Are you a spoiled happy only child?

[Liberal_in_LA]

Poll question: Are you a spoiled happy only child?

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfmoms/detail?entry_id=77058

Are only children happier?

[sakabatou]

1. I have 2 older brothers.

[onehandle]

2. Me too. nt

[jillan]

4. Me too!

[Skittles]

3. only gal of six kids

[Solly Mack]

5. No.

I'm the happily adorable spoiled rotten youngest.

[pipi_k]

6. Oldest of five...two of whom

were born after I was 16 (half-brother and half-sister).


It was not fun being the oldest...essentially the one they "practiced" on.

By the time my younger brother and youngest sister were born, things were way more relaxed.

[Demeter]

8. Same here--oldest of 4

[femmocrat]

7. I'm the oldest. My much younger baby sister got to be the happy, spoiled one.

I had to be the responsible, (unhappy) one.

[gateley]

9. Other. ONE sibling, but I'm really spoiled in certain ways. nt

[KatyaR]

10. I'm an only child.

However, I lost the "spoiled, happy" part about 30 years ago.

I think only children of course can be happy, I'm not so sure about "happier." I think it depends on how you're raised. My mother didn't let me socialize much with kids when I was little (outside of school and church) and subsequently I've never been very good with people my own age. As I've gotten older, I've turned into a total social misfit; I'd much rather be at home by myself that out with others.

[Cleita]

I was an only child but not spoiled.

My family were harder on me than my cousins' families were on them because they were determined I would not be a spoiled only child.

[Liberal_in_LA]

13. good for them

[ChazII]

18. Sounds like our families

had similar mind-sets. I was raised to be responsible and like several others here to care of my mom until her death and now am care taker for my dad. Since I am an only (with an only) there are no siblings to share in the responsibilities.

[KittyWampus]

11. I am youngest of three and help take care of my one brother, father and took care of mom too

until she died a few years ago.

[seabeyond]

12. only girl, youngest.... ultimate in spoiled. but then, i always said, we were spoiled in love

not in things. none of us.

[JanMichael]

14. Nope. Oldest of um...hang on...3...5...or 6...or 10. Yep 10.

You can guess the math.

EDIT - I should have added that as the oldest I did catch most of the crappy young parenting (not all bad but there are distinctive differences in tact and touch) while the much younger siblings have been spoiled rotten.

[Liberal_in_LA]

15. wow

[madmom]

16. I am the youngest of two, I have an older brother. But I am not spoiled. I was

quite shy until I hit 16 then I turned into a rebel without a clue.:hippie:

[Heddi]

17. Only child, not spoiled, do not regret not having siblings. My husband is 37, sisters are

39 and 41 (give or take) and the 3 of them still act like they are 7, 9, and 11. We don't live near any of his sisters, but jesus christ they are in their fucking 40s' and still have to treat my husband like he's a 15 year old punk. They act as if they are Mom #2 and 3. It's ridiculous. One of his sisters even sent an email about us going on vacation and said "I don't recall your mentioning you were going on vacation then" Um, yeah, because it's none of your fucking business....

Anyways.

Usually it's fine because we have nothing to do with the 2 of them but now that it's holiday time, the gloves come off and 2 older sisters spend from September-mid January lamenting our (meaning me and husband's) lack of love for family, how dare we moved away from the family, how important it is for family to be up each other's asses, how gift cards as gifts are so lacking in thought and love and blah blah blah. Then they will ignore us until next September, never respond to our emails....hypocrites.

Then we have to hear it from his mom "Oh, Sister #2 mentioned she saw a facebook posting where you said "Fuck working". Honey, are you unhappy with your job? What's wrong? Do you want to come back to N.Carolina and be with the rest of the family?"....ugh. It's so ridiculous.

I was the only only child I knew growing up and I thought I was odd not having siblings. Now, being an adult, and seeing what a pain in the ass it is, fuck it. I'm happy being an only child. If and when we have a child, it will be an only child.

[PBS Poll-435]

19. Worse. Middle Child

:(

[raccoon]

29. Same here...I don't like being middle either.

As for being spoiled, a college friend told me, "You could have done with a little spoiling."

[pipi_k]

43. I think I would have liked being a middle child...

I would have enjoyed having an older brother, in any event.

