Your Parenting Mojo - Respectful, Research-based Parenting Ideas To Help Kids Thrive

Today’s episode comes to us as a result of a listener named Sylvia who wrote to me saying she and her partner don’t want another child but are worried about the potential impact on their daughter of growing up without siblings.  But why would there be a potential impact? Turns out there’s a slew of information in the popular press about how only children grow up with no way to learn social skills, which makes them simply awful to be around.  And everybody agrees – from parents of multiples and children who grew up with siblings, to parents of only children and even only children themselves – that only children are more selfish and not as nice to spend time with as children who grew up with siblings. No wonder Sylvia is worried! Personally I don’t have this problem; my own selfishness about not wanting a second child has overridden the issue of growing up without siblings to the extent that I had actually never considered it a potential problem until I received the question.  But having pondered it and foun