I’ve always said that my childhood devoid of siblings was fantastic conditioning for my future as a crazy cat lady. I love being alone, I am self-sufficient, and would be content with only the company of a warm, furry ball to spoon at night. Sure it might get a little lonely, but, hey, I’m used to it!
Joking aside, a significant part of who I am stems from the fact that I am an only child. Sometimes when people find out that I am an only child they smile knowingly and say, “Oh, that explains so much.” What does that even mean? Am I marked from the other people who grew up in the company of brothers and sisters with some strange social quirk that only single children have?
Maybe it isn’t particularly obvious, and while I can’t attribute general social awkwardness to my only-childness (yes, I’m making it a noun), I am marked as an only child. In my case, I have an unfortunately extreme form of only-childness with not only the absence of brothers and sisters but of close family relatives my age. I was born in a period when all of my extended family for some reason decided to take a hiatus from child rearing. So when I was a toddler, my cousins were just graduating college. Watching my four younger cousins born a decade after me, I realize that I was denied the opportunity to escape from the adult world in pillow forts and water balloon fights. I always sat at the adult table.
So here I am. A product of my.childhood. Some would say that I was denied a proper childhood though this isn’t something I really identify with. So for this free choice blog, I wanted choose a topic that I could write about from personal experience but also something wanted to learn more about. While I feel like a life with siblings would have made me a different person, I am not entirely sure how or why. Psychologically, it would make sense that people who grew up in an environment with adults will have certain behavioral habits different from people who grew up sharing a room and the attention of their parent(s).
Obviously there is a wide range of possible experiences for only children though there are a few trends that I would like to identify and explore further in future blog posts.
-ambition to live up to parent’s achievements
-tendency to not want to share/to prefer privacy
-to prefer peaceful environments and shy away from conflict
-feelings of stress to behave correctly
-independence/self-sufficiency
-morality based off parent’s views
-ability to communicate with adults
-preference to being introverted
-feelings of self-consciousness
There are common traits that I have noticed in myself and other only children. I would like to make this a somewhat personal case study of my own experience and the impact that this upbringing and these characteristics may have on an individual in the future.
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