My One and Only: what it's all about

Learn about: My One and Only: what it's all about from Lauren Sandler, MA,...
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My One and Only: what it's all about

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Don´t feel guilty if you have an only child or if you are thinking about having an only child. Hundreds of studies conducted over decades have shown that when it comes to emotional well-being, social skills, you name it, only children are no different than kids with siblings. Actually, only children in the literature tend to better. The ways in which only children are different than kids with siblings is they tend to be higher achieving, they do better on intelligence tests and they have higher confidence and self-esteem. So it is remarkable to me that we hold on to these cultural assumptions that only children are worse off when the literature shows that they are not. Furthermore, parents of only children tend to be very happy. Just think about it. If you didn´t have to divide your time, your money, the resources that you have between more kids and you actually devoted some of that to yourself or your marriage. I know our culture brands that as selfish, but I actually believe that happier people make the best parents. And so, I think that if we saved some of those resources for own happiness, that would end up yielding a world of better kids.

Learn about: My One and Only: what it's all about from Lauren Sandler, MA,...

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Lauren Sandler, MA

Journalist & Author

Lauren Sandler is the author of One and Only: The Freedom of Having an Only Child and the Joy of Being One, and a journalist who writes on cultural politics and gender issues for publications like Time, The New York Times, and Slate. And she’s as an only child and the mother of one herself. 

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