). Meta-analyses of Western literature showed that, although only children have better relationships with their parents than non-only children in general, they are not significantly different from firstborns or children from two-child families ( Falbo and Polit, 1986 ; Falbo, 2012 ). The Largest differences usually came from the comparisons between only children and children with more than one sibling or children of later born ( Haan, 2010 ; Falbo, 2012 ). As discussed above, this is because parents of only children, firstborns, or children with only one sibling have greater anxiety about parenting (more responsive to children’s needs) and more attention in child rearing activities ( Falbo and Polit, 1986 ; Falbo, 2012 ).

The resource dilution model could explain the link between sibship size and parent–child relationships. The term “resource dilution” is first used by Blake (1981) to describe the relationship between family size and the quality of children. Resource dilution model argues that parental resources are not infinite and with the increase in the number of children, the resources invested in each child decrease ( Blake, 1981 ). Parental resources can take many forms, such as those providing a supportive home environment, opportunities to engage with the outside world, and direct treatments, such as attention ( Polit and Falbo, 1988 ; Gibbs et al., 2016 ). The parent–child relationship is also a kind of parental resource because it is closely related to parental time (attention) spent on children or parent–child interactions: the more time parents devote to their children, the closer the parent–child relationship is ( Li et al., 2015 ).

Although limited, there are still a few studies analyzing how sibship size influences Chinese parent–child relationships. Most of the existing research suggested a more positive parent–child relationship of only children compared to their sibling counterparts. Using data of Beijing schools, Chow and Zhao (1996) showed that parents of only children spent a greater proportion of their leisure and total time on their singleton children than did parents of non-only children. The author also compared other parental resources invested in only children and non-only children and found that the only children were generally in a more advantaged position ( Chow and Zhao, 1996 ). Hao and Feng (2002) used data collected from Hubei Province and found that parents of only children interacted more frequently on both verbal and physical activities with their children than did parents of non-only children. Wei et al. (2016) observed an only child advantage in maternal educational involvement in Chinese families. In a qualitative study by Deutsch (2006) , compared to children with siblings, children without siblings were found to be more concerned with the parent–child relationship and have closer emotional bonds with their parents. By analyzing the social behaviors of Beijing kindergarteners, Li et al. (2015) found that non-only children had slightly closer mother–child relationship than did only children. This pattern is not in line with the resource dilution model perhaps because the sampled families were highly selected and the multiple-child families in Beijing had more resources: the mothers of non-only children did not have to work. In this case, non-only children might have more time to interact with their mothers than only children whose mothers working outside the home ( Li et al., 2015 ).

In sum, existing studies were limited and findings were mainly based on regional data. More representative national-scale data are needed to further examine how only children and non-only children are emotionally attached to their parents and whether there are significant differences between the two groups. Western studies have detected the birth-order effects that only children were no different from firstborns but significantly different from laterborns in terms of parent–child relationships ( Falbo and Polit, 1986 ). Does this pattern apply to Chinese children? Studies of Chinese only children failed to do the comparisons between only children and children of different birth order regarding parent–child relationship. Therefore, this study also aims to fill in the research gap by considering the birth order of children.

The Role of Children’s Gender

Influenced by Confucianism culture, children’s gender plays important role in Chinese parenting strategies. Due to the patriarchal, patrilineal, and patrilocal structure, women are subordinate to men and young women are in the lowest strata of the family hierarchy ( Shu, 2004 ). In this system, daughters are traditionally devalued because they would eventually marry into another family and would have to contribute to that family. Natal families could not see benefits in investing in daughters ( Xie, 2013 ). However, this is not true for sons. Sons are not only expected to support their elderly parents but also responsible for carrying on the family lines ( Sun, 2002 ). Therefore, investments in sons was deemed more rewarding than investments in daughters. As a result, Chinese parenting strategies have been characterized by a son preference for a long time ( Guo et al., 2018 ). The female infanticide in Chinese history is a proof of that ( Das Gupta et al., 2003 ). However, as discussed above, with the implementation of the One-Child Policy and socio-economic development, a child-centered phenomenon is emerging in Chinese families ( Tsui and Rich, 2002 ). By having fewer children or only one child, parents would not show gender preference in their parenting strategies ( Tsui and Rich, 2002 ). Empirical studies have found a narrowing male-favorable gender gap in education ( Ye and Wu, 2011 ) or even a reversed educational gender gap among the Chinese only child group ( Lee, 2012 ). For example, Ye and Wu (2011) found that gender inequality in education among younger cohorts was less prominent than among older cohorts due to the fertility decline in China. This implies that the daughter benefits more from having fewer siblings or being an only child in intra-household resources allocation than does the son ( Lee, 2012 ).

Parent–child relationship is a reflection of emotional and time resources parents invest in children. Therefore, when applying the resource dilution model to analyzing the link between sibship size and parent–child relationship in Chinese families, children’s gender needs to be given special attention ( Chu et al., 2007 ). To the best of our knowledge, little research has examined the role of children’s gender in the association between sibship size and parent–child relationship. To fill in the important research gap, this study will gain an insight into whether the only child advantages (in parent–child relationship), if any, are more prominent among daughters than sons. Previous studies also paid attention to the gender of siblings ( Chu et al., 2007 ; Zheng, 2015 ; Guo et al., 2018 ). Due to the strong son preference, having brothers (especially younger brothers) would reduce one’s opportunities in obtaining family resources, whereas having sisters (especially older sisters) would generally improve one’s well-being ( Chu et al., 2007 ; Zheng, 2015 ). For example, a study in Taiwanese families indicated that parents tended to discontinue the older daughters’ education and further encouraged them to make economic contributions to the whole family and their younger siblings (usually brothers) ( Chu et al., 2007 ). This led to more education of those with older sisters. For the well-being of children, brother(s) presence is an unfavorable factor, while sister(s) presence is a favorable factor ( Zheng, 2015 ). Considering the importance of siblings’ gender, this study also compared only children to children with siblings of different gender.

The Present Study

This study is designed to explore whether Chinese only children are more advantaged in emotional relationship with their parents compared to non-only children. Meanwhile, we also aim to compare only children with the firstborns, the middleborns, and the lastborns from multiple-child families to identify the birth-order effects. Furthermore, considering the gendered characteristics of family relationships in China, we will analyze whether children’s gender plays a moderating role in the association between the only child status and children’s parent–child relationship. Finally, we will compare only children to children with siblings of different gender (sibling-gender composition) regarding parent–child relationships.

The data used in this study derived from a national survey of school-going adolescents (junior high school students, 48.66% female, age range: 12 – 18; average age = 14.5 years). We used this dataset — China Education Panel Survey (2014) — based on the following reasons. First, adolescence is a period when people are undergoing critical changes in psychological, physical, and social development ( Ruhl et al., 2015 ). Influenced by these changes, during this period, children are more vulnerable to their social relationships with parent–child relationships being the most important. The quality of parent–child relationships during adolescence has been found to influence the adolescents’ developmental outcomes ( Ruhl et al., 2015 ; Chen, 2017 ; Li et al., 2018 ; Xu et al., 2019 ), with the influences persisting well into adulthood and later life ( Hair et al., 2008 ; Raudino et al., 2013 ). Second, the increased autonomy and shared-decision making with parents during adolescence enable adolescents to be more objective in their evaluations of their relationships with parents ( Ruhl et al., 2015 ). Third, the sampled adolescents in our study had a mean age of 14.5 years at 2014 meaning that they were born around 2000 when the one-child policy had been in force for almost 30 years. The phenomenon of one-child families had become a social norm ( Falbo and Hooper, 2015 ; Falbo, 2018 ) and a child-centered culture had taken shape in Chinese society. Parenting strategies were thus unique for this generation (the one-child policy began to be relaxed around 2013, see Jiang and Liu, 2016 ). Therefore, it is interesting to explore the only child effects on parenting strategies for this generation. Lastly, because Chinese culture continues to value education highly ( Huang and Gove, 2015 ), junior high school education, which plays an important role in transitioning to high school education, is emphasized by Chinese parents. Due to the highly competitive nature of attaining entrance to high schools in China, there is much stress placed on junior high school students to prepare for the graduation examination—that allows them to enter high-quality high schools ( Wu, 2015 ). In this process, parents also make their own contributions to their children such as providing harmonious family relationships. Furthermore, a junior high sample is more representative of Chinese adolescents in general because this educational stage is covered by the Nine-Year Compulsory Education ( Guo et al., 2019 ). Many adolescents could not go to high schools due to a lack of family resources ( Loyalka et al., 2013 ). The website of China’s Ministry of Education shows that in 2012, around 98% of primary graduates entered junior high schools, whereas only 88% of junior high graduates entered high schools [ MEPRC (Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China), 2019 ]. Based on this, it is important to analyze parent–child relationships among junior high school students.

The following content of the paper is divided into four parts: (1) an introduction of materials and methods used in the study; (2) a report of the results from the descriptive analyses and the multilevel models; (3) a discussion of the empirical findings; (4) a summary of the study.

Materials and Methods

We used data from the baseline of China Education Panel Survey (CEPS 2014). CEPS is a nationally representative survey aiming at investigating how individual educational outputs are impacted by family, school, and community. Conducted by Renmin University of China, the data were gathered with a fourth-stage probability sampling design that randomly selected 19,487 students of grade 7 and grade 9 from 438 classes across 112 junior high schools in 28 counties (districts) of mainland China. Students along with their parents (19,487), teachers (438), and school faculty (112) constituted the final survey sample.

Five types of major questionnaires were used in the survey to collect information on students, their parents, homeroom teachers, main subject teachers (Chinese, Math, and English), and school administrators. The student questionnaires were completed by students collectively in the classroom and the parent questionnaires were completed by their corresponding parents or their main caregivers at home (copies of the parent questionnaires were taken home by the students). The study variables in this paper were mainly derived from the student questionnaires. All the survey data were collected using a paper/pencil measure. The data had a response rate of 98.7%.

We merged students’ data and parents’ data and 19,487 parent–child pairs were generated. One hundred and sixty five (0.85%) observations were deleted due to the missing information on dependent variables. In the remaining sample, most of our explanatory variables had a very low level of missing in formation (ranging from 0 to 2.5%) with parental age at birth of the respondent child (around 25% missing) and gender of siblings (around 10% missing) being the exceptions. Apart from parental age at birth and gender of siblings, the missing percentage for the whole sample were 5.35%. To avoid losing too many observations, we created a “missing” category for the variables with high rate of missing information (will elaborate later in the “measure” part). Thus, the final analytical sample was 18,445.

Dependent Variables

Parent–child relationship.

Research has measured parent–child relationships in a variety of ways. Some studies employed parental verbal and physical interactions with children, parental control, and prenatal supportiveness through specific and multi-dimensional items to measure parent–child relationships ( Pritchett et al., 2011 ; Li et al., 2015 ; Chen et al., 2018 ; Xu et al., 2019 ; Ma et al., 2020 ). Others utilized a single and general item measuring parent–child relationships ( Videon, 2005 ; Damsgaard et al., 2014 ). For example, Videon (2005) operationalized parent–child relationship using a single question: “Overall, are you satisfied with your relationship with your mother (father)?” Damsgaard et al. (2014) employed the question: “how easy is it for you to talk to your mother/father about things that really bother you?” In our study, we employed the later practice: capturing the quality of parent–child relationship with a single general question. Meanwhile, because mothers and fathers tend to play different roles in parenting activities ( Liu, 2020 ), and the child’s development is usually influenced by his/her same-sex parent ( Ohannessian, 2012 ), it is necessary to measure father–child and mother–child relationship separately.

