Statistics suggest that the size of families in many countries is shrinking and a growing number of parents worldwide either willingly or unwillingly end up only having one child. While many psychology studies have explored the differences between individuals who have siblings and those who don’t, the effects of not having any brothers or sisters on people’s brains and behavior are not yet fully understood.
Past research has yielded varying and sometimes contradictory results, which sometimes hinted at negative effects of being an only child and other times highlighted its positive implications. In addition, these negative and positive effects were found to be inconsistent across studies, with some studies suggesting that only children tend to do better at school, are more pro-social and less problematic, while others showed the opposite.
Researchers at Tianjin Medical University General Hospital and other institutes in China recently carried out a study aimed at better understanding how being an only child affects people’s brain and behavior during adulthood. Their findings, published in Nature Human Behaviour, highlight specific patterns in the brain’s development and activity, as well as behavioral tendencies, that are commonly observed in adults who grew up without siblings.
