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Old 05-13-2019, 11:24 AM
 
Location: Madison, NJ
453 posts, read 342,609 times
Reputation: 1145

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Do you feel generally happy in life?
Yes! I am very content with how my life is, although my job could be better.

Are you very close to your parents?
Extremely close with my mom. Close with my dad but I don't see him as much.

Are you the type who enjoys/prefers the solitude that you probably had from not having siblings growing up OR have you made sure you mostly surrounded yourself with friends?
I am fine in both situations. I am not an introvert, I have a solid group of friends I enjoy spending time with but I do not crave attention from others 100% of the time.

Do you know any other only children?
Yes, some of my friends are only children.

Any other comments?
My parents asked me if I wanted a sibling when I was growing up. I said no and I really meant it. I am 100% happy with that decision and their decision not to have another.
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Old 05-13-2019, 02:18 PM
 
Location: Southern California
12,704 posts, read 14,876,224 times
Reputation: 15234
Quote:
Originally Posted by Juicy Ajenku View Post
...Yes and most seem to like it. I am the oddball that has always hated it. Ideally, I'd love to be apart of a close-nit loving family with a bunch of fun siblings. I envy my friends with that...
Re: the part I bolded in red, I feel for you that you never really got used to being an only child your whole life.

I think in my entire life, there was a VERY brief time when I was a child that I wanted a sibling & then a couple of times, maybe when I was a teenager, but that's about it.

I wish my fiance' was an only child. He's put up w/ hell from his 3 siblings. His parents aren't good either...definitely the type of people who weren't parent material.
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Old 03-11-2020, 10:15 PM
 
860 posts, read 1,106,351 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Amelie90 View Post

Any other comments? I don’t really think that being an only child is a good thing. I feel like I have no family besides my parents. Extended relatives don’t really count to me. I rarely see them and they have their own families.
You could have siblings whom you rarely see and they could have their own families. So you siblings wouldn't count either. If you don't see your extended family (aunt, cousins, uncles), then that means that your parents siblings are not close to them and have their own families. You just proved that siblings are not always close.
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Old 03-11-2020, 10:17 PM
 
860 posts, read 1,106,351 times
Reputation: 502
Quote:
Originally Posted by silibran View Post

Any other comments? She did not have a happy childhood. She told me and my sibs a lot about her upbringing, as if it was a sort of therapy. It was hard on us to hear it as a constant refrain throughout our lives. If she had had siblings, she might have been able to weather the loss of her mother better. I do think she must have been lonely throughout much of her childhood.
I know people with siblings who were lonely and also bullied by their own siblings.
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Old 03-13-2020, 04:44 PM
 
Location: Phoenix, AZ
20,328 posts, read 14,547,380 times
Reputation: 39259
I'm not technically an only child, but I have always felt like one. I didn't really grow up with siblings around. I have two brothers, but the first was born when I was 9 and the other when I was 13. But beyond that, as a small child I did not go to daycare, I was cared for until age 5 by my wheelchair bound Great Grandma. I learned to be quiet and polite and helpful. I just did not have a very normal childhood. When she died, and they started putting me in daycare and school, I felt utterly out of place among children. They were loud, dirty, and cruel. I was afraid of most of them.

By the time I had a sibling, I was used to being on my own as much as possible, avoiding my parents, other kids, other people. I made friends of some of our adult neighbors here and there, as I could, but much of my time was spent wandering the woods alone. So when my little brother was born, my parents were on the brink of divorce, my Dad was avoiding being at home and was cheating, and my Mom was deeply depressed and sleeping much of the time. I had to learn to care for an infant, by myself, at 9 years old. Then later I ended up living with my Mom after the divorce, and she treated me like an adult, and I took care of her other son that she had with a foreign lover who took off, never to be seen or heard from again, shortly after his birth. I was more surrogate mother to my brothers, than I was a sister to them. And then I moved far away and we barely have any relationship at all now.

I call my Mom fairly often, and sometimes my Dad, rarely my brothers. I'm not very close to any of them, really. I certainly live quite far from any of them, or any other family. The people who took the best care of me as a child, are all dead now. But I'm very happy with my life, I make friends extremely easily and have many of them...yet I keep them all at a certain distance. I don't count on them, they don't count on me, I'm very self-sufficient and independent, I just only need "my people" for my social needs and because I enjoy them.

My fiance is a legit only child. He is more of an introvert, though he does like going out socially now and then, he's quiet and our friends jokingly call him a "houseplant." He is one of those still-waters-run-deep types. Very few people have been let close enough to him, to see past a somewhat polite and formal surface persona. It makes me feel very honored that I am one of them.
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Old 03-14-2020, 06:43 PM
 
14,376 posts, read 18,320,068 times
Reputation: 43047
Do you feel generally happy in life?

Yes - I love my life. It took a long time and a lot of hard work, but I am generally very excited about each day and derive a lot of satisfaction and joy from my professional and recreational endeavors.


Are you very close to your parents?

My parents are... problematic. I'm entirely estranged from my mother and hope she never contacts me again. My father was a difficult person but he really worked hard at supporting me in so many ways. He has Alzheimer's now, and I oversee his care and assets. I moved him to a memorycare facility down the street. We have always been close.

Are you the type who enjoys/prefers the solitude that you probably had from not having siblings growing up OR have you made sure you mostly surrounded yourself with friends?

I was an only child in an isolated area, and my social skills were not helped by my undiagnosed ADD, my mother's emotional abuse and my father's benign neglect. I learned to enjoy being alone with my pets and my books. That said, when I came out of my shell in my late 20s, I put a lot of work into building an expansive social network that remains one of my greatest joys in my life to this day. I am perfectly happy on my own, but I am also perfectly happy to drop everything to make time for a friend.