In the present study, parent–child relationships were assessed with one item about each parent. On the student questionnaire, children were asked to rate the relationship with their parents: how is the general relationship with your mother/father? Responses included “not close (2.4% for mother–child relationship and 4.3% for father–child relationship),” “moderate (24.21% for mother–child relationship and 33.28% for father–child relationship),” and “close (73.40% for mother–child relationship and 62.42% for father–child relationship).” We created a three-category ordinal variable for mother–child closeness and father–child closeness (0–2, a higher value indicates closer parent–child relationship), respectively. See Table 1 for the measurements of dependent variables.

Table 1. Definitions and measurements of the study variables.

Key Independent Variables

Our key independent variable is the sibling status. Based on our research objectives, various sibling-related variables were produced. To compare only children with children having siblings, we created a three-category variable named sibship size with only children as the reference group and children having one sibling and children having two or more siblings as the other two groups. We combined the children with two siblings and more into one category (2 + siblings) because there were only five percent of the students having three or more siblings. In addition, to compare only children with children of different birth order from multiple-child families, we created a four-category variable named birth order. Specifically, only children were coded as 0 (reference category); firstborns, middleborns, and lastborns from multiple-child families were coded as 1, 2, and 3, respectively. To be clear, firstborns, middleborns, and lastborns were defined by the birth order of children from multiple-child families: firstborns were children with only younger siblings; middleborns were children who had both younger siblings and older siblings; lastborns were children with only older siblings. See Table 1 for the definitions and measurements of the study variables. At last, to compare only children with children having siblings of different gender, we created another four variables with each having four categories. For example, the variable “younger brothers” indicated whether the child had younger brothers (0 = only child, 1 = without younger brothers, 2 = with younger brothers, 3 = younger brothers missing). The creations of the other three variables (“younger sisters,” “older brothers,” and “older sisters”) followed the same pattern.

Potential Moderator

To test whether the effects of only child status on parent–child relationship depend on children’s gender, this study set children’s gender as the moderating variable (0 = son, 1 = daughter).

We controlled for a variety of covariates in the models. Covariates included adolescents’ demographics (grade and ethnicity), academic characteristics (cognitive score and academic performance), family dynamics (boarding school attendance, parental co-residence, and parental marital quality), family SES (family economic condition, parental education, hukou type), and parental age at birth of the respondent child. Children’s grade (grade 7 and grade 9) is a reflection of both children’s age and birth cohort which could influence parent–child closeness as well as sibship size. Children’s academic characteristics were also found to predict parent–child relationship ( Sharma and Vaid, 2005 ), especially in the Chinese culture highly valuing children’s education ( Huang and Gove, 2015 ). According to family systems theory, family structure (boarding school attendance and parental co-residence) and marital relationships were strong predictors of parent–child relationship ( Dinisman et al., 2017 ; Yoo, 2020 ). Children’s ethnicity and family SES could affect not only parent–child closeness but also sibship size ( Zhang, 2012 ; Piotrowski and Tong, 2016 ; Weng et al., 2019 ). The one-child policy were implemented more rigorously in the Han ethnicity than in minority ethnicities and in urban families than in rural families, we therefore included ethnicity and the hukou type ( Weng et al., 2019 ). Research has consistently found that with the increase of parental education, the number of children declines ( Piotrowski and Tong, 2016 ) and the parent–child relationship improves ( Zhang, 2012 ). We also controlled for parental age at birth of the surveyed child because it was expected to influence both parent–child relationship and sibship size. Because parental age at birth had a high proportion of missing values (24.61%), we included “age missing” along with other values in the model. Refer to Table 1 for the specific measurements.

Analytical Strategy

We started the analyses by reporting the sibling information of the analytical sample ( Table 2 ) and the sample characteristics in the full, only child, and non-only child sample ( Table 3 ). Meanwhile, we displayed the percent of “close” mother–child and father–child relationships by children’s sibship size and birth order ( Figures 1 , 2 ). In the next step, given the ordinal nature of the dependent variables, we employed two-level ordered logistic models to estimate mother–child closeness and father–child closeness ( Tables 4 , 5 ). Two-level models were used due to the nested structure of the data (students were nested in schools).

Table 2. Sibling information.

Table 3. Sample characteristics (Percent or Mean/SD).

Figure 1. Percent of a “close” mother–child relationship by sibship size and birth order (firstborns do not consist of only children).

Figure 2. Percent of a “close” father–child relationship by sibship size and birth order (firstborns do not consist of only children).

Table 4. Two-level ordered logistic models estimating mother–child closeness ( N = 18445).

Table 5. Two-level ordered logistic models estimating father–child closeness ( N = 18,445).

Descriptive Analyses

Table 2 reports the sibling information of our analytical sample. Information in Table 2 indicates that modern Chinese families have a very small family size with one-child and two-child families accounting for a large proportion (more than 80%). Specifically, only children accounted for almost half of the sampled children (44.25%); children with only one sibling accounted for 42% of the full sample; children with two or more siblings held a very low proportion of 14%. Of the analytical children, around 27% were firstborns, 5% were middleborns, and 23% were lastborns. Among our sampled children, those having younger brothers held the largest proportion (21.66%) and those having older sisters accounted for the second largest proportion (20.24%). Only 10.77% of the children had older brothers. This is perhaps because most rural parents were subject to the one-and-a-half-child policy: rural couples whose first child was a daughter were allowed to have a second child, whereas those with a son as the first child were not allowed to have another child ( Jiang and Liu, 2016 ). The mean number of children for each household in our sample was only 1.74.

Table 3 reports the sample characteristics. In addition to showing the sample characteristics in the full sample, Table 3 also displays the characteristics by children’s only child status. Meanwhile, the chi-squared test (for categorical variables) or t -test (for continuous variables) was employed to decide if the difference between only children and non-only children were significant. As shown in Table 3 , most junior-high-school students had a close parent–child relationship (73.40% for mother–child relationship and 62.42% for father–child relationship). Chi-squared tests show that only children were significantly different from non-only children in three levels of mother–child relationship (χ 2 = 52.23, df = 2, p = 0.000) and father–child relationship (χ 2 = 27.47, df = 2, p = 0.000). To test whether only children were significantly different from non-only children in reporting “close” parent–child relationships, we combined “not close” and “moderate” into one category. After the combination, chi-squared tests of the two levels of parent–child relationships (“not close-moderate combination” and “close”) show that compared to non-only children (71.30%), only children (76.03%) were more likely to report “close” relationships with their mothers (χ 2 = 52.08, df = 1, p = 0.000); compared to non-only children (60.82%), only children (64.44%) were also more likely to report “close” relationships with their fathers (χ 2 = 25.39, df = 1, p = 0.000). In addition, only children had significantly higher cognitive score (0.23 for only children and −0.15 for non-only children, t = 30.90, df = 18,443, p = 0.000) and reported better academic performance (2.16 for only children and 1.99 for non-only children, t = 10.25, df = 18,443, p = 0.000) than did non-only children. Non-only children were more likely to attend a boarding school than only children (χ 2 = 1,800, df = 1, p = 0.000). Regarding family background, only children were more likely to be born in high-income families (χ 2 = 46.19, df = 1, p = 0.000), having parents of more educated (maternal education: χ 2 = 2,500, df = 1, p = 0.000; paternal education: χ 2 = 2,100, df = 1, p = 0.000), and having higher probability of living with both parents (χ 2 = 219.06, df = 1, p = 0.000). Finally, due to the more rigorous implementation of the OCP and the more modern culture in urban areas than in rural areas, only children were significantly different from non-only children in hukou type (urban hukou accounted for 66.73% among only children and only 28.72% among non-only children, χ 2 = 2,700, df = 1, p = 0.000). Overall, only children were more advantaged in terms of both parent–child relationship and background characteristics than non-only children.

Figures 1 , 2 show the percent of “close” mother–child relationship and “close” father–child relationship, respectively, by sibship size and birth order. For “close” mother–child relationship ( Figure 1 ), significant difference was not only found between only children and children with two or more siblings (only children: 76.03%, children with two or more siblings: 68.28%, χ 2 = 60.73, df = 1, p = 0.000) but also found between only children and children having only one sibling (only children: 76.03%, children with 1 sibling: 72.30%; χ 2 = 29.00, df = 1, p = 0.000). Further, only children were also significantly more likely to report “close” mother–child relationships than firstborns (firstborns: 68.87%, χ 2 = 81.10, df = 1, p = 0.000) and middleborns (middleborns: 65.78%, χ 2 = 49.01, df = 1, p = 0.000), but no significant difference was observed between only children and lastborns (lastborns: 75.37%, χ 2 = 0.67, df = 1, p = 0.412). For “close” father–child relationship ( Figure 2 ), the pattern was similar. First, only children were significantly more likely to report “close” father–child relationship than children with one sibling (only children: 64.44%, children with 1 sibling: 61.66%; χ 2 = 13.22, df = 1, p = 0.000) and children with two or more siblings (only children: 64.44%, children with two or more siblings: 58.27%; χ 2 = 31.57, df = 1, p = 0.000). Turing to birth order, only children were also more likely to report “close” father–child relationship than firstborns (firstborns: 57.46%, χ 2 = 63.87, df = 1, p = 0.000) and middleborns (middleborns: 55.91%, χ 2 = 27.55, df = 1, p = 0.000). However, no significant difference was detected between only children and lastborns (lastborns: 65.82%, χ 2 = 2.38, df = 1, p = 0.123).

Multivariate Analyses

Mother–child closeness.

Table 4 shows the coefficients of two-level ordered logistic models estimating mother–child closeness. Model a1 and Model b1 were designed to test the effects of children’s sibship size and birth order on mother–child closeness without controlling for covariates, respectively. Sibship size and birth order were not included in the models simultaneously in order to avoid multi-collinearity because the two variables shared a same reference group (only children). Model a2 and Model b2 were models estimating the net effects of sibship size and birth order, respectively, with other things being equal (all the covariates were controlled). It is worth noting that, in the birth order model (Model b2), we controlled for the total number of children in the family to capture the net effects of birth order. Model a3 and Model b3 were interaction models designed to test the moderating effects of children’s gender on the effects of sibship size and birth order, respectively.

In Model a1, the significantly negative coefficients of one-sibling child and two-or-more-sibling child indicate that the presence of sibling(s) was disadvantaged for children. We then successively added the control variables. In Model a2, with all the covariates being controlled, the negative effects of sibship size dropped in the magnitude but still remained significant. We found that the sibship size effects were largely confounded by family SES (results not shown). Other things being equal, compared to only children, children with one sibling were 10% [1- exp (−0.11), p = 0.016] less likely to report a close relationship with their mothers; Children with two or more siblings were 16.5% [1- exp (−0.18), p = 0.004] less likely to report a close mother–child relationship. In addition, the significantly positive coefficient of children’s gender (β = 0.11, p = 0.001) implied that daughters were more likely to report a close mother–child relationship than sons. Moving to Model a3, the coefficients of the interaction terms are significantly negative (β 1 sibling × daughter = −0.34, p = 0.000; β 2 + siblings × daughter = −0.64, p = 0.000) indicating that the effects of sibship size were significantly different between daughters and sons. We visually displayed the interaction effects in the form of predicted probabilities (for “close” mother–child closeness) in Figure 3 . Figure 3 clearly shows that, the changing directions of the solid line (representing daughter) and the dash line (representing son) were different. Larger sibship size reduced daughters’ probabilities of having a close relationship with mothers by a great degree whereas slightly increased sons’ probabilities of attaining such relationship. In other words, the benefits of being an only child is mainly reflected on daughters in the Chinese context.

