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In a story in today's Washington Post, Marcia Katz writes about what it's like to be the parent of one child. There's a stigma against single children: In the 1930s, psychologist G. Stanley Hall called the only child "a disease in itself." You'll hear that only children are self-centered, lonely, maladjusted (or, argues Katz, are they just self-confident, independent, accomplished?) What really concerns Katz, however, is how people treat her as the mother of an only child. "The sociable woman at the checkout stares," she writes. "'So,' she finally asks, 'you only have the one child?'" Katz claims that people see her as "inadequate or selfish." And the backhanded compliments keep on coming: Katz' son's teacher swears he doesn't "act" like an only child. And her friends point out that her son is not selfish and spoiled. And as she makes every attempt to convince us that her son is "normal," Katz succeeds in proving that she is the one with serious neuroses. More »
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