Sexists, ageists, and only-child skeptics buy into negative myths and unsupported biases. In short, they are mostly stuck in the past and misinformed. The dated thinking around these issues is deeply embedded and fed by what a person believes and where they get their information.
Most of us cling to one stereotype or another. Unintentionally, we may hold on to stereotypes about race, firstborn or middle children, single women, childless women, gender, or older people. The teen years come with their own set of stereotypes. We expect adolescents to rebel and be irresponsible or difficult, for example.
Like only-child stereotypes, ageism is ingrained in our culture and based on falsehoods. The same could be said of gender stereotypes. Researchers Lin Bian et al. have found that girls as young as 6 associate a high level of intellectual ability, such as brilliance or genius, with men more than women.
The reality is that no person of any age, background, family makeup, or life stage neatly fits our preconceived stereotypes. Criticism cuts both ways. Today, for instance, larger families face the kind of censure or ridicule that was once reserved for only children and their parents. I was among those who questioned the Duggars, the family starring in the reality TV show “19 Kids and Counting.” When their 19th child was born. I asked, “When Will the Duggars Stop?”
The Duggars are an outlier, certainly, when it comes to family size, but having a conversation about family size and bringing attention to it takes great care. Parents and researchers alike who try to make definitive statements about the implications of being an only child or having siblings risk offending and reinforcing stereotypes.
Stereotype Whiplash
Changing how a culture thinks is difficult. Over time, however, it’s possible. China’s long-held preference for boys, once referred to as “little emperors,” spotlights how attitudes can shift. In a country that has long revered male offspring, researcher Shi Lihong found that the overwhelming pressure to have boys, or that having a girl is undesirable, has dissipated in parts of the country.
Similarly, the original culprit of demeaning messages about only children, psychologist G. Stanley Hall, conducted a study in 1896 that was flawed on many levels. His study of “peculiar and exceptional children” concluded that only children were bossy, lonely, and selfish and had more imaginary friends. As a result of his findings, he declared that being an only child was essentially “a disease in itself.”
Although Hall’s early followers adhered to his thinking and reinforced his research, other researchers have since chipped away at the flaws in Hall’s findings. By 1934, a study titled “The Personality Adjustments of Only Children,” reviewed many previous studies focused on the impact of being a singleton and concluded: “‘Onliness’ per se is not the environmental specter so widely assumed. Whatever role the mere presence or absence of siblings may play in the development of personality, its importance is certainly not crucial.”
Toni Falbo, a professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, concurs. Her groundbreaking research spanning decades has helped set the record straight on only children. “I think the belief in the ‘lonely-only,’ or the ‘maladjusted-only,’ persists because of the stereotypes,” Falbo clarifies when speaking to the Christian Science Monitor, “Stereotypes are something that seem to make sense in people’s thinking. They’ve been around for thousands of years, and there’s the benefit of thinking that all couples should have children, and that’s plural.”
Judith Blake, a sociologist at the University of California, Berkeley, spent years investigating only children in America and found much of the bias about only children is mistaken. In the 1980s, she refuted prevailing beliefs that only children are “isolated, less successful and socially clumsy. The performance of only children belies the prejudice,” she wrote, making it clear that “only children have no obvious character or personality defects.”
What these studies and present research can’t find is a distinct difference or disadvantage for being an only child. In fact, most studies point to the reverse.
What Keeps Stereotypes Alive
The only-child syndrome, ageism, sexism, and other cultural stereotypes share these qualities:
- They are buried deeply in our culture.
- They are kept alive by misinformation.
- They are stubbornly difficult to change.
- They persist long after they have been debunked.
By understanding the facts instead of getting swept up by persistent stereotypes, we can change the climate around ageism and sexism as rural Chinese families did about their preference for boy babies and as more people recognize the fallacies in the only-child stigmas and express their preference for only children.
Copyright @2025 by Susan Newman, Ph.D.