Figure 3. Predicted probabilities of a “close” mother–child relationship by sibship size and children’s gender (MCR: mother-child relationship).

Turning to the birth-order models. In Model b1, without controlling for other variables, firstborns were found to be less likely to form a close mother–child relationship compared to only children. In Model b2, net of all the other factors, compared to only children, firstborns and middleborns were 25% [1- exp (−0.29), p = 0.000] and 24% [1- exp (−0.27), p = 0.041] less likely, respectively, to have a close mother–child relationship. Finally, the coefficient of lastborns is positive and marginally significant (β = 0.15; p = 0.052) suggesting lastborns were not disadvantaged compared to only children in mother–child closeness. Turning to Model b3 with interaction terms, we found a significant joint effects of birth order with children’s gender. Figure 4 clearly shows the interaction information of Model b5: daughters as only children had a significantly higher probability to enjoy a close mother–child relationship than sons as only children. Last daughters and sons had the same probability to enjoy a close mother–child relationship. Firstborns and middleborns (both daughters and sons) were least likely to have a close mother–child relationship.

Figure 4. Predicted probabilities of a “close” mother–child relationship by birth order and children’s gender (MCR: mother-child relationship).

Father–Child Closeness

Table 5 shows the coefficients of two-level logistic regression estimating father–child closeness. Model a1 and Model b1 were designed to test the sibship-size effects and birth-order effects on father–child closeness without controlling for other variables, respectively. Model a2 and Model b2 were models testing the net effects of sibship size and birth order (all covariates were controlled). Similar to the estimates of mother–child relationship, sibship size and birth order were not included simultaneously to avoid multi-collinearity. Model a3 and Model b3 were interaction models testing whether children’s gender moderated the sibship-size effects and birth-order effects, respectively.

In Model a1, the coefficients of sibship size were significantly negative suggesting that compared to only children, children with siblings experienced a declined odds of having a close father–child relationship. We then successively added covariates in the model with Model a2 including all variables. Holding other things consistent, having one sibling and two or more siblings reduced the odds of enjoying a close father–child relationship by 14% [1-exp (−0.15), p = 0.000] and 16% [1-exp (−0.18), p = 0.002], respectively. It is worth noting the coefficient of children’s gender: although daughters were more likely (β = 0.11, p = 0.001) to have a close mother–child relationship than sons (see Model a2 in Table 4 ), they were less likely (β = −0.13, p = 0.000) to have a close father–child relationship. Turning to Model a3, the significant coefficients of the interaction terms suggest that children’s gender and sibship size jointly influenced father–child relationship (β 1 sibling × daughter = −0.26, p = 0.000; β 2 + siblings × daughter = −0.61, p = 0.000). We visually displayed the interaction information of Model a3 in Figure 5 . Figure 5 clearly shows that daughters’ probabilities of having a “close” father–child relation declined with the increase of sibship size and only daughters have the highest probabilities. Sons, on the contrary, experienced a slightly increase in father-son closeness as their sibship size rose. Among non-only children (children with 1 sibling or 2+ siblings), sons had higher probabilities of reporting a close father–child relationship than did daughters, whereas among children without siblings, daughters had higher probabilities in reporting a close relationship with their fathers than did sons. Figure 5 suggests that daughters, rather than sons, benefit from being only children.

Figure 5. Predicted probabilities of a “close” father–child relationship by sibship size and children’s gender (FCR: father-child relationship).

Model b1 (only including birth order) suggests that only children were significantly more likely to have close father–child relationships than did firstborns. In Model b2, with all the covariates being controlled, firstborns were 25% [1-exp (−0.29), p = 0.000] less likely to report a close father–child relationship. However, there was no significant difference between only children and middleborns or lastborns. Model b3 includes the interactions of children’s gender and birth order to test whether birth order influenced father–child relationships differently for daughters and sons. The coefficients of the interactions were significantly negative suggesting daughters and sons showed different patterns in the association between birth order and father–child relationship. We displayed the interaction information of Model 4 in Figure 6 . Figure 6 clearly shows that, for sons, being the lastborns of multiple-child families was most beneficial. This is probably due to the son preference: the youngest sons in the families were usually born in the situation that fathers were dissatisfied with the number of sons and their births would make up for it ( Basu and De Jong, 2010 ). Therefore, the births of younger sons would bring about more satisfactions than that of older sons. However, for daughters, the situation is distinct: being the only child was most beneficial. This is also an indirect reflection of son preference: only when there were no siblings to compete for family resources will daughters receive more attention from parents in the Chinese families.

Figure 6. Predicted probabilities of a “close” father–child relationship by birth order and children’s gender (FCR: father-child relationship).

The Presence of Siblings of Different Gender

To compare only children with children having siblings of different gender, we ran a series of additional models. See Table 6 .

Table 6. Effects of younger brothers, younger sisters, older brothers, and older sisters.

The models shown in the left part of Table 6 estimate mother–child closeness. In the main-effects models, having younger brothers and having younger sisters reduced the odds of involving in a close mother–child relationship by 33% [1-exp (−0.40), p = 0.000] and 17% [1-exp (−0.19), p = 0.015], respectively, whereas having older sisters were a favorable factor [increasing the odds by 34%, exp (0.29)-1, p = 0.000]. Moving to the interaction models of younger brother(s) and younger sister(s), the coefficients of the interaction terms “with younger brother(s) × daughter” and “with younger sister(s) × daughter” were both significantly negative [β with younger  brother(s) × daughter = −0.30, p = 0.001; β with  younger  sister(s) × daughter = −0.33, p = 0.002] suggesting having younger siblings exerted stronger negative impacts on daughters than on sons. In the interaction model of older brother(s), the main effects of older brother(s) was significantly positive [β with  older  brother(s) = 0.21, p = 0.044] suggesting that for sons, older brother(s) presence was an advantageous factor in mother–child closeness, whereas the interaction effects was significantly negative [β with  older  brother(s) × daughter = −0.37, p = 0.002] suggesting having older brothers was an unfavorable factor for daughters. Coefficients of the interaction term in the interaction model of older sister(s) suggested that the positive effect of having older sisters was stronger for sons than for daughters [β with  older  sister(s) = 0.42, p = 0.000; β with  older  sister(s) × daughter = −0.41, p = 0.000].

The models shown in the right part of Table 6 predict father–child closeness. The main-effects analyses revealed that having younger siblings was an unfavorable factor for children to have a close father–child relationship, compared to only children [β with  younger  brother(s) = −0.34, p = 0.000; β with  younger  sister(s) = −0.29, p = 0.000]. Meanwhile, the effects of having older siblings were insignificant. Turning to the interaction models. Interaction analyses of younger siblings suggested that the negative effects of having younger siblings were stronger for daughters than for sons [β with  younger  brother(s) × daughter = −0.29, p = 0.001; β with  younger  sister(s) × daughter = −0.29, p = 0.002]. Interaction analyses of older siblings suggested that although having older siblings did not matter for the overall children, interesting patterns emerged when we included interaction terms: the presence of older siblings was positively associated with sons’ closeness to fathers [β with  older  brother(s) = 0.22, p = 0.024; β with  older  sister(s) = 0.22, p = 0.004], whereas negatively linked to daughters’ closeness to fathers [β with  older  brother(s) × daughter = −0.42, p = 0.000; β with  older  sister(s) × daughter = −0.35, p = 0.000].

In summary, influenced by son preference, the associations between the presence of siblings and parent–child closeness were based on different sibling-gender compositions. Specifically, having younger brothers was an unfavorable factor for children regarding parent-child relationship, especially for female children. By comparison, having older sisters was a favorable factor for male children in terms of parent-child relationship.

After more than three decades of implementation, the one-child policy created a large number of families with just one child and this family size became the social norm in Chinese society ( Falbo and Hooper, 2015 ; Falbo, 2018 ). A growing body of research has documented the developmental outcomes of being an only child ( Liu et al., 2010 ; Falbo, 2012 ; Falbo and Hooper, 2015 ; Guo et al., 2015 , 2018 ; Wang et al., 2020 ). However, few studies examined whether only children have different parent–child emotional relationships compared with non-only children. As an emotional resource, the parent–child relationship plays an important role in shaping adolescents’ psychological, social, and academic development ( Li et al., 2018 ; Xu et al., 2019 ). Thus, it is essential to gain insight into only children’s relationships with their parents. Western research has reported that although only children are generally more advantaged in the parent–child relationship compared to non-only children, only children are no different from firstborns or those from two-child families ( Falbo and Polit, 1986 ). Therefore, in addition to exploring the sibship-size effects on parent–child relationships, the birth-order effects should also be tested in the Chinese context. Considering the gender stratification in Chinese culture ( Guo et al., 2018 ), this study further examined whether the sibship-size effects and birth-order effects depended on children’s gender. Finally, comparisons between only children and children with siblings of different gender were also made. The findings of this study are as follows.

First, Chinese only children had closer parent–child relationship than did non-only children. Specifically, compared to children from two-child families or larger families, only children were more likely to describe their relationships with their mothers and fathers as highly close. This result is consistent with the resource dilution theory ( Blake, 1981 ). The quality of the parent–child relationship tends to be a reflection of parental time, energy, and attention devoted to children and such resources are not infinite ( Li et al., 2015 ). Therefore, children with many siblings have to share these resources with their siblings and, in this case, the resources for each child would decrease; on the contrary, only children do not need to compete with their siblings and thus have more access to family resources ( Downey, 1995 ). As a result, only children are more likely to describe their relationships with their parents as close, suggesting that the parent–child relationships for only children are of higher quality than those found among other sibship sizes. This result demonstrates the existence of the child-centered culture in Chinese one-child families ( Tsui and Rich, 2002 ). Previous studies have found that only children have higher educational achievements than non-only children because the former receive more educational resources from parents ( Downey, 1995 ; Lee, 2012 ). This study contributes to the existing literature by including parental emotional resources in the resource-dilution model.

Second, considering birth order, we found that only children had advantages over firstborns (of multiple-child families), but these advantages disappeared when they were compared to lastborns (of multiple-child families). This is inconsistent with findings from Western families ( Falbo and Polit, 1986 ). In the West, only children were found to be indistinguishable from firstborns in terms of parent–child relationships because, before the births of younger siblings, firstborns are the only children of their parents, at least for a while, and have access to all the family resources at that period ( Falbo and Polit, 1986 ; Mellor, 1990 ; Falbo, 2012 ). Therefore, in Western families, only children are more advantaged only when they are compared to laterborns of large families with three or more children ( Falbo, 2012 ). However, our study demonstrates that the situation is different in Chinese families: Chinese only children are more at an advantage than firstborns and they are no different from lastborns. In short, among all children, firstborns as well as middleborns of multiple-child families are the most disadvantaged. The following are some possible explanations for this result.

