Who needs siblings?

Tell someone you're an only child and they assume you are spoiled, selfish and lonely. They couldn't be more wrong, argues Emma Kennedy
Emma Kennedy with her parents
Only child Emma Kennedy with her parents, Brenda and Tony. Photograph: Graham Turner for the Guardian

In 1978, the Chinese government introduced the one-child policy. On the face of it, its argument was that by restricting families to popping only one baby into the world and one alone, it would be alleviating social, economic and environmental problems in China. At least, that was the official story. But I can now reveal its real agenda. It did it because only children are brilliant.

According to a statistic, only children are 98% more likely to succeed.* This is terrible news for parents the world over who have made the calamitous decision to procreate more than once. Parenting, as I have often cried from any available rooftop, is the hardest job in the world. I don't know how you do it. I'd rather be sent to a gulag or stabbed to death with a plastic knife slowly, over a period of 18 years. Surely it is hard enough with one? So why make it harder on yourself by having more?

I imagine the basic starting position for any parent is that they want their child to do as well as possible. Well, bad luck everyone who has got more than one. Your multiple offspring are now on a collision course with disaster. I don't quite know what to suggest for the best. Perhaps you could line your children up and ask them which one loves you most, keep that one and drop the rest off in a wood, like Haley Joel Osment's character David in Artificial Intelligence? They'll be fine. They can eat pine cones and maybe join a circus.

"Hang on, Emma Kennedy," I can hear you yelling. "Are you deliberately trying to annoy us? Again."

Do not shoot the messenger, dearest reader, I am merely the conduit for truth. But in the name of fairness, I suppose I should declare that I am devoid of siblings. I am one.

Sometimes, when I tell people this, they look at me, raise their eyebrows and say, in a disparaging tone, things such as: "Well, that explains it."

Explains what? The fact that I am confident and have done all right for myself and have supportive and fulfilling relationships with those around me? Oh dear. What an awful state to be in. The psychologist G Stanley Hall went even further and referred to the state of being an only child as "a disease in itself". So I have a disease. Perhaps they should go the whole hog and give it a proper name, in the manner of cancer or diabetes. They could call it something on trend such as Sad Face, or suitably depressing-sounding such as Ughnngngn (the gs, as only children should be, are silent). Either which way, from all of this I can draw only one conclusion – that only children have a bad reputation.

Over the years I have been subjected to persistent and baseless assumptions about me and my character simply because I am an only child. "Spoiled" being the most common. No. I wasn't "spoiled". I had 10p pocket money and I got my first job at 14. I have worked ever since. In terms of material possessions, I am no different from any other child brought up by two teachers. I got presents on my birthday and at Christmas (one Christmas I was actually given a cracker as my main present) but that was it. I recall begging for a gonk. I didn't get it. In terms of my career, my parents instilled in me a ferocious work ethic. In terms of my achievements, I have been given nothing. I have done it on my own.

The only thing I've been spoiled with is my parents' love. I adore them and they adore me. I speak to them every day and see them at least once a week. Often, when I tell people this, they look at me as if I am mad or there is something wrong with me for loving my parents. I find this extraordinary. It must be so awful for parents to have raised someone who likes them. Imagine the grim reality of that. No, far better to have six children who never speak to you and only see you, under duress, at Christmas. That makes total sense.

The next one is "selfish". Quite why anyone would automatically assume only children are selfish is beyond me. We are perceived in one homogeneous lump as being excessively and exclusively signed up to Club Me. I have no idea why this is.

I suspect it is because only children are presumed to be unaffected by the world around them. Breaking news just in – only children have to exist within society the same as everyone else. We are not hamsters rolling about in bubble balls. We are able to form relationships with people the same as everyone else. And anyone who can form a relationship is capable of understanding the needs of other people. This isn't the preserve of people with siblings.

