Anita Rao
As my thoughts about motherhood evolve, I've brought y'all along for the ride. I've shared that while I absolutely adore being an aunt, I'm not quite ready to have little ones around me all the time. And understanding the reality of the postpartum experience has me solidly worried about how I would continue to do the work I love — and navigate brain fog, sleep deprivation and all the rest. The other question that started to nag at me — and as a point of disagreement with my partner — if we do decide and are able to have kids, how many? While having one kid makes the most sense for our careers and other life circumstances, I can't quite quiet the voice that wonders if that family unit would feel incomplete. If that experience of a childhood for that kid could feel lonely. It turns out that nagging voice may not actually be mine, but instead decades of mythology and assumptions around only children that are not backed up by science or lived experience.
This is Embodied, I'm Anita Rao.
Anna
One of the biggest stereotypes confronting only children is the idea that they are somehow spoiled. I always like to say that I was raised in a small democracy — which is not to say that my parents treated me as an adult too soon, but that we all had an equal say in any family decision, which often meant I was out-voted two to one.
Whitney
I am an only child, and I love being an only child. I don't think I fit the only child stereotypes, I'm super extroverted and love being around people all the time. I think being an only child was a major part of why I have such a close and happy relationship with my mom. I have a 2-year-old daughter, and I'm pregnant with our second. And being an only child was actually a big consideration about whether we wanted multiple children. I thought a lot about all the benefits and joy that I found from being an only child, but we'll see. Hopefully it's as good as being an only.
Leslie
I remember being a kid and, sort of, wondering what it would be like to have a sibling and to have a built-in friend. But on the whole, I don't wish for anything different. I have and had, like, very deep emotional relationships with my parents. And after my dad died, I was thinking about how deep the parent-child relationship is, regardless of how good the relationship is. I appreciate the depth of my relationship with my parents, and I sort of wonder how you replicate that across multiple parent-child relationships.
Anita Rao
Those were only children Anna, Whitney and Leslie. Anna is a former neighbor of mine, Whitney's in my book club and Leslie — one of my best friends from college. It was in large part conversations with them that inspired this show. While they as individuals disproved so many of the only child stereotypes I know, I wanted to understand where exactly these narratives are coming from. As did another journalist before me: Lauren Sandler.
Lauren Sandler
Before I became a parent, I wrote about war, I wrote about religion, I wrote about gender inequality. And guess what? It turns out that all of those experiences are actually preparation for what it means, I think, to be a parent in society — and, certainly, to be a parent of an only child. You know, it's a topic that people have a lot of opinions about, which are really weaponized, often, as people have told me that I have denied giving my child a sibling and denied giving my child, you know, what's seen as a normal life.
Anita Rao
As you've probably deduced, Lauren is the parent of an only child — and also an only child herself. But it was the former in particular that made her confront all of the mythology around single-child families. She dug into psychological studies and history books and interviewed a bunch of other only children and parents of only children. All of this culminated in her book, "One and Only: The Freedom of Having an Only Child and the Joy of Being One." This book takes readers through the long history of negative stereotypes and the people perpetuating them, like Granville Stanley Hall. He was an influential child psychologist in the late 19th century and the first president of the American Psychological Association.
Lauren Sandler
You know, he's a figure of a rural patriarchal, sort of, nostalgic America. Even in that age, there were men who felt that it used to be better. And he, you know, had this, sort of, rural upbringing of rough-and-tumble boys and the notion that that's what a family unit should be. And even though there was no actual research to back up these claims, he was really committed to the idea that an only child was somehow broken. He would refer to an only child is an "unteachable eagle." You know, even that language, I think, is evocative of the sort of vibe that Granville Stanley Hall would give off. And because he was such an important figure, such an important man, in such a limited and nascent field, his word — it had legs. And, you know, and there was a lot of history that predated him, right. I mean, large families were how people survived. People lived as hunters and gatherers, and then as farmers and — and that was your insurance plan. Child mortality, infant mortality, was really significant. And so there was something that backed up into Granville Stanley Hall's claims, but unfortunately, it wasn't ever borne out psychologically, and it certainly has not borne out in modernity.
Anita Rao
So this "only child syndrome" has now been debunked many times over and over, and you found that repeatedly in the research that we're looking at. But these stereotypes and assumptions still persist, so why is that? Why can't we let go of what has been debunked?