The first explanation concerns Chinese culture. The traditional Confucian idea that “having many children is a blessing” is embraced by many Chinese parents, especially those from rural areas ( Hillier, 1988 ; Jiao et al., 1996 ). In this case, parents tend to violate the One-Child Policy to have an ideal composition of gender and the number of children ( Jiao et al., 1996 ). As a consequence, the last child is usually the one parents show more affection toward. Another explanation is related to the personality traits of children. According to Sulloway’s (1996) theory about birth order, children of different order usually have different personalities. Firstborns, being the oldest in the family, are expected to act as a leader ( Shao et al., 2013 ). This is particularly true in China: historically, the eldest son is second in authority to his father in Chinese families ( Das Gupta et al., 2003 ). This requires the eldest children to be responsible, independent, and conservative ( Shao et al., 2013 ). The youngest children, on the other hand, were found to be higher in sociability ( Sulloway, 1996 ; Shao et al., 2013 ). Therefore, lastborns tend to be more open than firstborns– this argument has been demonstrated in the Chinese context ( Shao et al., 2013 ). Being more open enables lastborns to be more likely attaining parental attention, which results in a higher parent–child closeness.

Third, the parent–child relationship was significantly associated with children’s gender and such association differed by parental gender: daughters had a significantly more positive relationship with their mothers than sons, whereas sons had a significantly more positive relationship with their fathers than daughters. In short, parents were emotionally closer to their same-sex children. This pattern is consistent with the gendered theory of parenting ( Liu, 2020 ). According to the gendered theory of parenting, the gender of children and parents may simultaneously influence parenting styles as well as parent–child relationships ( Russell and Saebel, 1997 ). This gendered pattern may be reinforced in the Chinese culture characterized by traditional gender stereotypes or gender-specific expectations: the boys should be manliness and hard and the girls should be gentle and soft ( Liu, 2006 ). Encouraged by this notion, fathers usually spend more time with their sons to cultivate their masculinity and mothers tend to spend more time with their daughters to nurture their femininity ( Liu, 2006 ). Therefore, the “same-sex parent–child dyads” phenomenon is popular in Chinese families.

Forth, the only child status influenced the parent–child relationship depending on children’s gender. Specifically, even though having siblings was an obstructive factor for children in general to get a closer parent–child relationship, this negative effect was stronger for daughters than for sons. In short, daughters were more responsive to sibling status and benefited more from being only children. This could again be explained by the patriarchal culture derived from Confucianism ( Das Gupta et al., 2003 ). According to Patriarchy, Chinese families value sons’ roles as providers of old-age-support for their parents while devaluing daughters’ roles because their supports would eventually be channeled to their husband’s families ( Deutsch, 2006 ; Xie, 2013 ). In this case, parents would invest more in sons than in daughters to maximize the benefits of investment ( Jiang et al., 2012 ). Therefore, the more siblings the daughters have, the fewer resources they would receive ( Chu et al., 2007 ). Research has found that the resource dilution model is characterized by a gendered pattern in Chinese families: the negative effects of sibling presence is stronger for daughters than for sons ( Chu et al., 2007 ; Lee, 2012 ). Nevertheless, when the family has only one child, the gender of the child does not matter for the parenting strategies ( Tsui and Rich, 2002 ). This is perhaps because parents of only daughters usually hold more egalitarian gender role attitudes given that they had stopped giving birth in the case of having no sons. Moreover, recent studies have found that it is increasingly becoming common for daughters to transfer money or provide care to their aging parents in both rural and urban China ( Xie and Zhu, 2009 ; Gruijters, 2018 ). Thus, modern parents have economic incentives to invest in their only daughters ( Tsui and Rich, 2002 ). The gender bias weakens in one-child families ( Fong, 2002 ). Furthermore, considering the gender discrimination in the labor market, women may need more skills to compete with men ( Raley and Bianchi, 2006 ). Therefore, to guarantee the future success of their daughters, parents of singleton girls may have higher incentives to invest in their children than parents of singleton boys ( Tsui and Rich, 2002 ). Thus, the advantages of singleton daughters could be considered a proactive strategy to prepare for discrimination against women in the job market.

At last, our additional analyses found that the sibling effects on parent–child closeness differed by sibling-gender composition: female children were more likely to be disadvantaged due to the presence of younger brothers, whereas male children could benefit more from having older sisters. Previous studies, based on the son preference culture, has developed the resource dilution theory in China by introducing gender of siblings ( Chu et al., 2007 ; Zheng, 2015 ). These studies found that siblings were not equally associated with one’s educational resources: brothers reduced educational opportunities, while sisters increased one’s educational opportunities ( Chu et al., 2007 ; Zheng, 2015 ). Therefore, the resource dilution is gender asymmetric in the Chinese culture ( Zheng, 2015 ). Our study has developed the theory by examining the parent–child relationship: besides educational opportunities, the gender asymmetric pattern was also found for parent–child closeness. Under the son preference culture of Asian countries, parents, especially rural parents, would stop giving birth only when the desired number of sons was achieved (“male-preferring stopping rules”) ( Basu and De Jong, 2010 ). In this situation, families with only daughters were usually unsatisfied with the gender composition and would continue to give birth in their unrelenting search for a son—leading daughters usually being born at earlier parities within families ( Basu and De Jong, 2010 ). This could also be reflected in our data that children having younger brothers or older sisters accounted for the largest proportions, whereas children having older brothers were the least. This idea was again reinforced by Chinese national policy (the one-and-a-half-child policy which allowed rural couples to have a second child if the first child was a girl, see Jiang and Liu, 2016 ). As a result, parents are more likely to value their youngest male children who have older sisters and devalue their eldest female children who have younger brothers. Our findings suggest that despite daughters’ status has been improved in one-child families, son preference and daughter discrimination still persist in multiple-child families in modern China.

As with any study, the current study has some limitations. First, due to the cross-sectional nature of the dataset, one should be very cautious to conclude a causal relationship between only child status and parent–child relationship. Both children’s only child status and parental relationship with children are determined by parental characteristics that were not fully captured by our data. Second, due to data limitation, we used children’s subjective reported closeness with parents to measure the parent–child relationship and the views of parents and other family members were neglected. Although this practice has been employed by previous studies ( Videon, 2005 ; Damsgaard et al., 2014 ), a more objective way to reporting the parent–child relationship may be necessary for the future to ensure the validity of measurement.

Our study observed an only child advantage in the parent–child emotional relationship. Only children were not only more favored compared to non-only children in general, they were also more favored in comparison with children from two-child families and firstborns of multiple-child families. Furthermore, we found that the sibship-size and birth-order effects were gender-specific: daughters benefited more from being only children. We also found the gender asymmetric sibling effects that daughters were disadvantaged by having younger brothers, whereas sons benefited more from having older sisters. Our findings highlighted the importance to consider children’s gender when exploring the only child effects.

A large body of literature has documented various developmental outcomes of only children. However, relatively limited research has focused on the family relationships of only children in the Chinese context. Our study contributed to the current knowledge of only children by exploring their parent–child relationships. In addition to comparing only children to children with siblings, we also took another step forward by exploring the birth-order effects and gender-composition effects. Our study has important policy implications. Policy-makers should be highly aware of the persistence of “valuing sons but devaluing daughters” culture in the Chinese multiple-child families and formulate some policies to weaken this idea, especially in the universal two-child policy era.

Data Availability Statement

The datasets presented in this study can be found in online repositories. The names of the repository/repositories and accession number(s) can be found below: http://cnsda.ruc.edu.cn/index.php?r=projects/view&id=72810330 .

Ethics Statement

The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by the ethics committee of Renmin University of China. Written informed consent to participate in this study was provided by the participants’ legal guardian/next of kin.

Author Contributions

YL designed the study, processed the data, and drafted the original manuscript. QJ provided the data and revised the manuscript. Both the authors critically reviewed and approved the final manuscript.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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Keywords : only children, sibship size, birth order, children’s gender, parent–child relationship, China

Citation: Liu Y and Jiang Q (2021) Who Benefits From Being an Only Child? A Study of Parent–Child Relationship Among Chinese Junior High School Students. Front. Psychol. 11:608995. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.608995

Received: 22 September 2020; Accepted: 07 December 2020; Published: 08 January 2021.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2021 Liu and Jiang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Quanbao Jiang, [email protected]

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

"Growing up as an only child" - UC where you come from

kaaseythomaas 2 / 1   Sep 7, 2011   #1 UC Essay #1: Describe the world you come from - for example, your family, community or school - and tell us how your world has shaped your dreams and aspirations General comments, it is a work in progress, and comments/opinions would be greatly appreciated :) Growing up as an only child allotted me many advantages; I did not have to share my toys or my parent's attention with any brothers or sisters, nor did I have to compete for attention within my family. I had supportive and loving parents, as well as grandparents, who have always told me I could do anything I set my mind to. This phrase has set in over the years, and the encouragement it holds has never failed to inspire me. My mother is comparable to superwoman in the sense that she can do it all. She is opinionated, a trait that she and I both share, but she is also understanding and accepting of others, a trait that I am still learning from her. My father is a comedian, is his own sense of the word, and one of the most hard-working people I know. He is the first person to proofread all of my essays, and the first person to give me his honest feedback. He has instilled in me a passion for reading and writing, and sustains that passion by introducing me to his favorite authors and books. I grew up in Martinez, which is a very small community, where I was surrounded by children that lived a similar life to my own. Everyone knew one another, and news traveled to the other side of town faster then you could drive there. In elementary school, my third grade teacher introduced me to the world of chapter books. Here, I found something that took me to another world, a place other than my small town, and the people I had grown up with my whole life. Mrs. Edmonds forever changed my life, and without her, reading, writing, and the English language would not be something I wish to pursue in college. Although my community is an amazing and supportive place to grow up in, most of my peers have one common goal: to move out of Martinez. I am similar to my peers in the fact that I too want to move out of Martinez, but more importantly, I want to move out of Martinez, go to college, and realize my goals. I am grateful for my small town, and for all the things it has given me. Without my mother, I would not aspire to be a well-rounded and caring individual. Without my father, I would not have discovered my passion for books and my passion for writing. Without teachers like Mrs. Edmonds, I would not have developed an appreciation for the English language and the adventure a book can take you on. These people that have surrounded me for my almost 18 years of living not only make up my community, but make up the individual I have grown up to be. They have shaped my passions and my dreams, and they have continually supported my growth as a person. Without these people, I would not be who I am today. Word Count: 495

Noob in writing 5 / 25   Sep 7, 2011   #2 Good essay overall. However I think the school really wants to see more concrete examples of your interaction with your environment, either the people or some special situations you have that shape your personalities. Hope this makes sense...

OP kaaseythomaas 2 / 1   Sep 7, 2011   #3 thank you very much.. i agree, i am just having trouble getting there. thanks for the help!

muge 5 / 12   Sep 16, 2011   #5 I have supportive and loving parents, as well as grandparents, who have always told me I could do anything I set my mind to. My father is a comedian, is his own sense of the word, and one of the most hard-working people I know. He is the first person to proofread all of my essays, and the first person giving me his honest feedback. Everyone knew one another, and news traveled to the other side of town faster then you could drive there. Everyone knew each other, and news traveled to the other side of town faster then you can imagine. (For me, Is much better) Here, I found something that took me to the another world, a place different than my small town, and the people I had grown up with my whole life. Mrs. Edmonds changed my life forever , and without her, reading, writing, and the English language would not be something I wish to pursue in college. Although my community is an amazing and supportive place to grow up in, most of my peers have one goal : to move out of Martinez. I am grateful for my small town, and for all the things it has given to me.

