My Brother Is An Only Child

I am an only child. Always have been, always will be. G. Stanley Hall may have been thinking of me when he proclaimed that being an only child was a disease. Hall also gave us the concept of adolescence as a life-stage. What a guy! If this is (fair & balanced) self-disclosure, so be it.


[x Austin Fishwrap]
About 20 percent of U.S. children younger than 18 had no siblings at home in 2003, according to Census Bureau; the trend is chipping away at the stigma
By Michele M. Melendez — Newhouse News Service

Maria Mason and Paul Schierhorn put off parenthood in order to be financially poised and emotionally prepared. When the time came for the New Orleans couple, she was 39. He was 44.

Nine years later, their boy, Will, remains their one and only.

They are among the growing numbers of American families that have stopped at one child -- a trend observers predict will ease the long-standing view of such households as incomplete.

For generations, one-child families have gotten a bad rap. Prominent psychologist G. Stanley Hall declared around the turn of the 20th century that being an only child was a disease, stoked by permissive parents.

But research suggests otherwise.

"Only children tend to be higher achievers," said Steven Mintz, history professor at the University of Houston and author of Huck's Raft: A History of American Childhood. "They get along fine with their peers. They aren't spoiled or lonely or aloof."

According to Census Bureau data from 2003, about 20 percent of U.S. children under age 18 had no siblings at home.

The country's birth rate has been deflating since at least 1960, with small bounces through the years. Meanwhile, a greater proportion of women have their first children at later ages, when declining fertility makes it less likely they will have more.

From 1970 to 2003, the birth rate of first children among mothers 40 to 44 quintupled, from 0.4 to two births per 1,000 women, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. For women 20 to 24, the rate fell, from 78.2 to 48.3.

With couples delaying marriage and childbirth and mothers remaining in the workforce in large numbers, single-child families are becoming more common, said Susan Newman, a Metuchen, N.J., psychologist and author of Parenting an Only Child: The Joys and Challenges of Raising Your One and Only.

"The sheer numbers are forcing the stigmas away," Newman said. "The studies are invalidating the stigmas."

Mason, 49, and Schierhorn, 53, who teach acting at Tulane University, know the stereotypes. They constantly ask themselves if they're setting the right limits, helping their 9-year-old too much or too little.

Schierhorn recalls Will learning to tie his shoes: "You have to get out of the house, (but) it takes the kid 20 minutes," he said with a laugh. Yet he stood back, because Will needed to conquer his own laces.

That's the right strategy, family counselors say.

"You can't attend to every need of the child," said Thomas Haller, co-author of The 10 Commitments: Parenting with Purpose and a Bay City, Mich., therapist. "With an only child, sometimes the parents move in and rescue them too soon, rescue them too much."

Knowing the traps can help.

Carolyn White, editor of Los Angeles-based Only Child magazine, lists several in her book, The Seven Common Sins of Parenting an Only Child: A Guide for Parents and Families: overindulgence, overprotection, failure to discipline, overcompensation, seeking perfection, treating the child like an adult, overpraising.

"When you have only one, you think, 'This is my first and last chance with everything,' " White said.

Sometimes, Joe Klemmer, 42, of Dale City, Va., thinks he's overprotective because his son, Joseph, 8, is his only child, though Klemmer suspects he would guard a larger family as closely: "Nothing is more important for me than Joseph."

He cares for Joseph during the school year and alternates weekends with his ex-wife. Joseph does well at school, has lots of friends and is an overall good kid, but occasionally Klemmer notices that he is used to getting what he wants.

"I know that he is spoiled -- not spoiled rotten, but spoiled," said Klemmer, who battles the chronic pain of fibromyalgia. "He knows he can wear me down, because I don't have much energy."

Klemmer grew up with two brothers and two sisters and sometimes wishes Joseph could experience having siblings.

That's a common theme.

Naomi Pardue of Bloomington, Ind., went through two years of pricey fertility treatments to become a mother. She and her husband, Randy -- both are 44 -- had envisioned having two, maybe three, kids. But they knew it would be expensive, and were overjoyed with their girl, Shaina.

A smaller family also meant a less drastic change to their pre-baby lifestyle. "It gives me more time for me," Pardue said. "I find it hard enough to juggle her schedule, my schedule and my husband's schedule."

Shaina, 13, accepts her only-child status, but admits, "I've always kind of wanted siblings, because I live in a neighborhood where there aren't a lot of kids." Since an early age, she said, "I was kind of on my own. I learned how to do things I could do by myself."

Parental advisers say children without siblings need relationships with peers.

"Some of these kids inside feel really lonely, because they don't have anyone to share with," said Erik Fisher, an Atlanta area psychologist who counsels families.

Fisher said parents should expose the young child to other children -- with play dates, for example -- without taking over the child's schedule.

Mason finds ample opportunity to connect with other mothers in New Orleans. She has found them on a ticket line, in a clothing store, in a museum and during other outings. Will is the beneficiary.

"I was very focused on creating stimulus and setting up play dates from an early age on," she said.

