The coming reign of the only child

A few years ago, Hallie Parker joined a WhatsApp group of millennial women who call themselves geriatric moms — almost all were close to 40 when they became parents. Half of them had two kids, including Parker, who at 33 was among the youngest. Half had only one kid, with no plans for more. But Parker was the only member in the group who is herself an only child. "If you have questions about only children," she volunteered, "you can ask me."

She was flooded with queries. Were you lonely? Did you wish you had siblings? What did your parents do to normalize it?

The level of anxiety in Parker's group chat made it clear that only children are still viewed as something of a demographic outlier — and a questionable one at that. Kids without siblings are seen as lonely brats who are moody and bossy and unable to play well with others. Their sense of entitlement draws everyone around them into mayhem: Just look at Harry Potter, Harriet the Spy, and Dennis the Menace. They're untethered and troubled in childhood (Drew Barrymore), in early adulthood (Tiger Woods), and especially in middle age (Elvis, Kanye). As only children become more prevalent, their alleged deficiencies have become generational shorthand: Instead of calling only children selfish, introverted, and lonely, we slap those labels on Gen Zers. No wonder we've never had an only-child president. In surveys, most Americans continue to say that the ideal family has two kids raised by married parents. Almost nobody — not even all of the mothers in Parker's group who have just one kid — aspires to have just one kid.

Yet that's exactly what's happening. The only child's time has come.

Back in 1978, the National Council on Family Relations published a paper titled "The One-Child Family: A New Life-Style," as if it were introducing a strange countercultural phenomenon. At the time, about 11% of American families had just one kid. By 2015, that number had doubled, to 22%. Big families, meanwhile, have become as rare as only children once were. In the early 1980s, 28% of women had four or more kids. Thirty years later, it was just 10%. Families with one child may be the least-desired outcome when Americans envision their dream lives, but in reality they're the fastest-growing family configuration in the country.

It's not hard to see why sibling-free families are increasingly common. Over the past half-century, the cost of raising a child has increased far faster than the average salary. American women are having kids later in life, leaving less time to bear multiple children. And the bigger-is-better belief about families that fueled the baby boom is now confined mostly to the deeply religious and the dramatically wealthy. In some schoolrooms, it's now more noteworthy among kids to actually have a sibling than to have none.

But it's harder to foresee what the rise of the only child means for our future. Will more solo kids lead to a world run by spoiled brats, devoid of empathy and unschooled in the art of collaboration? The experts, surprisingly, say no. As the ranks of only children swell, their personal idiosyncrasies, social skills, and family dynamics could prove to be the very tools we need to thrive in modern life. In an America that is more divided than ever, the only child might just be what brings us back together.

No one has done more to give only children a bad rap than Granville Stanley Hall. Once described as a "Victorian Dr. Spock," Hall was America's OG psychologist — the first man to earn a doctorate in the field from Harvard. Employing a method that was more sketchy than scientific, Hall asked college professors to share stories about "peculiar and exceptional children" they had encountered. Simply because only children were mentioned more often than they occur in the general population, and he concluded that they were inherently flawed: sickly, unable to get along with others, with a deluded tendency to create imaginary companions. Being an only child, Hall declared in 1907, "is a disease in itself."

In the decades that followed, scores of "experts" relying on equally dubious methods echoed Hall's spurious claims, which seeped into the wider culture. Then, in the 1980s, a social psychologist named Toni Falbo — herself an only child — set out to rigorously test Hall's ideas about her kind. Reviewing 141 studies of personality development in only children, she found that they were virtually indistinguishable from children with siblings, with one notable exception: They scored "significantly better than other groups in achievement motivation and personal adjustment." That's right: They scored better. It's a finding that has been repeated many times since. Only children are not, on the whole, any more shy, entitled, or lonely than their peers with brothers or sisters.

On the contrary, surveys have suggested that only children grow up learning to entertain themselves and solve their own problems. They don't mind eating alone. They're adept at forging close friendships that feel like family. Their comfort with being on their own may make them more unwilling to accept unhealthy relationships: One study found that only children were more likely to get divorced than their peers with siblings. And they tend to be academic achievers and highly independent, with high self-esteem. Only kids are more likely than other kids to become CEOs. Thomas Edison, Jack Welch, Carl Icahn — all onlies. But their success may have more to do with income than inclination. Small families tend to be more educated and wealthier, which gives only children a double advantage: Their parents have more time and money to spend, and fewer kids to spend it on.

In her group chat, Parker tried to reassure the moms who worried about their only children. She loved being an only, she told them. Even as a child, she knew it provided her with more opportunities. She loved horseback riding, a hobby her parents never would have been able to afford if she had siblings. Her folks made sure she wasn't lonely by always allowing her to bring a friend along with them on vacation. And despite the stereotype that only children are spoiled rotten, Parker was always eager to share her snacks and toys with others. She grew up hearing stories about her mother's difficult pregnancy and so was not one to beg for a sibling.

Nothing has accelerated the rise of only children more than delayed childbearing. American women in general are having children later, but the delay is most pronounced among the most educated. In fact, the single largest determinant of how many children a woman will have is her level of education: The more degrees you hold, the older you are when you start to have kids, the fewer kids you have. "It's not just people having kids later — they're starting to think about them later," says Anastasia Berg, a coauthor of "What Are Children For?"

That's how it turned out for the women in Parker's group chat. Most of them started out wanting to have more than one kid — but by the time they got around to bearing the cost and physical toll of having their first, they had changed their minds. In a 2021 survey, about a quarter of parents who said they didn't expect to have more children cited financial reasons. During the Great Depression, 23% of families had just one child; it's no coincidence that the baby boom took place during an unprecedented economic boom.

