Anne Brown of Chatham, Andrea Rogers of Taunton and Mary McIlvenny of Northampton are only children and they describe their feelings and experiences of the subject.
Is there something instantly recognisable about an only child?
Anne - Only children are really part of a select club, members of which can always recognise each other instantly. I would imagine they wouldn’t be too gregarious.
Andrea - they’d probably be self conscious as well and probably disappear into the background unless they’d had one too many and then they’d be over the top.
Mary - They would be more reticent and one of the learning things is that you have to learn to overcome that with confidence ..you haven’t got any other support but yourself and it really is you against the world.
Why is it difficult being an only child?
Mary - I think because you don’t have the natural repartee at home...for me the greatest disadvantage is that you don’t learn to be witty and have instant rapport. You think it, but you don’t say it and maybe that sparring with others when you are young, seems to have a long lasting effect and because I didn’t do it, I therefore feel inadequate in crowds and I don’t push myself forward and I wait for others to seek me out.
Andrea - never getting picked for school teams, so whenever that situation came up you’d be the last one.
What did you miss out on as an only child?
Andrea - I think I missed out on being ordinary. I was told I was very special as a child by her parents. They were wonderful parents and I was special to them and my poor mother has had 45 years of me saying why didn’t you have another child?
Did you have any imaginary friends?
Mary - I didn’t have imaginary friends. I used to image that I was other people and pretend I was like them and make it all wonderful for them and surround myself with other imaginary children.
Andrea - You get very good at people watching. I’m now a homeopath and I watch patients as well as speaking and listening to them and I’m sure that developed from kind of isolation of just watching and not being involved.
Anne - I am very good at working people out , I don’t just look at the covering I look inside the book so to speak. I do judge people...I can’t help it I’m very judgemental.
Mary - You do become very receptive to every single nuance.
Andrea - You do become serious and you watch other people gadding about their lives and they seem so airy and you think I wish I could be like that too.
Mary - I think that as an only child there’s always something missing, that sort of solidarity, that missing link. Maybe people with families, are unaware that they see things through the same shade, and you don't. You see it through your own shade and no body shares that with you.
Andrea - I see myself doing sibling rivalry now with my husband, my kids, my mates. And they say "hang on". It’s like I’m living that part of family life out now.
Anne - Do you regard your long standing friends as more siblings than friends?
Mary - your friendships are much deeper than other people’s relationships with their friends. You expect much more from them as well because you give them so much more.
I wonder how much we’re indoctrinated into the "big family" as a sort of deity. It comes up at school even in the reading list. You start with something like Little Women, then you are on to Pride and Prejudice and you haven’t got any of this family stuff and it’s many years later when you realise just how dysfunctional this lot was.
Anne - I find as I get older I’m grateful for the moulding it gave me. I’m a strong person now and the world can throw very little at me that I can’t cope with because I have to rely on me.
Mary - There’s one disadvantage that you can’t overcome. It happened to me about 20 years ago when my mother was very ill and I realised that her life was very much in my hands. The authorities came in and told me that she needed to be institutionalized. That was a very traumatic experience because there’s no one to discuss it with no-one to share the responsibility with.
Have they got more than one child?
Anne - has three sons. I didn’t want them to go through what I’d experienced
Mary - has two son.
Andrea has one daughter and three sons.