Essays About Growing Up: 5 Examples and 7 Prompts

Essays about growing up help us view and understand various experiences from different perspectives. Check out our top examples and prompts for your writing.

How do you know when you’ve finally grown up? Me, it happened when I was in high school. I realized I matured when I had no qualms about looking for ways to help my family financially. I didn’t think I had a choice, but at the same time, I desperately wanted to aid my parents in ensuring we had food on the table. 

I was a fast food crew member, a librarian, and many other odd jobs I could talk about for hours. Some judge my parents’ poor financial literacy when I tell my stories, but I never did. All of it was a part of my growing up; without these experiences, I wouldn’t be the person I am today. 

Growing up is a unique experience for every person, influenced by our surroundings and influences. With so many variables, each person has their own story about growing up; take a look below to see the best example and prompts to begin writing your own. You might also like these essays about youth .

5 Essay Examples

1. social influences on children’s growing up by anonymous on ivypanda.com, 2. growing up in the 626 by katie gee salisbury, 3. growing up in poverty determines the person’s fate by anonymous on gradesfixer.com, 4. growing up on the streets by writer bernadette, 5. growing up with hearing loss by anonymous on ivypanda.com, 1. what does growing up mean, 2. the effect of my environment on my growth, 3. growing up rich or poor, 4. family values and growing up, 5. growing up with siblings, 6. your best memories growing up, 7. changes while growing up.

“Human growth and development is a complicated process which is inevitably impacted upon by socioeconomic circumstances within which an individual is growing up.”

To demonstrate the social influences that can impact a child’s experiences growing up, the essay offers several credible citations from professionals, such as Damon and Lerner, the writer and editor of “ Handbook of Child Psychology .” It looks at how social factors, such as living conditions, access to resources, and others, can affect a child’s overall development as they grow. Ultimately, the writer believes that parents play a huge role in the development of their children. You can also check out these essays about development .

“Something welled up inside my throat. All of a sudden I felt a burning urgency to stake a claim, to assert that I was one of them, that I too belonged in this group. ‘Hey guys, I’m Chinese too,’ I ventured. A classmate who carpooled with my family was quick to counter, ‘Katie, that doesn’t count.'”

Salisbury shares her experiences as an overachieving Asian-American, focusing on her grievances at being biracial, not connecting to her heritage, and people’s assumption of her being white. She talks about her life in 626, the area code for Arcadia, Southern California, where most Asians reside. At the end of her essay, Salisbury offers facts about herself to the reader, recognizing and accepting every part of herself.

Looking for more? Check out these essays about time .

“Economic mobility is the ability of someone or a family to move up from one income group to another. In the United States, it is at an all-time low and is currently decreasing.”

The author shares their opinion on how a family’s financial situation shapes their children’s future. To back up their claim, the essay provides relevant statistics showing the number of children and families in poverty, alongside its dramatic effects on a child’s overall development. The writer mentions that a family’s economic incompetence can pass on to the children, reducing their chances of receiving a proper education.

“As a young black woman growing up on the hardcore streets of North Philadelphia, you have to strive and fight for everything. The negativity and madness can grab and swallow even the most well-behaved kids.”

Bernadette opens her readers’ eyes to the harsh realities of being a young black woman throughout her essay. However, she also expresses her gratitude to her family, who encouraged her to have a positive mindset. Her parents, who also grew up on the streets of North Philly, were determined to give her and her siblings a proper education. 

She knows how individuals’ environments impact their values ​​and choices, so she fought hard to endure her circumstances. She also notes that the lack of exposure to different social norms results in children having limited thinking and prevents them from entertaining new perspectives. You might be interested in these essays about dream jobs .

“The world is not accommodating to people with hearing disabilities: apart from professionals, barely anyone knows and understands sign language. On top of that, many are merely unaware of the fact that they might be hurting and making a deaf person feel disrespected.”

The essay discusses critical issues in children growing up with hearing impairments. It includes situations that show the difference between a child growing up in an all-deaf family and a non-deaf environment. While parental love and support are essential, deaf parents should consider hearing impairment a gift and be aware of their children’s needs. 

If you are interested in learning more, check out our essay writing tips !

7 Prompts for Essays About Growing Up

Growing up is a continuous sequence where we develop and experience significant changes in our bodies and how we think and feel. It’s the transition between being a child and an adult, so define what childhood and adulthood entail in your essay.

Then, describe how an individual grows up and the indications that they progressed physically and intellectually. For a fun addition to your essay, include questions your readers can answer to see if they have matured.

Many studies show how people’s environments, such as home, community, and school, affect growth. These environments significantly impact an individual’s development through interactions. For this prompt, write about the factors that influence your overall development and explain how you think they affected you. For example, those who studied at a religious school tend to be more conservative.

Money is essential for survival, but only some have easy access. Most people act and make decisions based on how much money they have, which also influences their behavior. In this prompt, cite several situations where money affects parents’ decisions about their children’s needs and wants and how it affects the children as they grow up.

Discuss how financial constraints impact their emotions, perceptions, and choices in life. Choose high, average, and low-income households, then compare and contrast their situations. To create an in-depth analysis, use interview research and statistical data to back up your arguments.

Studies show that children understand rules and have already formed their behaviors and attitudes at seven. Before this age, children are surrounded by relatives who teach them values through experiences within the family. For this prompt, use real-life examples and factual information to discuss the importance of good parenting in instilling good values ​​in children.

Growing up with siblings is an entirely different experience growing up versus being an only child. Use this prompt to explain how having a brother or sister can impact a child’s progress and discuss its pros and cons. For instance, having siblings means the child has more role models and can get more emotional support. However, it can also mean that a child craves more of their parent’s attention. Discuss these points in your essay, and decide the “better” experience, for a fun argumentative essay.

In this essay, choose the best memories you had from childhood to the current day that has contributed significantly to your principles and outlook. Describe each memory and share how it changed you, for better or worse.

Talk about the changes people expect as they grow up. These physical, emotional, or mental changes lead people to act and think more maturely.  Add studies demonstrating the necessity of these changes and recount instances when you realize that you’ve grown up. For example, if before you didn’t care about your spending, now you’re more frugal and learned to save money. For help with your essay, check our round-up of best essay writing apps .

Maria Caballero is a freelance writer who has been writing since high school. She believes that to be a writer doesn't only refer to excellent syntax and semantics but also knowing how to weave words together to communicate to any reader effectively.

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Growing Up as an Only Child: Pros and Cons

Cents + Purpose

Growing Up Lonely: 15 Telltale Signs of an Only Child

Posted: October 13, 2023 | Last updated: November 20, 2023

Everyone has a role in a family. Personalities get shaped based on things taught, environments, and much more. One of the factors in how a person behaves is birth order, but what if you are an only child? Here are some tell-tale signs that someone is an only child based on an online pole.

1. Disbelief

Someone said, “My only child’s ex-boyfriend’s complete disbelief at all my stories about stuff my sisters and I would pull on each other growing up was always hilarious to me. He was always like, “How do you guys like each other still after that?!”

2. On Their Own

“They go off on their own a lot. You do what you want to do. I’ll do what I want to do, and we’ll meet up when that’s the same thing,” someone stated.

3. You Like Space

“It was extremely difficult for me to get used to having a roommate when I went to college. I hated not having my own space. Still do. I need alone time like I need oxygen,” someone shared.

4. Where is it?

“My boyfriend is an only child. He gets super frustrated when something isn’t in the spot he left it. Like if I used the remote or a charger, he gets flustered because, living at home, he always knew where his stuff was,” a user shared.

5. Entertain Yourself

“I’d say, being able to entertain themselves for days at a time without needing someone else to join in,” someone observed.

6. Peace and Quiet

“Typically, they don’t like noisy households. Mine was always loud as we had six kids plus all our friends at my house. Only children would find that too chaotic,” someone stated.

7. Older Friends

“Very comfortable with people older than them. Most of my friends are 10+ years older than me,” someone said.

8. Slow Eater

A person shared, “I’m an only child. The only giveaway I can think of is I eat extremely slowly because I never had siblings to hurry me up or steal my food, but I also had parents that were never around, so others might not have that issue.”

9. Intricate Conversations

“Conversations and language are usually more intricate as children since most discussions are with parent(s),” someone stated.

10. Closer Connections

“We always feel closer to others than they do to us because we’re missing one degree of social connection that others have,” somebody shared.

11. Good Listener

“I don’t know if this makes sense, but I have more time to listen to people. If someone’s talking to me, they’re my sole focus. I learned that as a kid, but I don’t know if it was parental guidance or an honored skill,” a user said.

12. Better Opportunities

“They may have been at the same social and economic level as you as a child, but they had better vacations, extracurricular activities, and outings with parents. Their parents didn’t have to split child-rearing expenses with other children so that they can do more fun stuff,” somebody said.

13. Value Friendship

A user shared, “I know only two children as adults now. Both are great people, and they value normal friendships of both genders more than I’d say most other people. In that respect, I wish I was more like them.”

14. Hyper Vigilant

“Personally, I think if someone is highly critical of themselves. There’s no room for error in anything, so your mistakes show more because all eyes are on you, and that’ll make them hyper-vigilant,” someone said.

15. Well-Mannered

“In my experience, only children are more articulate, communicative, and well-mannered because they grew up with adults and were talked to as such,” a user shared.

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Do you feel as though you’re always having a bad day? Are you often wondering why the world is against you? Or why you seem to have the absolute worst luck? Did you know that there are things you can do each day to combat those feelings? Did you know that a “good day” is really just a state of mind?

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10 Cold Hard Facts Older People Have Learned Over the Years

One of the best places on the internet is the SubReddit r/askoldpeople—people who are Gen-X (1980) and older answer today’s youth. Someone asked, “What are some cold hard facts you have learned over the years?” Here are the top-voted cold hard facts of life.

17 Ways To Master the Art of Self-Care Without Draining Your Wallet

It’s normal to get so caught up in life that you forget to take care of yourself. Amidst taking care of the people around you, it’s important to prioritize your own physical and mental health. But constant trips to the salon and spa can quickly bust your budget.

Inspired by this thread – photos for illustrative purposes only.

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S omething went suddenly and horribly wrong for adolescents in the early 2010s. By now you’ve likely seen the statistics : Rates of depression and anxiety in the United States—fairly stable in the 2000s—rose by more than 50 percent in many studies from 2010 to 2019. The suicide rate rose 48 percent for adolescents ages 10 to 19. For girls ages 10 to 14, it rose 131 percent.

The problem was not limited to the U.S.: Similar patterns emerged around the same time in Canada, the U.K., Australia, New Zealand , the Nordic countries , and beyond . By a variety of measures and in a variety of countries, the members of Generation Z (born in and after 1996) are suffering from anxiety, depression, self-harm, and related disorders at levels higher than any other generation for which we have data.