Lauren Sandler
I mean, it is a great question that does not have a clear and easy answer. But I, I have some theories. And you know, some of those theories are about, frankly, wanting women to be mothers more than anything else. The more that women are occupied with motherhood and with all of the domestic duties that ripple out, the less we can participate in society, in the marketplace, in, you know, the political sphere, and be, frankly, agents of our own pleasure — agents of our own autonomy. And I think it's been a very useful myth to keep telling people. And I'm using very, sort of, cisgender terminology as a shorthand here. You know, these things are certainly — they've been more complicated, and they are now, you know, increasingly more complicated as people have more freedom to make family choices and make choices around their own bodies and identities in a way that fits them. But in the most reductive, binary sense, you know, this, I think, has been a really great way to keep us at home.
Anita Rao
I appreciate that acknowledgement, and there are so many different ways that family structures look now that span so much greater than the nuclear family. And we're going to talk about that as we continue, but I want to go back to this question that while we have debunked these myths — that, you know, only children are selfish, and narcissistic, and so on — when you talk to only children, and in a lot of your interviews with only children and parents of only children, many folks still attribute large parts of their identity to being an only child. So why is that?
Lauren Sandler
Well, when the world tells you that this is why you are how you are — especially if you're not, like, totally thrilled about how you are — you know, I think most of us see the things that don't feel great about ourselves, don't feel great about our family situations. We yearn for deeper connection, we yearn for what has been idealized in the world. You know, those things stick. And when there is one totalizing story, it's pretty hard to put that into a different sort of perspective. And this story has remained totalizing for so many people.
Jeanene
Hello, I'm Jeanene, and I'm calling from Chapel Hill, North Carolina. And I am the parent of an only child. One of the main factors that caused me to only have one child is that I waited a long time to have her. I had her at the age of 40. And it was relatively easy process. But I decided after going through that, that I didn't want to go through it again. And now after 10 years, I feel the same way. I feel that God wanted me to only have one child, and I'm very happy.
Anonymous
For myself and my wife, after having one, there were lots of things going on in our lives, and we were not up for having another child immediately. And so, more and more time passes, and then at some point, it becomes a bit too late. It's hard to say if there's a regret behind those choices, and it's hard to say what would have happened if we had raised two or three or four children. But I can say that it feels good to have one, and I don't have the urge to have any more.
Kate
The main reason to have an only child, for me, really is the fact that I can't imagine being pregnant again. I just don't want to put my body through that experience again. I think there are other reasons as well, but I think they're not as important. And they're actually difficult to say out loud, because they're really, just, practical reasons related to work or the availability of time.
Anita Rao
That's Jeanene, a parent who wished to remain anonymous and Kate. Despite the stigma against single child families, that family unit is actually the fastest growing in the U.S. This trend is also mirrored in other parts of the world, like the EU and Canada. For public school teacher Corinne Lyons, the only child experience was one that she shared with both of her parents.
Corinne Lyons
That was actually a really interesting childhood. Because when you are the child of only children, you don't have any aunts, you don't have any uncles and you don't have any cousins. So a lot of the socialization that only children experience comes from their extended family. I didn't have that. So that was definitely a different experience than, I think, that a lot of only children have. Even if one of their parents is the only child, the other parent can generally supply some of those biological familial connections, if you will.
Anita Rao
Totally. How did this affect how you were perceived by other friends? Did you have any of those stereotypes that you were confronted with, that you were spoiled, or selfish or anything like that?
Corinne Lyons
There was definitely the stereotypes that came about. For me, it was a little bit easier, though, being the child of an only child, because my mom could, kind of, help me navigate those stereotypes and still help me develop as my own person. One of the things that I believe is people will be people, regardless. It's not just what the situation is, but who they are in that situation. So yes, I might be a little more spoiled. I might be, you know, a little bit less thoughtful of others. But that might have happened whether or not I was an only child. That's just one part of who Corinne is, as a whole. That one part just brings a different flavor to everything else.
Anita Rao
Lauren, how did your experience growing up as an only affect the conversation that you and your partner were having after the birth of your first child, and whether you were unsure about whether or not you would have a second?
Lauren Sandler
Oh, well, it definitely normalized it. It didn't feel like I was making a radical choice, it felt like I was carrying on a new tradition. But you still think about these things, you know. I always say, like, why don't we just think about having children one at a time, instead of, sort of, like, when are you having kids? Why isn't it just, kid? And that's something that I wish we could rethink a little bit. Which isn't to say it's idealized, I mean, when Corinne was talking about that smaller family dynamic, I really related to that. And I know that my kid does, too. But then, I think it becomes a question of how much weight we put societally on biological families. You know, what a chosen family dynamic can open up, what different ways of living in community. The way that we can have more intentional relationships with other people, instead of necessarily relying on biological relationships to determine what family looks like. I feel like there's a lot of power there — if we can open ourselves up to it — instead of sticking with some of these norms.
