家庭：独生子女会面临什么不幸的事实

What is the brutal truth about being an only child?Joanne Friedman, BA Psychology, MEd Special Education, Farmer, Teacher, Horseman, Writer, OMG I'm old!As mother to an “only” (by choice and also by Fortune), I’ve heard her complaints. Her biggest complaint, which only arose lately as she turned 40, has been that she believes she’s expected to care for all of her parents, both blood and in-law, by herself, which is overwhelming. No matter how often we assure her that none of us expects her to spend her adult life as our caretaker and that we’ve all made significant other plans for our care, she feels that weight. Only time will remove it.The other negative became evident when she was a mid-teen and her father and I, who had divorced when she was young but remained co-parents, both found other partners who also had family members (as most people do, after all). I can well recall her having a flat-out hissy fit one holiday when I invited her to join me and my partner’s family for an event. It wasn’t about not liking my partner or her stepmother or the event in question. It was about feeling overwhelmed. She yelled, “I have too much family already! There’s you and your family and Dad and his whole family, and now there’s two more whole families and I can’t stand it!” She dug in her heels and firmly refused to include any further people. Period. Hard stop. Until then, she’d been able to choose her “family” from the cadre of friends with whom she surrounded herself. Suddenly the choice was no longer hers alone to make and it rankled badly.That stance continued until she was in her mid-20’s. Having grown up as an only, she did not relish trying to accommodate so many other people in her life, but life has a way of ignoring our desires. At 27, she married into a very large family, and suddenly, despite adding some 15 or so more hearts to her cache, she began to be less irritated and more welcoming. Now her home constantly vibrates with the sound of visiting family members and she loves it as much as she thought she hated the very idea.That’s the “brutal truth”. At some point, onlies have to accept that there is room inside them for more love and caring than they grew up expecting.What is the brutal truth about being an only child?Joanne Friedman, BA Psychology, MEd Special Education, Farmer, Teacher, Horseman, Writer, OMG I'm old!As mother to an “only” (by choice and also by Fortune), I’ve heard her complaints. Her biggest complaint, which only arose lately as she turned 40, has been that she believes she’s expected to care for all of her parents, both blood and in-law, by herself, which is overwhelming. No matter how often we assure her that none of us expects her to spend her adult life as our caretaker and that we’ve all made significant other plans for our care, she feels that weight. Only time will remove it.The other negative became evident when she was a mid-teen and her father and I, who had divorced when she was young but remained co-parents, both found other partners who also had family members (as most people do, after all). I can well recall her having a flat-out hissy fit one holiday when I invited her to join me and my partner’s family for an event. It wasn’t about not liking my partner or her stepmother or the event in question. It was about feeling overwhelmed. She yelled, “I have too much family already! There’s you and your family and Dad and his whole family, and now there’s two more whole families and I can’t stand it!” She dug in her heels and firmly refused to include any further people. Period. Hard stop. Until then, she’d been able to choose her “family” from the cadre of friends with whom she surrounded herself. Suddenly the choice was no longer hers alone to make and it rankled badly.That stance continued until she was in her mid-20’s. Having grown up as an only, she did not relish trying to accommodate so many other people in her life, but life has a way of ignoring our desires. At 27, she married into a very large family, and suddenly, despite adding some 15 or so more hearts to her cache, she began to be less irritated and more welcoming. Now her home constantly vibrates with the sound of visiting family members and she loves it as much as she thought she hated the very idea.That’s the “brutal truth”. At some point, onlies have to accept that there is room inside them for more love and caring than they grew up expecting.