The decline in mental health is just one of many signs that something went awry. Loneliness and friendlessness among American teens began to surge around 2012. Academic achievement went down, too. According to “The Nation’s Report Card,” scores in reading and math began to decline for U.S. students after 2012, reversing decades of slow but generally steady increase. PISA, the major international measure of educational trends, shows that declines in math, reading, and science happened globally, also beginning in the early 2010s.

Read: It sure looks like phones are making students dumber

As the oldest members of Gen Z reach their late 20s, their troubles are carrying over into adulthood. Young adults are dating less , having less sex, and showing less interest in ever having children than prior generations. They are more likely to live with their parents. They were less likely to get jobs as teens , and managers say they are harder to work with. Many of these trends began with earlier generations, but most of them accelerated with Gen Z.

Surveys show that members of Gen Z are shyer and more risk averse than previous generations, too, and risk aversion may make them less ambitious. In an interview last May , OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman and Stripe co-founder Patrick Collison noted that, for the first time since the 1970s, none of Silicon Valley’s preeminent entrepreneurs are under 30. “Something has really gone wrong,” Altman said. In a famously young industry, he was baffled by the sudden absence of great founders in their 20s.

Generations are not monolithic, of course. Many young people are flourishing. Taken as a whole, however, Gen Z is in poor mental health and is lagging behind previous generations on many important metrics. And if a generation is doing poorly––if it is more anxious and depressed and is starting families, careers, and important companies at a substantially lower rate than previous generations––then the sociological and economic consequences will be profound for the entire society.

What happened in the early 2010s that altered adolescent development and worsened mental health? Theories abound , but the fact that similar trends are found in many countries worldwide means that events and trends that are specific to the United States cannot be the main story.

I think the answer can be stated simply, although the underlying psychology is complex: Those were the years when adolescents in rich countries traded in their flip phones for smartphones and moved much more of their social lives online—particularly onto social-media platforms designed for virality and addiction . Once young people began carrying the entire internet in their pockets, available to them day and night, it altered their daily experiences and developmental pathways across the board. Friendship, dating, sexuality, exercise, sleep, academics, politics, family dynamics, identity—all were affected. Life changed rapidly for younger children, too, as they began to get access to their parents’ smartphones and, later, got their own iPads, laptops, and even smartphones during elementary school.

Jonathan Haidt: Get phones out of schools now

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As a social psychologist who has long studied social and moral development, I have been involved in debates about the effects of digital technology for years. Typically, the scientific questions have been framed somewhat narrowly, to make them easier to address with data. For example, do adolescents who consume more social media have higher levels of depression? Does using a smartphone just before bedtime interfere with sleep? The answer to these questions is usually found to be yes, although the size of the relationship is often statistically small, which has led some researchers to conclude that these new technologies are not responsible for the gigantic increases in mental illness that began in the early 2010s.

But before we can evaluate the evidence on any one potential avenue of harm, we need to step back and ask a broader question: What is childhood––including adolescence––and how did it change when smartphones moved to the center of it? If we take a more holistic view of what childhood is and what young children, tweens, and teens need to do to mature into competent adults, the picture becomes much clearer. Smartphone-based life, it turns out, alters or interferes with a great number of developmental processes.

The intrusion of smartphones and social media are not the only changes that have deformed childhood. There’s an important backstory, beginning as long ago as the 1980s, when we started systematically depriving children and adolescents of freedom, unsupervised play, responsibility, and opportunities for risk taking, all of which promote competence, maturity, and mental health. But the change in childhood accelerated in the early 2010s, when an already independence-deprived generation was lured into a new virtual universe that seemed safe to parents but in fact is more dangerous, in many respects, than the physical world.

My claim is that the new phone-based childhood that took shape roughly 12 years ago is making young people sick and blocking their progress to flourishing in adulthood. We need a dramatic cultural correction, and we need it now.

Brain development is sometimes said to be “experience-expectant,” because specific parts of the brain show increased plasticity during periods of life when an animal’s brain can “expect” to have certain kinds of experiences. You can see this with baby geese, who will imprint on whatever mother-sized object moves in their vicinity just after they hatch. You can see it with human children, who are able to learn languages quickly and take on the local accent, but only through early puberty; after that, it’s hard to learn a language and sound like a native speaker. There is also some evidence of a sensitive period for cultural learning more generally. Japanese children who spent a few years in California in the 1970s came to feel “American” in their identity and ways of interacting only if they attended American schools for a few years between ages 9 and 15. If they left before age 9, there was no lasting impact. If they didn’t arrive until they were 15, it was too late; they didn’t come to feel American.

Human childhood is an extended cultural apprenticeship with different tasks at different ages all the way through puberty. Once we see it this way, we can identify factors that promote or impede the right kinds of learning at each age. For children of all ages, one of the most powerful drivers of learning is the strong motivation to play. Play is the work of childhood, and all young mammals have the same job: to wire up their brains by playing vigorously and often, practicing the moves and skills they’ll need as adults. Kittens will play-pounce on anything that looks like a mouse tail. Human children will play games such as tag and sharks and minnows, which let them practice both their predator skills and their escaping-from-predator skills. Adolescents will play sports with greater intensity, and will incorporate playfulness into their social interactions—flirting, teasing, and developing inside jokes that bond friends together. Hundreds of studies on young rats, monkeys, and humans show that young mammals want to play, need to play, and end up socially, cognitively, and emotionally impaired when they are deprived of play .

One crucial aspect of play is physical risk taking. Children and adolescents must take risks and fail—often—in environments in which failure is not very costly. This is how they extend their abilities, overcome their fears, learn to estimate risk, and learn to cooperate in order to take on larger challenges later. The ever-present possibility of getting hurt while running around, exploring, play-fighting, or getting into a real conflict with another group adds an element of thrill, and thrilling play appears to be the most effective kind for overcoming childhood anxieties and building social, emotional, and physical competence. The desire for risk and thrill increases in the teen years, when failure might carry more serious consequences. Children of all ages need to choose the risk they are ready for at a given moment. Young people who are deprived of opportunities for risk taking and independent exploration will, on average, develop into more anxious and risk-averse adults .

From the April 2014 issue: The overprotected kid

Human childhood and adolescence evolved outdoors, in a physical world full of dangers and opportunities. Its central activities––play, exploration, and intense socializing––were largely unsupervised by adults, allowing children to make their own choices, resolve their own conflicts, and take care of one another. Shared adventures and shared adversity bound young people together into strong friendship clusters within which they mastered the social dynamics of small groups, which prepared them to master bigger challenges and larger groups later on.

And then we changed childhood.

The changes started slowly in the late 1970s and ’80s, before the arrival of the internet, as many parents in the U.S. grew fearful that their children would be harmed or abducted if left unsupervised. Such crimes have always been extremely rare, but they loomed larger in parents’ minds thanks in part to rising levels of street crime combined with the arrival of cable TV, which enabled round-the-clock coverage of missing-children cases. A general decline in social capital ––the degree to which people knew and trusted their neighbors and institutions–– exacerbated parental fears . Meanwhile, rising competition for college admissions encouraged more intensive forms of parenting . In the 1990s, American parents began pulling their children indoors or insisting that afternoons be spent in adult-run enrichment activities. Free play, independent exploration, and teen-hangout time declined.

In recent decades, seeing unchaperoned children outdoors has become so novel that when one is spotted in the wild, some adults feel it is their duty to call the police. In 2015, the Pew Research Center found that parents, on average, believed that children should be at least 10 years old to play unsupervised in front of their house, and that kids should be 14 before being allowed to go unsupervised to a public park. Most of these same parents had enjoyed joyous and unsupervised outdoor play by the age of 7 or 8.

But overprotection is only part of the story. The transition away from a more independent childhood was facilitated by steady improvements in digital technology, which made it easier and more inviting for young people to spend a lot more time at home, indoors, and alone in their rooms. Eventually, tech companies got access to children 24/7. They developed exciting virtual activities, engineered for “engagement,” that are nothing like the real-world experiences young brains evolved to expect.

The first wave came ashore in the 1990s with the arrival of dial-up internet access, which made personal computers good for something beyond word processing and basic games. By 2003, 55 percent of American households had a computer with (slow) internet access. Rates of adolescent depression, loneliness, and other measures of poor mental health did not rise in this first wave. If anything, they went down a bit. Millennial teens (born 1981 through 1995), who were the first to go through puberty with access to the internet, were psychologically healthier and happier, on average, than their older siblings or parents in Generation X (born 1965 through 1980).

The second wave began to rise in the 2000s, though its full force didn’t hit until the early 2010s. It began rather innocently with the introduction of social-media platforms that helped people connect with their friends. Posting and sharing content became much easier with sites such as Friendster (launched in 2003), Myspace (2003), and Facebook (2004).

Teens embraced social media soon after it came out, but the time they could spend on these sites was limited in those early years because the sites could only be accessed from a computer, often the family computer in the living room. Young people couldn’t access social media (and the rest of the internet) from the school bus, during class time, or while hanging out with friends outdoors. Many teens in the early-to-mid-2000s had cellphones, but these were basic phones (many of them flip phones) that had no internet access. Typing on them was difficult––they had only number keys. Basic phones were tools that helped Millennials meet up with one another in person or talk with each other one-on-one. I have seen no evidence to suggest that basic cellphones harmed the mental health of Millennials.

It was not until the introduction of the iPhone (2007), the App Store (2008), and high-speed internet (which reached 50 percent of American homes in 2007 )—and the corresponding pivot to mobile made by many providers of social media, video games, and porn—that it became possible for adolescents to spend nearly every waking moment online. The extraordinary synergy among these innovations was what powered the second technological wave. In 2011, only 23 percent of teens had a smartphone. By 2015, that number had risen to 73 percent , and a quarter of teens said they were online “almost constantly.” Their younger siblings in elementary school didn’t usually have their own smartphones, but after its release in 2010, the iPad quickly became a staple of young children’s daily lives. It was in this brief period, from 2010 to 2015, that childhood in America (and many other countries) was rewired into a form that was more sedentary, solitary, virtual, and incompatible with healthy human development.

In the 2000s, Silicon Valley and its world-changing inventions were a source of pride and excitement in America. Smart and ambitious young people around the world wanted to move to the West Coast to be part of the digital revolution. Tech-company founders such as Steve Jobs and Sergey Brin were lauded as gods, or at least as modern Prometheans, bringing humans godlike powers. The Arab Spring bloomed in 2011 with the help of decentralized social platforms, including Twitter and Facebook. When pundits and entrepreneurs talked about the power of social media to transform society, it didn’t sound like a dark prophecy.

You have to put yourself back in this heady time to understand why adults acquiesced so readily to the rapid transformation of childhood. Many parents had concerns , even then, about what their children were doing online, especially because of the internet’s ability to put children in contact with strangers. But there was also a lot of excitement about the upsides of this new digital world. If computers and the internet were the vanguards of progress, and if young people––widely referred to as “digital natives”––were going to live their lives entwined with these technologies, then why not give them a head start? I remember how exciting it was to see my 2-year-old son master the touch-and-swipe interface of my first iPhone in 2008. I thought I could see his neurons being woven together faster as a result of the stimulation it brought to his brain, compared to the passivity of watching television or the slowness of building a block tower. I thought I could see his future job prospects improving.

Touchscreen devices were also a godsend for harried parents. Many of us discovered that we could have peace at a restaurant, on a long car trip, or at home while making dinner or replying to emails if we just gave our children what they most wanted: our smartphones and tablets. We saw that everyone else was doing it and figured it must be okay.

