“We don’t care for the term ‘only child’ because it sounds so negative.”
- Yahoo! homeschooling group, which prefers “singleton”
“Come on…you don’t want to let Jessica finish ahead, do you?”
- Lo, on a boxing team run
I have a standard reply when people inquire about my (nonexistent) siblings: “No, I’m an only child. In fact, I’m an only grandchild on one side of my family. So, pretty much, I’m the center of the universe.” Inevitably, my examiner will ask some iteration of the question, “But aren’t you sad/lonely/disappointed/empty?” Raising my left eyebrow independent of my right, I reply, “Wouldn’t you want to be the center of the universe?”
Yes: I am an only child, and I am the epitome of an only child, if what I’ve learned from other onlies/singletons is statistically significant: early reader, self-directed, more comfortable with adults than same-age peers when younger, at best a strong leader, at worst a strongarm dictator. I’ve loved every moment.
Some of what I am has to do with where I grew up, as well. I was raised in rural Pennsylvania, as in “more cows than people” rural. There wasn’t another child near my age in the area until I was eight. The lack of other kids, coupled with the fact that I could, with safety and impunity, run wild on my family’s farm and its adjacent woods created a unique space in which to grow. My world, and particularly my Summer World, consisted of me, my boxer-dog Misty, and the landscape. All games were self-invented or necessary modifications of “For 2-6 players; Ages 10 and up!” No one shouted “No fair!”; the rules changed to suit me; there was no taking of turns; it made me a person who still talks to myself (a lot).
One of the messages that led to this “only child blog-off” invoked the term “hyper-individual,” a phrase with which I fell instantly and passionately in love. It’s perfect: biologically, it connotes excessive production; colloquially, it indicates rabidity, fanaticism…everything I feel about being exactly who I am in any given moment and someone else entirely in the next. Growing up as my own sounding board, as my parents’ archetype for what a child is and should be affords me that freedom.
Unfortunately, that’s the crux of nearly everything negative I hear leveled at only children, and particularly, at parents who choose to raise only children. Onlies are spoiled; they never learn compromise; they expect the world to yield to them. Sometimes, yes. But who isn’t/doesn’t, sometimes?
Where I do see and feel a difference in myself is my ability to, regardless of circumstance, hold onto that key core that is Me. The Me that developed in my childhood remains. She doesn’t feel coerced to back down from her beliefs, be it in the classroom or the ring. She isn’t worried that no one will like her if she wears eight-hole Doc Martens with shorts to a bridesmaid gown fitting. She covers her left arm with more and more and more ink that formulates a map of where she was; where she would like to go next. She doesn’t care if Jessica finishes ahead of her on a team run. She knows, precisely, the time she last logged on this distance – she’s nearly 45 seconds ahead of herself, and what the hell else matters?
For more on onlies, see the lovely and talented http://indecisivepeach.com/
