Disregarding the Stigma

I swear I wrote this before and used my Panic Button to extend the deadline and it got saved as a draft and I'm sorry.

There are few people who I idolize more than Bill McKibben, founder of the environmental organization 350.org. I pretty much threw up from excitement when I heard him speak and met him a few months ago. Aren’t we adorable?
So I was thrilled to find out that he has written a few things making a case for one children families and, as the parent of an only child himself, advocating for only children. One article published in The New York Times “What Only-Child Syndrome?” McKibben explores the history of the only child stigma, the reasons why even now only-children are stereotyped as spoiled and self-possessed.
In the late 19th century there was a study which used a survey to find exceptional and peculiar children. The conclusion was that immigrants and only children were far more likely to be peculiar. The stigma stuck and for a generation only-childness might at well have been a disease. At one point in the early 1900s one journalist insisted “It would be best for the individual and the race if there were no only children.”
This viewpoint held through the first half of the century. Finally in the 1970s, two researchers began to perform studies to look into the difference in only children. Toni Falbo and Denise Polit eventually examined more than a hundred studies done since the 1920's. In the mid-1980's, Falbo and Polit concluded that ''only children scored significantly better than other groups in achievement motivation and personal adjustment,'' and were in all other respects indistinguishable from children with siblings.
Only children tend to have slightly higher I.Q.'s and their vocabulary scores are markedly higher, probably because conversation in the household does not become as childlike.I can certainly attest to the fact that, as an only child, I only ever sat at the adult table and had the privileged of being treated as an equal

In his book, Maybe One: A Personal and Environmental Argument for Single-Child Families, McKibben argues that one child may be enough, may not fall into the stereotypes and could slow the terrifying population rise. It could be an environmental service to only have one child in a world overburdened by quickly rising populations. Having only one child, in a non-dictatorial, government demanded way, could be more socially and environmentally responsible. McKibben makes it seem that having two children is a luxury. However, for the 2.3 children and a picket fence attitude to shift, the stigma surrounding self-centered only children will have to change first.
So the study in the 1920s that said that only children are peculiar might be right. Only children are weird, they grow up in a significantly different environment, however, weird might not be so bad. Regardless, my position as an only child may have given me a different upbringing, but only children like others are influenced negatively and positively by their home environment.