Anita Rao
Definitely, and Corinne, you talk about that. You wrote this really beautiful essay about your experience as an only child in which you say, you know, these are the people that have become my sisters. These are the people that have become my brothers and my aunts. Talk to me, in particular, how you've come to define who the siblings are in your life.
Corinne Lyons
So, just defining people who fill in, kind of, those gaps that you feel are missing. I actually feel like, in some ways, chosen family is a little bit better than biological family. Because with biological family, they don't really have a choice to be there, because they're your family. But with a chosen family, you're choosing them, and they're choosing you. So it's a process of, just, discovering who is really going to support you and who's really going to be in your corner.
Anita Rao
For sure, for sure. And it makes me think about this particular aspect of being an only child, that I want to ask both of you about, that was prompted by a friend of mine named Leslie. And she is biracial, her dad was Black and her mom is white. And she has some reflections on how being an only child who is biracial is a particularly unique experience. Let's listen to Leslie.
Leslie
My parents are really good at having, kind of, direct, honest conversations with me about race, and about being mixed race, and about understanding and relating to both sides of myself — both sides of my racial identity. But I do think it might have been nice to have a sibling from that perspective, to have somebody who really reflected me on that level — was also mixed race and had grown up in my home, with my parents, in the place where I grew up.
Anita Rao
So that is Leslie. And Corinne, I'm curious how that clip resonates with you. Have there been any moments in your life where you've wanted someone who grew up in the very particular context that you did, with the particular parents that you did, where you really craved having that person around for something really specific?
Corinne Lyons
As you process, as an adult, your childhood, right? If you have a sibling, you know, you can, kind of, bounce that conversation off of each other. I have a joke with my mom that she could, just, tell me anything at this point, and I would have no choice but to believe it because there's really no one else to ask, right. And of course, on the other end of it, as you know, parents start to mature. You start to think well, like, who is going to, kind of, help share these duties? And even if they're not, like, physically demanding duties, there's still emotional duties that come with aging parents that sometimes, I just feel like having someone who, kind of, had a shared childhood with me would be able to give me a different perspective, yeah.
Anita Rao
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And one of the things we heard about so often in leading up to the show was that while folks said, "I've really enjoyed the experience of being an only child as a kid, but as I become an adult, I have some fears about what it's going to be like to care for my aging parents." Or if they're going through something unique, "I don't necessarily have that person to talk to." Lauren, I'm curious to get your perspective on this, both from your own experience and the research about parental caregiving in multi-children families versus only-children families, and what you learned from that.
Lauren Sandler
Let's just say that in my book, I describe this element of the conversation as the Greek tragedy of only childhood. It is real, and I am on the precipice of it now. And no matter how many research papers I read about how it ends up being on one kid, and it's always the closest residing sister. You know, like, there's so much data around caregiving and aging parents. And so much psychological data around how siblings don't actually share the same memories, etc. And I read it all and it just, sort of, like, ends up in a different box in my brain because this is part of where, you know, the psyche, I think, really yearns for something different. You know, I have a friend who told me that she had a second kid just because she could not bear the idea of her existing kid having to deal with end of life stuff on her own, which I get on a deep level. I also then wonder within the whole calculation of how we choose to have kids, how we choose what our, you know, so-called adulthoods look like, if that is reason enough. And I think that that's, just, a really personal choice.
Anita Rao
It is a very personal choice. And honestly, I didn't quite realize how sensitive this topic was until we started diving into it. From her research, Lauren found that most people say they have their first kid for themselves and their second kid for their first. That's a sentiment that Kate, who you met earlier, definitely also hears from her community.
Kate
So if I ask any of my friends who have more than one child, why? They say, because when their child is an adult, they would like them to have somebody for support.
Anita Rao
I totally get that. And yet, the older I get, the more I realize it's all so case-dependent. I have two siblings that I know I can rely on as our parents age. But some of my other siblinged friends don't have great relationships with their brothers and sisters, and know that their ability to lean on them in the future is probably going to be limited. The other thing that surprised me when talking to parents of only children was that they did feel some guilt about sharing the reasons for their choice out loud. Lauren gets that, but also wants to push back.
Lauren Sandler
Yeah, I mean, I just always say that if the culture is telling you that you're doing it wrong, it's sort of important to ask why the culture is telling you that. That those messages are coming from a place that might be outside actual lived experience.