Do you know any other only children?

Yes. My favorite cousin, for one.

Any other comments?

I am very close to my cousins, so I feel like i have the best of both worlds. I could not love them more than siblings, but I don't have any baggage due to sharing parents, which I find comes between a lot of siblings (even some of my cousins).
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Old 03-21-2020, 01:48 PM
 
Location: In the house we finally own!
922 posts, read 785,966 times
Reputation: 4587
I'm an only child too. I have some questions regarding your life:

Do you feel generally happy in life? I do now, but for most of my life I did not.

Are you very close to your parents? I was close to my mom, perhaps too close. She was very controlling and had me under her thumb for most of my life. My dad was remarried and had two other kids, so I wasn't ever really a priority for him. They are both gone now.

Are you the type who enjoys/prefers the solitude that you probably had from not having siblings growing up OR have you made sure you mostly surrounded yourself with friends? I was a loner. I have a couple of lifelong friends that I mostly hung out with during various ages of my life. I did have other friends now and them but I was especially close to these three women. I am used to being alone, and I do like solitude. Now I spend all of my time with my husband as I am disabled and don't really leave the house too much. I have a lot of pets.

Do you know any other only children? My first best friend was an only child, and like me, was raised by her suffocating mother and grandmother. We were inseparable from the fourth grade until the tenth grade when I moved to another state. My other two friends had siblings.

Any other comments? I have been bullied my whole life, by other people and my own family. I never really learned to stand up for myself, but I stood up for my kids. My narcissistic mother and my abusive first husband both did a number on my self-esteem and is wasn't until I got away from them that I started becoming my own self.
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Old 03-25-2020, 12:29 AM
 
4,096 posts, read 6,194,573 times
Reputation: 7406
Very interesting thread to read. For some reason half of my family has all only children, cousins. But they were all to far apart in years to know each other. So I’ve seen a lot of only children.

From my perspective they have struggled with being happy. Don’t know if that is a direct result of being an only though as the other half of my family has bigger families, wrought with problems.

As far as siblings being close, I have 6 and not one is close with another. That’s a result of alcoholic abusive parents playing each kid off the others though.
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Old 03-27-2020, 11:51 AM
 
Location: So Cal
52,011 posts, read 52,464,357 times
Reputation: 52524
Quote:
Originally Posted by Forever Blue View Post
I'm an only child too. I have some questions regarding your life:

Do you feel generally happy in life?

Are you very close to your parents?

Are you the type who enjoys/prefers the solitude that you probably had from not having siblings growing up OR have you made sure you mostly surrounded yourself with friends?

Do you know any other only children?

Any other comments?

My Answers:

Regarding happiness, overall, I guess I am...I certainly try to be!

My parents are still married. I'm very close to my mom, but my dad's always been a very difficult man to get along with, so after my childhood, I'm not so close w/ him, but of course we're nice to each other. My dad would still do anything in the world for me & I with him.

I don't have what you'd call close friends & it's pretty much been like that my entire life, since jr high school. I have a couple of pals/acquaintances, meaning, I may meet up for lunch with someone every so many months...that's it. One friend & I also email each other maybe every couple of months, but there's no one I talk on the phone with. I do have a longtime boyfriend, which I'm glad about. We see each other almost daily. I don't mind dolitude....it's what I'm used to.

I recently met another only child through work. She's a few years older than I & lives alone as well. She doesn't seem to have too many friends either. She's talked of a friend or two that live far away who she hardly sees. She's got the type of personality of someone I could be friends with socially, so we'll see. Other than her, I never really met any other only children in my life as I recall.

My overall thoughts: It is what it is. Sure,I wish I had a couple close pals who are close enough to go on little fun trips together, but, what can you do?
I'm an only child and will answer the questions as honestly as I can.

Do you feel generally happy in life? I have moments of happiness, I've always had a darker depressive / anxiety side to me, if I'm being honest. My life on paper looks great as I've always sorta thought.

Are you very close to your parents? I was much closer to my mom than my dad.

Are you the type who enjoys/prefers the solitude that you probably had from not having siblings growing up OR have you made sure you mostly surrounded yourself with friends? I don't enjoy solitude that much. I do know that I don't thrive in large groups. I'm definitely an introvert for sure.

Do you know any other only children? Sporadically over the years I've bumped into a couple. Our extended family on my SO's side has two other "only children"

Any other comments? I think that one of the things that annoys me is the stereotype that only kids were spoiled and grew up with "more" stuff than other kids because we didn't have another sibling to share things with. Well, in my case that ain't nothing but a big ol pile of BS and may be true for some but certainly not for all.

I think for me that the way I turned out is more related to my screwed up parents than the fact that I was an only child, if I'm going to armchair psychoanalyze myself here.
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Old 03-29-2020, 11:45 AM
 
Location: Crook County, Hellinois
5,820 posts, read 3,849,372 times
Reputation: 8123
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chowhound View Post
Any other comments? I think that one of the things that annoys me is the stereotype that only kids were spoiled and grew up with "more" stuff than other kids because we didn't have another sibling to share things with. Well, in my case that ain't nothing but a big ol pile of BS and may be true for some but certainly not for all.
"Spoiled"? Oh, puh-leeeeease!

I'm an only child. If anything, I say that children with siblings are "spoiled". They may have more "stuff" and their parents' attention---and even that's questionable. But most of them don't have a clue what loneliness feels like, because they always had a built-in playmate at home. Whether for a board game, a game of catch in the backyard, or what have you, they generally always have someone to play with at home, for when their parents are "too busy" or don't care to play with a child. Especially now, with this "social distancing" charade, where socializing with friends has become the new weed (i.e. something illegal you don't dare get caught doing).
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