Will, for his part, has been attracted to guitar lessons, learning to perform circus skills and playing baseball on a team his dad coaches. When he's at home, he reads, climbs his favorite tree and explores rocks, pebbles and leaves.

Does he think he's spoiled?

"Yes and no. . . . My parents buy me too much," Will said, with his mother laughing in the background. But, he added, "I'm smothered in love."

National correspondent Michele M. Melendez joined Newhouse News Service in 2000 to cover generational issues. Her beat spans old and young, pop culture and politics, family relationships and personal journeys. She worked previously at The Plain Dealer in Cleveland as a community news reporter and a features writer concentrating on women's issues. She has a print journalism degree from The American University in Washington, D.C., and lives in Washington.

Copyright © 2005 Austin American-Statesman

Move Over Cheeseheads! Here Comes Texas In The Dumbass Sweepstakes!

Just when I thought Wisconsin took the Dumbass of the Year trophy for the feral cat hunting permit, the Texas lege (now in session; hide the children) — in particular, the House of Clowns Representatives — has undertaken the regulation of Texas high school cheerleaders, mascots, and dance teams. Representative Al Edwards (D-Houston) is a notorious headline-seeker. On the day of the vote on this ridiculous bill in the House, Edwards and his supporters (He's not alone!) distributed blue and white pom-poms to the members on the floor of the Texas House of Representatives. Sam Rayburn (House Speaker of Texas as well as the United States) is rolling in his grave at this moment. With a huge rollicking laugh, the best representatives money can buy passed the cheerleader bill and sent it on to the Texas Senate. The Lone Star State is going to Hell in a handbasket and the House of Clowns spends time on this nonsense. "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" has sent a team to Texas to interview an Austin high school cheerleading squad and that report will be featured on the news show on Monday, May 9, 2005, at 10:00 PM (CDT) on the Comedy Central cable channel. Trust the "Daily Show" to portray the Texas House of Clowns in the best possible light. The only folks in the report making any sense are the high school cheerleaders! If this is (fair & balanced) chagrin, so be it.

[x Waco Fishwrap]
Please, liberate our schools
by John Young

Sis boom bah. Coming into this session, when Texas lawmakers asked citizens what they wanted them to do in Austin, you know the one request that kept coming up: "Please, regulate our cheerleaders."

You don't think so? So why, instead of laughing the idea out of the chamber, did the Texas House salute Rep. Al Edwards' ban on "suggestive" cheerleading and send it to the Senate?

Here's why: State leaders are so addicted to controlling what goes on in schoolhouses, why not also control what happens on the sidelines?

Yes, we know: Each of these lawmakers has been a stump-speech cheerleader for "local control." But in every way, and with every session, Texas lawmakers exert more control over schools.

In the "age of accountability," this particularly applies to state-mandated testing that drives virtually every waking, working and learning moment in Texas public schools.

Lawmakers in general seem oblivious to how standardization has taken something that should be in living color and turned it to a whiter shade of pale. If they were truly pro-education, rather than pro-standardization, lawmakers would have interim studies on what the overemphasis on testing has done to education, and would be taking the results seriously. Instead, all we get are pasty bromides about "raising the bar" and devising new tests.

Such is the case with House Bill 2, the education reform bill that got sent to the Senate.

For purposes of graduation, it would phase out the exit-level Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) and replace it with 13 end-of-course tests in individual subjects.

Bill author State Rep. Kent Grusendorf says the reason for the proposal is that with the all-encompassing TAKS, students sometimes get tested on material they might not have studied in more than a year. That's a legitimate problem with TAKS, but adding more state tests is not the answer.

The answer is contained in another Grusendorf proposal: administering TAKS online. If administered properly, students would be able to take, say, the TAKS math portion when they were finished with exit-level material and when it was fresh in their minds.

The appealing thing about online tests as proposed is that they could be true diagnostic devices, giving teachers and students instant information that shows how they did, what they did right, what they did wrong.

The most important thing is that with online testing entire campuses wouldn't have to stop dead for TAKS. Individually or in classes, students could rotate in and out from the school diagnostic lab.

In the meantime, in addition to making our testing system more diagnostic, we need to devise ways to make one test less of a cataclysmic moment in a student's life.

This week with hearings in the House Public Education Committee, State Rep. Dora Olivo, D-Rosenberg, pressed on in a mission to base the promotion or retention of students on multiple criteria and not just TAKS scores.

Olivo's House Bill 1612 would require schools to fully analyze a student's academic strengths, not just his or her test-taking ability.

To opponents, this sounds like "social promotion." To proponents, it is decompressing the system that puts way too much weight on one moment and on one test score. Why, proponents say, would you want one means of evaluating a student instead of several? Why, indeed.

If parents of schoolchildren were running this state, they wouldn't be worried about suggestive cheerleading routines. They'd be worried about bleaching the vitality from their children's education at the altar of standardization.

They'd also do something about micro-managing schools from afar in the name of "local control."

John Young is editorial page editor of the Waco Tribune-Herald.

Copyright © 2005 Waco Tribune-Herald