Anita Rao
Corinne, I know that you don't have children of your own in this moment, and I'm curious about how your experience as an only child has shaped your own desires for parenthood — if at all — and your thoughts about family.
Corinne Lyons
I say that, kind of, one of the things that I look for in a partner is, what are his familial relationships like, right? Not just how does he treat people, but, like, what is that back-and-forth relationship like between, you know, his parents, his siblings? Because I know that this is definitely something that I lack in. Any time you're considering becoming a parent, right, one of the things that you should kind of be thinking about is, how do I want my life to look, right? And how do I want my child's life to look? So in considering how I want my child's life to look, one of the things is, I definitely want them to have a sibling. So being an only child, kind of, shapes who I look for in a romantic partner, as well as, kind of, the discussions that I engage with that romantic partner about how many children, currently, I would like to have, right? And, kind of, just navigating the world in that manner.
Anita Rao
I'd love to know, Lauren, almost a decade ago now, you wrote a piece for The Atlantic that was published, and it was published with the headline, "The Secret to Being Both a Successful Writer and a Mother: Have Just One Kid." And this piece got a lot of pushback from writers you admired, the headline was not what you necessarily had intended and it started some hard conversations. And I'd love to know what those conversations illuminated for you about how we discuss parenting choices that's relevant to, kind of, understand the the frame and the context for this whole conversation.
Lauren Sandler
Oh, well, I hate to say that, to me, the conversations didn't illuminate anything, because they were just about that horrendous title. Yeah, because to me, you know, the point is never "have one kid." The point is never that there's a secret. The whole purpose of my book was to say, you should do whatever you want, but if you're doing something that maybe isn't what you want, you should interrogate why. Like, listening to Corinne talk about why, if she were to become a parent, she would want to have two kids, I feel like, that's so great. You've asked the questions, and you know what you want, which is so hard to do. And, yeah, I mean, the pushback, unfortunately, I think, was all against the title, which I asked them to take down as soon as it came up. But we all know that's, like, you know, love and war in publishing. It really, unfortunately, drew the whole conversation away from the one that I actually, really wanted to have about family policy, about the environment, about equal pay, about why it is that we have a history of telling women that they should be mothers more than anything else and how rooted in inaccurate and bunk psychology that might be. I personally believe that to be a good parent, you need to be a happy person. And it's not easy to be a happy person. And that that's how you can often have a happy kid, and that if we are living in constant states of sacrifice, and everyone is so rundown all the time — people are broke, you know, it's supposed to be the hardest, most important job in the world, right, is parenting. Well, it's not a job, and what if it wasn't so hard? I just think it's really important that we know ourselves and our desires, and that when people are telling us that we are living wrong or raising our kids wrong, that we ask why they might be saying that.
Anita Rao
All of the parents you've met in this show so far are parenting an only child in a moment where it's increasingly common to do so. But that was certainly not the case for the man you're about to meet.
Billy Collins
My mother was born in a rural town in Ontario, Canada. And I think it was expected that she just marry the guy at the haberdashery, or the lumber store or something. But she went to nursing school, and then she traveled all over the country. And my father was an electrician, and he was wandering around. He was working on the Gulf of Mexico on oil rigs, he helped with the Empire State Building — doing his little job.
Anita Rao
That is former U.S. poet laureate Billy Collins. And yes, he did say, haberdashery. Billy was born in 1941 to parents who, at the time, were both 39.
Billy Collins
Well, I think every — every family is considered normal by its members. I mean, I knew that my friends had brothers and sisters, but I didn't think of myself as an only child until I was a little older. And then, I really embraced it. Because when thinking about my childhood, I really enjoyed being alone. And I think being an only child is great preparation for being a poet, because you have a lot of time to fantasize, to imagine, to have imaginary friends, also. You have to kill them off eventually, though. You know, Baudrillard, the French philosopher, talks about children hiding under staircases, building pillow forts, little enclosures where they hide. And he says that's where the imagination really begins. And I think poetry, for me, writing it and even reading it, is a way of being more alone. And I felt I enjoyed solitude more than I ever felt loneliness or the need for a sibling.
Anita Rao
As a kid, how did you differentiate those two things — loneliness and being alone?
Billy Collins
I guess I had a feeling when I was alone in my room, and the room was — I love being in my room. I talked to myself, I had toy soldiers that were killing each other on the floor there, and I had really never felt needy or abandoned. You know, there are, kind of, have two great fears they say: abandonment and engulfment. And I think I had just the right balance. And I never really wished for a sibling, as I say in a poem I'm going to read later, I hope.
