You may have seen the Motherlode post written by an unhappy only child this week in the New York Times. It’s fairly typical of its ilk: my mother wanted more children, and I wanted siblings, and therefore an only childhood is a miserable thing. The only data points the author offers are on the rising number of only children in America. According to her anecdotal experience, this is a terrible thing.
Perhaps without knowing it, the author–a public relations specialist and essayist–reveals what may be the two surest ways to lay the groundwork for unhappy onliness. It starts a generation earlier than you’d think, with our parents’ longing. She writes: ”For my parents, having an only child was not a …