Of my two full sisters, I'm the oldest, and (as I posted somewhere upthread) was not happy about being the experimental kid for all my parents' mistakes, etc.

By the time my younger brother and youngest sister came along, I was already over 16 and pretty much done with the basics of being raised.

Anyway...about being a middle child...I guess the complaint there is that one is invisible. That's all I really wanted to be...invisible. Not easy when one is the oldest.

My next younger sister always held a grudge against me for being the oldest of three and making HER the middle child. I can't even begin to list the shitty things she's done over the years, and how many times she spoke to me about how she hated being the middle child with a look on her face that suggested I had planned the whole thing...

[raccoon]

45. In my case, my older sister is my bete noire. I think she had a grudge against

me for being born and displacing her as the only.

"I guess the complaint there is that one is invisible." Yes, there is. And in my case, nothing I did was ever right.

[Liberal_in_LA]

55. lol n/t

[proteus_lives]

20. Youngest of three.

2 older sisters.

[Loudmxr]

21. No we were poor. I didn't order every year book because I didn't want my family to pay.

They were already paying for music lessons. Which gave me a career.

I had no playmates when I was growing up so I never learned not to trust others. I grew up around adults. I trusted everyone. So by the time I entered school .....

But as I grew up and got knocked around a bit I learned that others did not have my best interests at heart. My natural character is to be brave. I never ran from a fight but talked my way out of many.

My Mom started work at the city. My Dad got a job at Disney. So I grew up around politics and show biz.

Now I trust no one.

I don't know about all or even some only children but one thing we do share in common is "What is mine is mine." I will share. I will not give it to you. I will get you one just like it for a gift but you return the one that's mine when you finish with it. BECUASE IT'S MINE!!!!!

[xchrom]

22. Adopted only child. Nt

[Raine]

23. Spoiled happy oldest child with one sibling

I had a younger brother we were both spoiled but still are relatively well-adjusted. :-)

[Reader Rabbit]

24. No, but my brother was.

To this day, I am warped by having been brought up in an "only boys are important" family.

[47of74]

25. I'm the oldest

One brother and one sister.

[racaulk]

26. I'm an only child, but I certainly wasn't spoiled. n/t

[LWolf]

27. I'm an only child.

It's true that my father dropped babies like kittens all over the midwest; 4 marriages, 7 kids, 5 mothers.

I didn't know my father very well, nor those half siblings. I visited with two of them a few times. My mother and I moved several states away when I was 7, and we didn't keep in touch.

My parents divorced when I was about 6 months old. I was raised by a single blue-collar working mom. She cut all ties to all extended family. Not only did I not have siblings, I didn't have aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins....We moved almost every year. I went to 10 different schools K-12. That made it hard to maintain friendships, as well, although I did have a couple of people my age I stayed in touch with.

Spoiled? Not on your life. I was babysitting and doing yard work by the time I was 10, and cleaning other people's houses for extra money by the time I was 12. By the time I was 12, I was also in charge of cooking dinner, laundry, vacuuming, and yard work, which were all a piece of cake in comparison to cleaning my room, lol. I was a latch-key kid in elementary school before the term was coined. I knew what an empty refrigerator looked like, and I knew what it was like to have other girls in school ask me why my mom didn't take me shopping to get more and "better" clothes.

Happier? Happier than whom? I was happy in some areas of my life, but lonely and isolated socially. Probably why I grew up to be the "Lone Wolf."

[bigwillq]

28. Twin sister

Very happy, and very spoiled. Still. We both are. :) :P

[blueamy66]

30. One older brother

he tortured me....but we had a wonderful childhood! I wouldn't trade it for anything!

[Dappleganger]

31. Oldest of 2.

We're less than 2 years apart. We survived together and are still pretty close, although we don't favor each other at all physically.

[smokey nj]

32. I'm the youngest of 6, but I wasn't spoiled.

[northernlights]

33. my middle sister is the spoiled, happy only child

And the apple of santa daddio's eye. She and santa daddio, with help from mommie dearest, drove my eldest sister away. And with mommie-dearest's abuse and both their lies to the entire family about me, drove me away. I worshiped the ground she walked on. The coolest, hippest, smartest big sister a kid could have. A couple years after I'd offered her everything in my bank account to bail her out, she told me she hated me, had always hated me and would always hate me. Nothing I could say or do, so don't bother. Years of therapy had taught her it was sibling rivalry, not me. So be it.