Anita Rao
Later? How about right now.
Billy Collins
Only Child
I never wished for a sibling, boy or girl.
Center of the universe,
I had the back of my parents' car
all to myself. I could look at one window
then slide over to the other window
without any quibbling over territorial rights,
and whenever I played a game
on the floor of my bedroom, it was always my turn.
Not until my parents entered their 90s
did I long for a sister, a nurse I named Mary,
who worked in a hospital
five minutes away from their house
and who would drop everything,
even a thermometer, whenever I called.
"Be there in a jiff" and "On my way!"
were two of her favorite expressions, and mine.
And now that the parents are dead,
I wish I could meet Mary for coffee
every now and then at that Italian place
with the blue awning where we would sit
and reminisce, even on rainy days.
I would gaze into her green eyes
and see my parents, my mother looking out
of Mary's right eye and my father staring out of her left,
which would remind me of what an odd duck
I was as a child, a little prince and a loner
who would break off from his gang of friends
on a Saturday and find a hedge to hide behind.
And I would tell Mary all about that, too,
and never embarrass her by asking about
her nonexistence, and maybe we
would have another espresso and a pastry
and I would always pay the bill and walk her home.
Anita Rao
Such a beautiful, beautiful poem, and takes you on such a journey as a reader and a listener. And it really reminds me of a conversation that I had with a close friend, who you heard from earlier in the intro, Leslie, and she lost her dad pretty suddenly a few years ago. And I remember her telling me that in the grieving process, she found herself thinking that that unit that used to feel so sturdy — those three, that triangle — felt really fragile after losing one parent. And she felt so much heaviness around the responsibility to carry on her father's memory, and do that alone. And I hear some of that in your poem too, and I'd love to hear you reflect on, I guess, what in particular about being an only child came up for you in the wake of your parents passing that you start to allude to in this poem.
Billy Collins
Well, my father went into a assisted living place — he suffered dementia. And it was a blissful kind of dementia because he had no idea that he was in a nursing home, he thought it was at his country club. And he had no idea that time was passing, and if you don't have an idea of duration, you have no sense of confinement either. And so then, he died in his sleep in the assisted living place. And because of that, he had already kind of disappeared. And so his passing seemed very normal, just, kind of, falling off the edge of the earth. My mother was — outlived him and she died at 96. So basically, I had, I'd say, quality parenting for about 50 years, which might seem excessive actually, but...
Anita Rao
Having had the experience of being an only child through both your youth and adulthood, do you have any advice for parents who are thinking about this decision and wondering what their adult kids may feel?
Billy Collins
Oh, I would stop after one. I was, well, you know, everyone — every firstborn is an only child for a while, you know. And then, sometimes you're an only child for good. Other times, you're a temporary only child. When I was on a trip once, my wife went out and got a cat, and then she said, "I think we should get another cat." And I said, "No, no, no, this is an only cat. Don't ruin the, you know, the solitude and the — the speciality." Well, she got another cat, and they get — they don't get along at all because they're cats. I mean, they just ignore each other. You can see, I'm very pro only child.
Anita Rao
Only child and only cat. Well, I'd love to end on, on what being alone has given you, especially in this later phase of your life. What have you gained from being present in your aloneness?
Billy Collins
Well, one realizes that as an only child — I did anyway — I realized that I had toys to play with. But my favorite toy was my imagination. If you have an imagination that's active, and you're communicative with it, then if you don't have a sister, you can just make one up. I grew up in New York City, and I grew up with this gang of friends of mine, but eventually I'd get kind of tired of it. And as we separated, I would just leave. I'd just run off and around a corner and disappear. And I'd spend the rest of the day by myself, and, to this day, I enjoy being alone almost more than anything. And I think the only child is a professional at being alone.
Anita Rao
Embodied is a production of North Carolina Public Radio-WUNC, a listener-supported station. If you want to lend your support to this podcast and WUNC's other shows on demand, consider a contribution at wunc.org now. Incredible storytelling like you hear on Embodied is only possible because of listeners like you.
This episode was produced by Kaia Findlay and edited by Amanda Magnus. Madison Speyer is our intern and Jenni Lawson is our sound engineer. Quilla wrote our theme music.
You can find information about everyone we talked to this week in our show notes, as well as a copy of Billy's poem. And hey, we want to say thank you so much to all of the new listeners who found their way to our podcast. We would certainly love for any of you listening now to share the word about Embodied with your own networks. Word of mouth recommendations are the best way to support our podcast, we would so appreciate your support.
Until next time, I'm Anita Rao, taking on the taboo with you.