The Observer, Sunday 15 March 2009 (part of the article - go to Sunday Observer for full article)
www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/mar/15/single-child-families
It certainly seems to be true for many grown-up only children. Google "only child" and you'll discover a number of websites in which "onlies" express their feelings of loss, grieving for the siblings they never had. There are even only-child conferences and workshops.
Bernice Sorensen is a psychotherapist based in the west country, and the author of Only Child Experience and Adulthood. Through her website, onlychild.org.uk, she has collected thousands of personal accounts from adult only children which contain a number of common themes.
"I've been surprised at the number of people I hear from who have spent their whole life wishing they had a sibling," she says. "Usually they're people who have been brought up in isolated places. They feel a huge lack in their lives. Generally it comes to a head later in their life, especially when their parents get older."
Without doubt the biggest challenge for onlies is the realisation that when your parents need care, the burden will fall squarely on your shoulders, and when they die you will be left alone. At that point, a sibling can be a huge comfort.
Sorensen believes that many only children find it difficult to form relationships in later life. (I have a sudden flashback to the 1970s sitcom Sorry, starring Ronnie Corbett, about the infantilised adult only child still struggling to break away from domineering parents.) She also believes that because they have "quasi-adult" ways of approaching things, they can be made to feel odd at school. "A child may be able to hold her own in adult conversation, but at school he or she might be bullied, simply because they don't know how to interact with other children. A child saying something in the voice of a parent... You can imagine how that goes down."
I post a message on the site's noticeboard and three people respond. Jane, 34, is privately educated, now works in sales and is based in southwest London. Jane first started taking an interest in her only-child upbringing after the break-up of a long-term relationship a year ago. "It made me question aspects of my personality," she says. "I found myself asking, 'Why has this failed?' I'm not saying my relationship failed because I'm an only child, but I think it was a factor."
Jane describes her upbringing as privileged, but says she was the victim of "horrendous pressure" from her parents. "All their hopes were on my shoulders - education, career, it still goes on. They'd be like, 'Why didn't you get into that school? Why didn't you do well on sports day?' Sometimes it felt like they were ganging up on me. Being an only child wasn't just about not having a playmate, it was about not having an ally. If you do argue with someone it's your parents and they're always right. So as an adult you become very good at sitting there meekly, and taking a lot of crap."
While the other people who contact me have, on the whole, positive memories of growing up as only children, it's clear from talking to Jane that she and many others are convinced the experience left them emotionally hamstrung.
Damon Syson