Both of my parents are only children (have no siblings). My mom has several half-siblings that are 14-22 years older than her, but she is my grandmother’s only child. My grandfather died when my mom was 18 and I don’t know any of his family.
My dad also has no siblings. My grandmother helped raised her nine brothers and sisters and decided that one child was all she wanted.
As a result, my sister and I have no real aunts and uncles and no first cousins. Thankfully, we are close to most of our great-aunts/uncles and our dad’s first cousins (our first cousins, once removed).
I’m just curious how rare it is for only children to marry?
I don’t know the exact stats but it must be pretty rare because I don’t think I have ever known two only children that married. If you believe in the effects of birth order on personality and relationships, many experts in that field say that an only child/only child marriage is one to purposefully steer clear of because of the generally incompatible traits that only children tend to have.
“But what if you are an only child? Who should you marry? Don’t make the mistake of marrying someone just like you, says Curtis. “The highest divorce rates are when an only child marries an only child,” said Curtis. “It makes sense when you think about it. An only child is used to being the center of attention. And when the only child marries another only child, usually it’s hard for them to share the spotlight.””
There are lots of other cites like this one if you are interested. I hope your parents beat the consensus.
As I look around my social circles,(age 50+) I see a lot of yuppie couples who got married in the 1990’s and had only one child, who is now 20 -ish, and going to college or whatever.*
So in the next few years, there are going to be lots of marriages between “only children”.
Sort of like the baby boom in reverse.
*(I’ve heard that universities now have problems within their dorms, because so many students were the only kid in their family, and have never shared a room before.)
I’ve known three couples with this property. Since I was a CS prof., in each case at least one person was also a CS prof or prof-to-be. And I really don’t make much effort to pry into people’s lives so I rarely know that much detail about others.
I know one of those couples only had one child, one had two, not sure about the other. Not big family types.
So I’d have to say it’s pretty common among the more advanced computer folk. MrsFtG and I sort of make up for it. I was in a 6 kid family and she is one of 4.
I’m 37, my mom is 57 and my dad is 64. I also have a 40-year old sister. My parents married a few weeks before my mom turned 16…and no, she wasn’t pregnant. She just wanted to get away from her parents.
Her mother was 35 and her father was 46 when she was born, so she had older than usual parents. My grandmother was also devoutly religious (Pentecostal) and my grandfather was an alcoholic (understandably), so her upbringing was was anything but ordinary.
She and my dad stayed together for 20 years before calling it quits. He was (and in many ways, still is) a spoiled, self-centered teenager trapped in a grown man’s body.
My sister and I have done a LOT of “reverse parenting” with them over the years…and our dad’s parents were really more like our parents in many ways.
Any studies, conjecture, or WAGs on whether marriages work better when the only child is the husband vs. the wife? What do we get when we map OC prejudices on top of gender prejudices?
Yeah, we only children are “used to being the center of attention.” We sure do hate to share that spotlight. We are so fucking spoiled that it is a hopeless endeavor to even try to live with us. No way an only child could find love with a significant other who refuses to bow and scrape and quiver before us, seeing as how we lonely onlies have all these delusions of grandeur. Nope. Not a chance.
Heard this sort of shit all my life. Really, really sick of it.
Never met anyone that I know of with that circumstance. I’ve met two people who have no cousins, which struck me as very unusual. Having not only no cousins but no aunts or uncles either is all the more unusual.
It’s not necessarily limted to only children. Over the past few decades families have gotten smaller while houses have gotten bigger (& w/ more bathrooms). Birth spacing has also gotten longer, so even kids with siblings of the same-sex are much less likely to have shared a bedroom. Many are even used to not having to share a bathroom (especially not at the same time as anyone else).
Naturally there’s alot of pressure on colleges to upgrade their facilities. Just as dormitories (in the sense of a large room w/ mulitple beds) gave way to double-rooms and communal showers gave way to private stalls in the past doubles are giving way to singles and bathrooms shared by entire floors are giving way to suite-style setups. Heck when my father went to college the men’s freshmen dorm had open toilets. :eek:
I think that’s one of the loopholes that let’s couples have a 2nd child; if mom & dad are both only children.
My parents we both an only child, so I have no aunt’s, uncles or first cousins. My partner and his ex-wife we both an only child, and they have an only child together. So it’s kind of common for me.
Each of my parents was an only child and born overseas. So my family, in this country, started with my parents, myself and my brothers and only grew due to marriage and childbirth as we grew up.
I’m an only child, married to an only child. Neither of us fits the only child stereotypes (we’re both introverts, and dislike being the center of attention) and although we don’t want kids, if we DID have kids we’d likely stick to one.
My parents were effectively only children. My Dad was an only child and my Mother’s brother (who was nine years older than she) was killed in WWII.
So no cousins, aunts, uncles for me. The closest were third cousins who I saw only occasionally. My parents raised four kids who had a total of 13 children.
Also interesting was that my Mother never knew any of her grandparents. I think that was a greater handicap for her in that she never had a model for being a grandmother herself.
I don’t think being only children made my parents significantly more selfish or self-centered. However I think it did harm their understanding of sibling rivalry and their (especially my Dad’s) tolerance for noise and activity. My father was also an introvert loner - so he didn’t learn a lot of social dynamics between children to help temper his understanding of us.
