Only Children in New York

I’m at least a fourth generation only child (me, dad, grandma, her mom…), and so I’m facinated by the concept of, well, ME!

A family with a single child is all for one and one for all. The children take on some of the characteristics of adults, and the adults take on some of the characteristics of children — though the child tends to be the focus of everyone’s attention, including his own.

The classic American idea about only children, nurtured in suburbs where two children could seem too few, is that they’re oddballs — coddled, spoiled, lonely. Raised without the camaraderie and competition of sibling society, they’re simultaneously stunted and overdeveloped — a repository of all their parents’ baggage.

A thoroughly unscientific culling of famous only children can suggest a certain kind of character, one who’s comfortable (sometimes too comfortable) creating his own weather, who is at home (sometimes too at home) with his or her own contradictions—and occasionally something of a megalomaniac…

For only children, that blessed sense of entitlement, where you’re always listened to and taken seriously…is at war with a sense of being smothered. The condition of being an only child gives one a lot to think about—and plenty of time to think.