People are curious when they find out someone grew up without the experience of siblings. They are full of questions.
“So it’s just you?” “Weren’t you lonely?” “Did your parents buy you everything you always wanted?” “Do you hate sharing?”
In other words, “Tell us how much your lonely upbringing made you an unsocialised freak”.
I have a brother, but the vast age gap between us meant I grew up as an only child in a day-to-day practical sense. We never had to share resources like food, space, cars or our parents’ attention. Considering he was driving while I was a toddler, he took on more of an additional parent role, albeit a much cooler one who made me milkshakes and definitely never, ever cut up the garden hose to make bongs with his friends (that’s for Mum if you are reading this).
Sibling people have always viewed my kind with a deep sense of mistrust. We are spoiled. We are selfish. We always have to get our own way. That’s what sibling people honestly believe. Yes, the people who had to fight for their parents’ love, attention and money think they are the well-adjusted ones. People who were told they were adopted by an older brother, or were chased around the garden with a knife after a game of Monopoly went wrong. Sisters who stole each other’s clothes. Brothers who locked each other in wardrobes.
[ Pierce Brosnan: ‘I was an only child from a fractured family’Opens in new window ]
As a kid visiting friends I got a glimpse into the horrors of the sibling world. I saw people get their siblings into trouble on purpose, offering their unsuspecting brother a chocolate before screaming “Mum, Michael was eating the sweets you told us not to touch until Christmas!”
I saw the deep satisfaction they drew from the telling-off they had just engineered. The sheer pleasure of tormenting their own flesh and blood.
You don’t have to worry about the only children, the people who never had to be sneaky or cunning or political just to get a packet of crisps. If I wanted something, I just asked for it like a big gom, while my friends devised complex plans to convince their younger sibling that they actually wanted pizza for dinner that night because their mum was less likely to say no to “the baby”. If I broke something, I had to own up. There was no one else to share the blame.
The American psychologist Dr Frank Sulloway studied birth order and its impact on psychology, concluding that people develop different personalities in families “because they adopt different strategies in the universal quest for parental favour”.
I asked my dad once why they stopped after me. I expected him to say it was because I was such a prodigious bundle of joy that I satisfied all their yearnings for other children so there was no need to make them. What he actually said was that they just couldn’t afford any more
This has been debated, but it sure fits my hypothesis that sibling people are traumatised by rivalry, and now we simple solo children have to put up with their nonsense, which includes banging on about “only children being bad at sharing”.
In fairness, I do hate sharing. Especially chips. I will happily buy you your own portion. There is no need to have “just a few” of mine. I have allotted my portion to my current level of hunger. Those chips are already spoken for. I might have boundaries around my food, but at least I didn’t learn to be manipulative before I could read.
“Didn’t you want a little sister or brother?” people ask.
The answer is no. Not now, not then. I knew I was on to a good thing, even at the age of eight.
I asked my dad once why they stopped after me. I expected him to say it was because I was such a prodigious bundle of joy that I satisfied all their yearnings for other children so there was no need to make them.
[ Brianna Parkins: Growing up without siblings, I knew I was on to a good thingOpens in new window ]
What he actually said was that they just couldn’t afford any more, and the Honda they drove back then barely fit me, my older brother and the dog in it anyway. Out of everyone, they were least likely to get rid of the dog.
Why am I considered the big freak but people with large families escape social stigma? Why do they get to ask me invasive questions, while politeness dictates that I can’t ask my own? Such as: where did you all sleep? Did you fight over clothes? Who decided what you ate for dinner? Are you parents super religious? Were you homeschooled? Did you wear matching outfits made from curtains? Did you sing goodnight to guests at family parties in slightly creepy ways? Did your dad run off with the nun who was your babysitter while you fled the Nazis across the Alps?
Admit it, the fictional Von Trapps would be off-putting in real life. Imagine standing at their summer barbecue, watching your Pinot Gris go warm in your hand while all the brats sing goodnight for 30 minutes with a fake smile stuck on your face.