It was the same for older children, desperate to join their friends on social-media platforms, where the minimum age to open an account was set by law to 13, even though no research had been done to establish the safety of these products for minors. Because the platforms did nothing (and still do nothing) to verify the stated age of new-account applicants, any 10-year-old could open multiple accounts without parental permission or knowledge, and many did. Facebook and later Instagram became places where many sixth and seventh graders were hanging out and socializing. If parents did find out about these accounts, it was too late. Nobody wanted their child to be isolated and alone, so parents rarely forced their children to shut down their accounts.

We had no idea what we were doing.

The numbers are hard to believe. The most recent Gallup data show that American teens spend about five hours a day just on social-media platforms (including watching videos on TikTok and YouTube). Add in all the other phone- and screen-based activities, and the number rises to somewhere between seven and nine hours a day, on average . The numbers are even higher in single-parent and low-income families, and among Black, Hispanic, and Native American families.

These very high numbers do not include time spent in front of screens for school or homework, nor do they include all the time adolescents spend paying only partial attention to events in the real world while thinking about what they’re missing on social media or waiting for their phones to ping. Pew reports that in 2022, one-third of teens said they were on one of the major social-media sites “almost constantly,” and nearly half said the same of the internet in general. For these heavy users, nearly every waking hour is an hour absorbed, in full or in part, by their devices.

In Thoreau’s terms, how much of life is exchanged for all this screen time? Arguably, most of it. Everything else in an adolescent’s day must get squeezed down or eliminated entirely to make room for the vast amount of content that is consumed, and for the hundreds of “friends,” “followers,” and other network connections that must be serviced with texts, posts, comments, likes, snaps, and direct messages. I recently surveyed my students at NYU, and most of them reported that the very first thing they do when they open their eyes in the morning is check their texts, direct messages, and social-media feeds. It’s also the last thing they do before they close their eyes at night. And it’s a lot of what they do in between.

The amount of time that adolescents spend sleeping declined in the early 2010s , and many studies tie sleep loss directly to the use of devices around bedtime, particularly when they’re used to scroll through social media . Exercise declined , too, which is unfortunate because exercise, like sleep, improves both mental and physical health. Book reading has been declining for decades, pushed aside by digital alternatives, but the decline, like so much else, sped up in the early 2010 s. With passive entertainment always available, adolescent minds likely wander less than they used to; contemplation and imagination might be placed on the list of things winnowed down or crowded out.

But perhaps the most devastating cost of the new phone-based childhood was the collapse of time spent interacting with other people face-to-face. A study of how Americans spend their time found that, before 2010, young people (ages 15 to 24) reported spending far more time with their friends (about two hours a day, on average, not counting time together at school) than did older people (who spent just 30 to 60 minutes with friends). Time with friends began decreasing for young people in the 2000s, but the drop accelerated in the 2010s, while it barely changed for older people. By 2019, young people’s time with friends had dropped to just 67 minutes a day. It turns out that Gen Z had been socially distancing for many years and had mostly completed the project by the time COVID-19 struck.

Read: What happens when kids don’t see their peers for months

You might question the importance of this decline. After all, isn’t much of this online time spent interacting with friends through texting, social media, and multiplayer video games? Isn’t that just as good?

Some of it surely is, and virtual interactions offer unique benefits too, especially for young people who are geographically or socially isolated. But in general, the virtual world lacks many of the features that make human interactions in the real world nutritious, as we might say, for physical, social, and emotional development. In particular, real-world relationships and social interactions are characterized by four features—typical for hundreds of thousands of years—that online interactions either distort or erase.

First, real-world interactions are embodied , meaning that we use our hands and facial expressions to communicate, and we learn to respond to the body language of others. Virtual interactions, in contrast, mostly rely on language alone. No matter how many emojis are offered as compensation, the elimination of communication channels for which we have eons of evolutionary programming is likely to produce adults who are less comfortable and less skilled at interacting in person.

Second, real-world interactions are synchronous ; they happen at the same time. As a result, we learn subtle cues about timing and conversational turn taking. Synchronous interactions make us feel closer to the other person because that’s what getting “in sync” does. Texts, posts, and many other virtual interactions lack synchrony. There is less real laughter, more room for misinterpretation, and more stress after a comment that gets no immediate response.

Third, real-world interactions primarily involve one‐to‐one communication , or sometimes one-to-several. But many virtual communications are broadcast to a potentially huge audience. Online, each person can engage in dozens of asynchronous interactions in parallel, which interferes with the depth achieved in all of them. The sender’s motivations are different, too: With a large audience, one’s reputation is always on the line; an error or poor performance can damage social standing with large numbers of peers. These communications thus tend to be more performative and anxiety-inducing than one-to-one conversations.

Finally, real-world interactions usually take place within communities that have a high bar for entry and exit , so people are strongly motivated to invest in relationships and repair rifts when they happen. But in many virtual networks, people can easily block others or quit when they are displeased. Relationships within such networks are usually more disposable.

From the September 2015 issue: The coddling of the American mind

These unsatisfying and anxiety-producing features of life online should be recognizable to most adults. Online interactions can bring out antisocial behavior that people would never display in their offline communities. But if life online takes a toll on adults, just imagine what it does to adolescents in the early years of puberty, when their “experience expectant” brains are rewiring based on feedback from their social interactions.

Kids going through puberty online are likely to experience far more social comparison, self-consciousness, public shaming, and chronic anxiety than adolescents in previous generations, which could potentially set developing brains into a habitual state of defensiveness. The brain contains systems that are specialized for approach (when opportunities beckon) and withdrawal (when threats appear or seem likely). People can be in what we might call “discover mode” or “defend mode” at any moment, but generally not both. The two systems together form a mechanism for quickly adapting to changing conditions, like a thermostat that can activate either a heating system or a cooling system as the temperature fluctuates. Some people’s internal thermostats are generally set to discover mode, and they flip into defend mode only when clear threats arise. These people tend to see the world as full of opportunities. They are happier and less anxious. Other people’s internal thermostats are generally set to defend mode, and they flip into discover mode only when they feel unusually safe. They tend to see the world as full of threats and are more prone to anxiety and depressive disorders.

A simple way to understand the differences between Gen Z and previous generations is that people born in and after 1996 have internal thermostats that were shifted toward defend mode. This is why life on college campuses changed so suddenly when Gen Z arrived, beginning around 2014. Students began requesting “safe spaces” and trigger warnings. They were highly sensitive to “microaggressions” and sometimes claimed that words were “violence.” These trends mystified those of us in older generations at the time, but in hindsight, it all makes sense. Gen Z students found words, ideas, and ambiguous social encounters more threatening than had previous generations of students because we had fundamentally altered their psychological development.

Staying on task while sitting at a computer is hard enough for an adult with a fully developed prefrontal cortex. It is far more difficult for adolescents in front of their laptop trying to do homework. They are probably less intrinsically motivated to stay on task. They’re certainly less able, given their undeveloped prefrontal cortex, and hence it’s easy for any company with an app to lure them away with an offer of social validation or entertainment. Their phones are pinging constantly— one study found that the typical adolescent now gets 237 notifications a day, roughly 15 every waking hour. Sustained attention is essential for doing almost anything big, creative, or valuable, yet young people find their attention chopped up into little bits by notifications offering the possibility of high-pleasure, low-effort digital experiences.

It even happens in the classroom. Studies confirm that when students have access to their phones during class time, they use them, especially for texting and checking social media, and their grades and learning suffer . This might explain why benchmark test scores began to decline in the U.S. and around the world in the early 2010s—well before the pandemic hit.

The neural basis of behavioral addiction to social media or video games is not exactly the same as chemical addiction to cocaine or opioids. Nonetheless, they all involve abnormally heavy and sustained activation of dopamine neurons and reward pathways. Over time, the brain adapts to these high levels of dopamine; when the child is not engaged in digital activity, their brain doesn’t have enough dopamine, and the child experiences withdrawal symptoms. These generally include anxiety, insomnia, and intense irritability. Kids with these kinds of behavioral addictions often become surly and aggressive, and withdraw from their families into their bedrooms and devices.

Social-media and gaming platforms were designed to hook users. How successful are they? How many kids suffer from digital addictions?

The main addiction risks for boys seem to be video games and porn. “ Internet gaming disorder ,” which was added to the main diagnosis manual of psychiatry in 2013 as a condition for further study, describes “significant impairment or distress” in several aspects of life, along with many hallmarks of addiction, including an inability to reduce usage despite attempts to do so. Estimates for the prevalence of IGD range from 7 to 15 percent among adolescent boys and young men. As for porn, a nationally representative survey of American adults published in 2019 found that 7 percent of American men agreed or strongly agreed with the statement “I am addicted to pornography”—and the rates were higher for the youngest men.

Girls have much lower rates of addiction to video games and porn, but they use social media more intensely than boys do. A study of teens in 29 nations found that between 5 and 15 percent of adolescents engage in what is called “problematic social media use,” which includes symptoms such as preoccupation, withdrawal symptoms, neglect of other areas of life, and lying to parents and friends about time spent on social media. That study did not break down results by gender, but many others have found that rates of “problematic use” are higher for girls.

Jonathan Haidt: The dangerous experiment on teen girls

I don’t want to overstate the risks: Most teens do not become addicted to their phones and video games. But across multiple studies and across genders, rates of problematic use come out in the ballpark of 5 to 15 percent. Is there any other consumer product that parents would let their children use relatively freely if they knew that something like one in 10 kids would end up with a pattern of habitual and compulsive use that disrupted various domains of life and looked a lot like an addiction?

During that crucial sensitive period for cultural learning, from roughly ages 9 through 15, we should be especially thoughtful about who is socializing our children for adulthood. Instead, that’s when most kids get their first smartphone and sign themselves up (with or without parental permission) to consume rivers of content from random strangers. Much of that content is produced by other adolescents, in blocks of a few minutes or a few seconds.

This rerouting of enculturating content has created a generation that is largely cut off from older generations and, to some extent, from the accumulated wisdom of humankind, including knowledge about how to live a flourishing life. Adolescents spend less time steeped in their local or national culture. They are coming of age in a confusing, placeless, ahistorical maelstrom of 30-second stories curated by algorithms designed to mesmerize them. Without solid knowledge of the past and the filtering of good ideas from bad––a process that plays out over many generations––young people will be more prone to believe whatever terrible ideas become popular around them, which might explain why v ideos showing young people reacting positively to Osama bin Laden’s thoughts about America were trending on TikTok last fall.

All this is made worse by the fact that so much of digital public life is an unending supply of micro dramas about somebody somewhere in our country of 340 million people who did something that can fuel an outrage cycle, only to be pushed aside by the next. It doesn’t add up to anything and leaves behind only a distorted sense of human nature and affairs.

When our public life becomes fragmented, ephemeral, and incomprehensible, it is a recipe for anomie, or normlessness. The great French sociologist Émile Durkheim showed long ago that a society that fails to bind its people together with some shared sense of sacredness and common respect for rules and norms is not a society of great individual freedom; it is, rather, a place where disoriented individuals have difficulty setting goals and exerting themselves to achieve them. Durkheim argued that anomie was a major driver of suicide rates in European countries. Modern scholars continue to draw on his work to understand suicide rates today.