Third on our checklist of insults is "lonely". We didn't have a brother or sister to play with, so, therefore, we must be a bit like Casper the Friendly Ghost, wandering about asking random people if we can "keep them" while giving off the faint aura of desperation and clinginess. No. I didn't have a sibling to play with. But I'll tell you what I did have. They were called "friends". They are amazing. They come over and you get to do stuff together. And you really like them and enjoy their company and you don't get anxiety when dinner's served that they might eat their meal quicker than you and get seconds. Try them. You might like them.

A friend of mine recently sat down with me and asked me in all seriousness whether I was happy about being an only child. It was if she were asking me what it was like to cope with a disability. But she had an agenda. She has got an only child and she is concerned that if she doesn't have another one, her currently happy and well-balanced three year old is somehow going to mutate into a gorgon of bitterness and despair.


First, I love my friends beyond words. I have a huge circle of acquaintances, I am an incredibly social beast, but there is a handful of people to whom I am devoted to the point of madness. I am fiercely loyal, and I suppose the feelings I have for those friends are not dissimilar to what friendly siblings experience. Except you can't always guarantee that you are going to get on with your siblings. I know plenty of people who don't see them from one year to the next. Yet nobody seems to frown on that, or feel sorry for people who can't bear their own family. So that must be normal, right? I have chosen my friends and they have chosen me. This seems a perfectly adequate situation.

Second, because I grew up with no experience of sibling rivalry, I have no professional jealousy. I have never, not once, looked at one of my peers and begrudged them their success. It never fails to amaze me how common this is. What on earth has anyone else's career got to do with yours? Make your own success. Don't wait to be handed things on a plate. The world owes nobody a living, and hard work and talent will always be rewarded. Sitting about pointing bitter fingers and encasing yourself in cynicism is, as far as I'm concerned, a fast track to misery. You make your own destiny. If people spent as much time concentrating on what they are doing, rather than what others around them are up to, then, dare I say it, they might actually be doing better.

The only negative I can ever come up with when I am quizzed about the downside of being an only child is that, when the time comes, I shall bear the burden of my parents' old age and inevitable decline on my own. While this will be difficult and stressful and heartbreaking, I can think of no greater privilege than being asked to look after the two people to whom I owe everything. My mother taught me to read, my father taught me to ride a bike. Those two things alone have gifted me a world of endless joy. So why wouldn't I want to be eternally grateful?

But beyond that, we were pals. My parents took me to the theatre and to dinner parties – wherever they went, I went too. I was taken, aged three, to see the musical Hair. I didn't laugh when the cast got naked, and I listened to the record on a loop for weeks on end so that, when my dad took me into his school staffroom, I sang Sodomy, my favourite song, for everyone to hear. My father still, to this day, recalls it as one of his prouder moments.


In 1987, there was a review of 141 studies examining personality traits associated with only children. It was discovered that the spoiled, selfish, lonely stereotype has no base in fact. But there was one thing they discovered that separates only children from their peers with siblings. Prepare yourself parents. You are not going to like it. Only children were significantly higher in achievement and motivation, and it wasn't down to spoiling, it was down to increased parental scrutiny. When the beams are on you and you alone, it turns out you pull your socks up.

And it gets worse for the multi-offspringed family. The author Bill McKibben, in his book Maybe One, revealed that only children also score higher when it comes to making friends, adjusting to new environments, self control and interpersonal skills.

Yet despite all this, the prejudiced assumptions about only children and what we are like remain. I will still be subjected to barbed sarcastic comments. I will still be asked for "advice" by parents wondering whether they are failing by not having a second or third child. No. You're not failing. You will fail only if you are rubbish at being a parent. Adding a sibling into the mix will have nothing to do with it. If having an only child feels right for you, then embrace it. If you want a house heaving with children, then do that. Everyone knows what feels right for them.

So for those of you who have only children, I say never fear. You have nothing to worry about. There is a reason China is now the most successful country in the world. It is because it is run by an entire generation of only children. Coincidence? I think not. Let the world take note.

* Entirely made up statistic by my mum