The average cost of raising a child in America from birth to age 18 was $310,000 in 2022 — and double that if you factor in four years of full college tuition. What's more, full-time working parents are spending even more time with their children than stay-at-home parents of previous generations did, prompting the surgeon general to issue a warning about their stress levels and mental well-being. If you're already struggling to care for one kid, it's difficult to imagine having a second.

But the trend toward fewer children isn't just an American phenomenon. Even in countries like Sweden and France that enjoy subsidized childcare and guaranteed parental leave, fertility rates are falling. "Trends of delay are consistent across the board," Berg says. Even religious conservatives, who are biblically motivated to be fruitful and multiply, are starting families later and more often having only one child.

Corinne Lyons is someone who wants a big family. A public-school teacher in her hometown of Detroit, she grew up the only child of two only children. But unlike Parker's, her siblingless childhood wasn't entirely glorious. "I didn't grow up playing with other kids," she says. Her biggest birthday parties involved having cake and ice cream at school. She wants a different experience for her own children, but she feels like she doesn't have much time: She'll be 36 when she marries her fiancé next September.

"Don't get me wrong," she says. "Being an only child is amazing. It's also hard. I don't want to have to send my child to school for social interactions." Even many only children, it would seem, aren't all that into having only children. But adult onlies are subject to the same trends (like later childbearing) and pressures (ahem, finances) that other Americans are. Lyons accepts that, despite her desires, she might end up having just one.

So what will the coming reign of the only child mean for America? For starters, only kids could spur us to build stronger communities and mend our divided social institutions. Without a built-in family of peers at home, only children learn to go out and build their own. Lyons, the public-school teacher, forged an extended family of friends in college, despite being a self-professed introvert. She was initiated into the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, and for nearly 20 years she has held her sorority sisters tighter than many people hold their relatives. "These people aren't in my life because they have to be," she says. "They're here because they want to be. I am very intentional in building that bond."

Only children could also transform America's business landscape. For starters, fewer kids means fewer heirs to take over family-run companies. In China, where the government's one-child policy created a generation of onlies, studies suggest that business founders with multiple children are significantly more likely to have an heir succeed them than founders with one child. What's more, research has found that only children, like first-born kids, tend to have a lower risk tolerance than younger siblings. China's one-child policy has contributed to a significant drop in the number of entrepreneurs — and only children who do start their own businesses tend to perform worse financially. One Chinese study found that companies run by only children generated revenue that was 30% lower than the revenue of companies run by children with siblings.

Onlies are under intense pressure to succeed professionally in part because of the financial burden they're expected to bear. They may start off life getting all the extra attention and devotion from their parents — but as their parents age, they'll be left alone to return the favor. Without any siblings to help out, only children face the prospect of being the sole caregiver for their parents. Studies suggest they're more likely than adults with siblings to provide direct care for their parents, such as bathing and dressing them, cleaning the house, and paying the bills. "I feel like the whole family rests on me," Parker says.

In a sense, having an only child effectively defers the costs of care by a generation. It's certainly cheaper to raise just one kid. But once that kid grows up, it's can be more expensive for them to care for two aging parents on one adult salary. And because their parents are likely to be older, many solo children are going to face elder-care questions earlier in their adulthood, while they're still trying to save up for a home or cover the costs of raising their own child. It's one of the few times that only children wind up longing for siblings. "It's true that there's infighting between siblings when a parent dies," says Lyons, who lives with and remains close to her mother. "But at least they can go through that experience together."

The one-child family has long been a stand-in for the best hopes and worst outcomes for the human race. In 1968, a Stanford entomologist named Paul Ehrlich and his wife, Anne, self-published a paperback titled "The Population Bomb." The Ehrlichs, who had one child, argued that the troubling headlines of their day — the Vietnam War, for example, or starvation in India — were all rooted in overpopulation. Unless we start having fewer babies, they argued, the planet is destined for famine, environmental degradation, and economic collapse. In 1998, the journalist Bill McKibben floated a similar argument in his book "Maybe One," making an ecological case for smaller families.

Fertility rates fell, and the population bomb never went off. These days, it's far more common to hear scaremongering about a population bust. America's most powerful billionaires, religious influencers, and conservative politicians are demanding we all make more babies. As Elon Musk, a father of 12, said in June, "It should be considered a national emergency to have kids." Conservative authors publish books with titles like "What to Expect When No One's Expecting: America's Coming Demographic Disaster." Vice President-elect JD Vance issued dire warnings about "childless cat ladies."

But as smaller families become the norm, the fears and stereotypes surrounding only children will inevitably subside. Just as having children is no longer seen as a required stage of adulthood, having siblings will no longer be a de facto part of childhood. Rainer Turim was raised in Manhattan as an only child who was immersed in his parents' adult world. "A lot of my friends in the neighborhood were older New Yorkers," says Turim, who's 25 and works in a restaurant. He has no idea how many of his classmates were also only children, because it never occurred to him to wonder about it. To him, it was totally unremarkable to grow up with no siblings.

Many of the millions of only children in the US will grow up to care for their parents on their own, build their own bonds of kinship and community, and lead their own companies in new and exciting ways. They'll spend much of their lives alone, as all Americans increasingly do, but they won't be lonely. And maybe, once there are enough of them, they'll no longer be seen as "only." They'll just be "children."

Ann Friedman is a writer who lives in Los Angeles. She is the coauthor of "Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close."