Durkheim’s observations are crucial for understanding what happened in the early 2010s. A long-running survey of American teens found that , from 1990 to 2010, high-school seniors became slightly less likely to agree with statements such as “Life often feels meaningless.” But as soon as they adopted a phone-based life and many began to live in the whirlpool of social media, where no stability can be found, every measure of despair increased. From 2010 to 2019, the number who agreed that their lives felt “meaningless” increased by about 70 percent, to more than one in five.

An additional source of evidence comes from Gen Z itself. With all the talk of regulating social media, raising age limits, and getting phones out of schools, you might expect to find many members of Gen Z writing and speaking out in opposition. I’ve looked for such arguments and found hardly any. In contrast, many young adults tell stories of devastation.

Freya India, a 24-year-old British essayist who writes about girls, explains how social-media sites carry girls off to unhealthy places: “It seems like your child is simply watching some makeup tutorials, following some mental health influencers, or experimenting with their identity. But let me tell you: they are on a conveyor belt to someplace bad. Whatever insecurity or vulnerability they are struggling with, they will be pushed further and further into it.” She continues:

Gen Z were the guinea pigs in this uncontrolled global social experiment. We were the first to have our vulnerabilities and insecurities fed into a machine that magnified and refracted them back at us, all the time, before we had any sense of who we were. We didn’t just grow up with algorithms. They raised us. They rearranged our faces. Shaped our identities. Convinced us we were sick.

Rikki Schlott, a 23-year-old American journalist and co-author of The Canceling of the American Mind , writes ,

The day-to-day life of a typical teen or tween today would be unrecognizable to someone who came of age before the smartphone arrived. Zoomers are spending an average of 9 hours daily in this screen-time doom loop—desperate to forget the gaping holes they’re bleeding out of, even if just for … 9 hours a day. Uncomfortable silence could be time to ponder why they’re so miserable in the first place. Drowning it out with algorithmic white noise is far easier.

A 27-year-old man who spent his adolescent years addicted (his word) to video games and pornography sent me this reflection on what that did to him:

I missed out on a lot of stuff in life—a lot of socialization. I feel the effects now: meeting new people, talking to people. I feel that my interactions are not as smooth and fluid as I want. My knowledge of the world (geography, politics, etc.) is lacking. I didn’t spend time having conversations or learning about sports. I often feel like a hollow operating system.

Or consider what Facebook found in a research project involving focus groups of young people, revealed in 2021 by the whistleblower Frances Haugen: “Teens blame Instagram for increases in the rates of anxiety and depression among teens,” an internal document said. “This reaction was unprompted and consistent across all groups.”

How can it be that an entire generation is hooked on consumer products that so few praise and so many ultimately regret using? Because smartphones and especially social media have put members of Gen Z and their parents into a series of collective-action traps. Once you understand the dynamics of these traps, the escape routes become clear.

Social media, in contrast, applies a lot more pressure on nonusers, at a much younger age and in a more insidious way. Once a few students in any middle school lie about their age and open accounts at age 11 or 12, they start posting photos and comments about themselves and other students. Drama ensues. The pressure on everyone else to join becomes intense. Even a girl who knows, consciously, that Instagram can foster beauty obsession, anxiety, and eating disorders might sooner take those risks than accept the seeming certainty of being out of the loop, clueless, and excluded. And indeed, if she resists while most of her classmates do not, she might, in fact, be marginalized, which puts her at risk for anxiety and depression, though via a different pathway than the one taken by those who use social media heavily. In this way, social media accomplishes a remarkable feat: It even harms adolescents who do not use it.

From the May 2022 issue: Jonathan Haidt on why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid

A recent study led by the University of Chicago economist Leonardo Bursztyn captured the dynamics of the social-media trap precisely. The researchers recruited more than 1,000 college students and asked them how much they’d need to be paid to deactivate their accounts on either Instagram or TikTok for four weeks. That’s a standard economist’s question to try to compute the net value of a product to society. On average, students said they’d need to be paid roughly $50 ($59 for TikTok, $47 for Instagram) to deactivate whichever platform they were asked about. Then the experimenters told the students that they were going to try to get most of the others in their school to deactivate that same platform, offering to pay them to do so as well, and asked, Now how much would you have to be paid to deactivate, if most others did so? The answer, on average, was less than zero. In each case, most students were willing to pay to have that happen.

Social media is all about network effects. Most students are only on it because everyone else is too. Most of them would prefer that nobody be on these platforms. Later in the study, students were asked directly, “Would you prefer to live in a world without Instagram [or TikTok]?” A majority of students said yes––58 percent for each app.

This is the textbook definition of what social scientists call a collective-action problem . It’s what happens when a group would be better off if everyone in the group took a particular action, but each actor is deterred from acting, because unless the others do the same, the personal cost outweighs the benefit. Fishermen considering limiting their catch to avoid wiping out the local fish population are caught in this same kind of trap. If no one else does it too, they just lose profit.

Cigarettes trapped individual smokers with a biological addiction. Social media has trapped an entire generation in a collective-action problem. Early app developers deliberately and knowingly exploited the psychological weaknesses and insecurities of young people to pressure them to consume a product that, upon reflection, many wish they could use less, or not at all.

The trap here is that each child thinks they need a smartphone because “everyone else” has one, and many parents give in because they don’t want their child to feel excluded. But if no one else had a smartphone—or even if, say, only half of the child’s sixth-grade class had one—parents would feel more comfortable providing a basic flip phone (or no phone at all). Delaying round-the-clock internet access until ninth grade (around age 14) as a national or community norm would help to protect adolescents during the very vulnerable first few years of puberty. According to a 2022 British study , these are the years when social-media use is most correlated with poor mental health. Family policies about tablets, laptops, and video-game consoles should be aligned with smartphone restrictions to prevent overuse of other screen activities.

The trap here, as with smartphones, is that each adolescent feels a strong need to open accounts on TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, and other platforms primarily because that’s where most of their peers are posting and gossiping. But if the majority of adolescents were not on these accounts until they were 16, families and adolescents could more easily resist the pressure to sign up. The delay would not mean that kids younger than 16 could never watch videos on TikTok or YouTube—only that they could not open accounts, give away their data, post their own content, and let algorithms get to know them and their preferences.

Most schools claim that they ban phones, but this usually just means that students aren’t supposed to take their phone out of their pocket during class. Research shows that most students do use their phones during class time. They also use them during lunchtime, free periods, and breaks between classes––times when students could and should be interacting with their classmates face-to-face. The only way to get students’ minds off their phones during the school day is to require all students to put their phones (and other devices that can send or receive texts) into a phone locker or locked pouch at the start of the day. Schools that have gone phone-free always seem to report that it has improved the culture, making students more attentive in class and more interactive with one another. Published studies back them up .

Many parents are afraid to give their children the level of independence and responsibility they themselves enjoyed when they were young, even though rates of homicide, drunk driving, and other physical threats to children are way down in recent decades. Part of the fear comes from the fact that parents look at each other to determine what is normal and therefore safe, and they see few examples of families acting as if a 9-year-old can be trusted to walk to a store without a chaperone. But if many parents started sending their children out to play or run errands, then the norms of what is safe and accepted would change quickly. So would ideas about what constitutes “good parenting.” And if more parents trusted their children with more responsibility––for example, by asking their kids to do more to help out, or to care for others––then the pervasive sense of uselessness now found in surveys of high-school students might begin to dissipate.

It would be a mistake to overlook this fourth norm. If parents don’t replace screen time with real-world experiences involving friends and independent activity, then banning devices will feel like deprivation, not the opening up of a world of opportunities.

The main reason why the phone-based childhood is so harmful is because it pushes aside everything else. Smartphones are experience blockers. Our ultimate goal should not be to remove screens entirely, nor should it be to return childhood to exactly the way it was in 1960. Rather, it should be to create a version of childhood and adolescence that keeps young people anchored in the real world while flourishing in the digital age.

In recent decades, however, Congress has not been good at addressing public concerns when the solutions would displease a powerful and deep-pocketed industry. Governors and state legislators have been much more effective, and their successes might let us evaluate how well various reforms work. But the bottom line is that to change norms, we’re going to need to do most of the work ourselves, in neighborhood groups, schools, and other communities.

Read: Why Congress keeps failing to protect kids online

There are now hundreds of organizations––most of them started by mothers who saw what smartphones had done to their children––that are working to roll back the phone-based childhood or promote a more independent, real-world childhood. (I have assembled a list of many of them.) One that I co-founded, at LetGrow.org , suggests a variety of simple programs for parents or schools, such as play club (schools keep the playground open at least one day a week before or after school, and kids sign up for phone-free, mixed-age, unstructured play as a regular weekly activity) and the Let Grow Experience (a series of homework assignments in which students––with their parents’ consent––choose something to do on their own that they’ve never done before, such as walk the dog, climb a tree, walk to a store, or cook dinner).

Even without the help of organizations, parents could break their families out of collective-action traps if they coordinated with the parents of their children’s friends. Together they could create common smartphone rules and organize unsupervised play sessions or encourage hangouts at a home, park, or shopping mall.

P arents are fed up with what childhood has become. Many are tired of having daily arguments about technologies that were designed to grab hold of their children’s attention and not let go. But the phone-based childhood is not inevitable.

We didn’t know what we were doing in the early 2010s. Now we do. It’s time to end the phone-based childhood.

This article is adapted from Jonathan Haidt’s forthcoming book, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness .

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Ask Amy: Our child says they don’t want to grow up. How do we respond?

• Published: Mar. 27, 2024, 2:00 a.m.

In today's Ask Amy column, Amy Dickinson responds to parents of an emotional child. Dreamstime

• Amy Dickinson

Dear Amy: My husband and I have a very sweet 8-year-old son. His dad and I adore him. We’re having a great time going through life together.

Recently he has been emotional and sensitive. He has said several times that he doesn’t want to grow up. When I ask him why, he says he’ll miss all of the things we do together, like reading together before bed and cuddling with us, and doing “little boy things.”

I don’t know if I should be concerned about this, or even how to respond.

Any suggestions?

– Concerned Mom

Dear Concerned: This is a fairly common phase for children at this age, especially for sensitive and expressive kids like your son.

Some children going through this phase will ask their parents, “When I grow up, can I marry you?” This reflects their strong and loving attachment.

I remember going through this phase as a child, telling my mother that I was never going to move away from home. (As an adult, I believe this prospect would  not  have been on my mother’s wish list.)

I recall her response as being kind and reassuring.

Heading into adolescence can be a pretty scary prospect. Hormonally, socially, and intellectually your son is sailing into choppy waters, and even if he doesn’t know what’s ahead, on a deep level – he understands that change is on the horizon.

Ask him, “What are the things you love the very most about being a kid?”

Listen to his answers and reminisce with him.

You might also ask him if there are things about growing older that make him nervous.

And then tell him that none of these good experiences will end or change unless he wants them to, and that your family will share lots of other wonderful experiences together as he grows older.

If your reassurance doesn’t comfort him, or if his anxiety seems to expand, you should consider having him evaluated by a psychologist.

Check out prior Ask Amy columns

(You can email Amy Dickinson at [email protected] or send a letter to Ask Amy, P.O. Box 194, Freeville, NY 13068. You can also follow her on Twitter @askingamy or Facebook .)

©2023 Amy Dickinson. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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