I recently reunited with my eldest sister. Apparently the middle sister is *still* spreading lies about me. And she tried to get eldest sister's social security number! Good thing we hooked up -- once eldest sister learned how santa-daddio listed me as a 1099 employee, paid himself my "wages" and stuck me with the taxes, interest, penalties and a threat from the IRS -- she decided her decision to not share the SSN with middle sister was a good one.

[Liberal_in_LA]

56. omg. Glad you got out of there alive

[tammywammy]

34. I'm the youngest by 8 years, so practically a spoiled only child

Well, I'm my father's only child and my mother's only daughter, plus there's the age difference between me and my brothers.

I'm greatful for what my parents have given me, so not completely spoiled, but spoiled nonetheless.

[marmar]

35. Only child.....I didn't want siblings.

Although I did have first cousins who were just like brothers and sisters.

[nunyabidness]

36. I am an only child, I am not "spoiled rotten" but I have everything I could ask for,

my family (mother) owned radio stations and sold them back before big corporations were feared. I have always gotten what I wanted but was taught early not to want for crap, that material things will not bring happiness or solve problems.

[Kalyke]

37. Only child here - and, let me tell you, there was no "spoiling."

When something was broken or missing in the house, your parents knew exactly who did it - no guessing.

:hi:

[MorningGlow]

38. I picked "other" because

I have an older brother, but he's 15 years older than I am, so I pretty much felt like an only child most of my life. After all, he graduated from high school when I was 3 and was away at college and then law school for the most part. We're close now, however.

As for spoiling--my mother always declared I was a spoiled rotten kid when she was mad at me, and I believed her and felt guilty about it (until I turned into a mouthy teenager and asked her who did the spoiling then--that pissed her off). Now that I'm an adult and a mother myself, I can look back with a little more objectivity and see that I was in no way spoiled. At ALL.

I have a young son who is a wonderful kid. He's happy. I don't know about happier because...compared to what, you know? There's no way of knowing if he'd have been happier if he had siblings (and I ain't about to produce any now!) so that's sort of pointless to wonder about. But the funny thing is that my mother informs me, on a regular basis, that my son is spoiled. Again, she just uses that accusation whenever she feels that he should be behaving a certain way (in her opinion) or I should be treating him differently (again, just in her opinion).

The main difference is that nowadays I just ignore her when she hauls out the "s" word. :P

[Heidi]

40. I understand completely.

I am the oldest of three kids raised in a progressive, middle class family. We were indulged to the extent that we had most of the things we wanted. Our parents' motto seemed to be that "spoiled" kids are those whose characters or treatment of others were impacted by being given too much. None of us three was spoiled in that way, but we had a grandmother who swore up and down that we were spoiled -- largely for the same reasons you cite for your mother calling you and your son "spoiled."

[MorningGlow]

48. Did your grandmother grow up during the Depression?

Mine did, and I'm sure that was a strong influence. In her eyes, if you're not being super-frugal and living in austerity and doing things like driving halfway across town to save $0.10/lb. on bananas (wasting gas in the process, but they never seem to think of that), then you are a horrible person. (She goes NUTS when I order something online because of the shipping cost, even if it's something that is simply not available locally.)

I will admit that my son lacks for nothing, even when it comes to toys and videogames. I recognize that "getting what he asks for" (not instantly, and not without strings, but again, that never gets noticed) can be viewed as being spoiled by senior citizens who had less than nothing during their formative years. But in my opinion being spoiled is defined more by a tendency to throw tantrums and display Veruca Salt-ish "I want it NOW" behavior, a lack of politeness, and lording it over the adults in the household--and my son is not like that at all. He's the sweetest, most polite, most low-key kid EVER and has always been that way (I really can take no credit), so I'm pretty sure he's going to be fine. ;)

[Heidi]

50. The critical granny was born in about 1925,

and lacked for little even during the Depression. The uncritical granny was born about 1910 and raised dirt poor in Oklahoma/Arkansas.

I think we agree: tantrums and Veruca Salt-ish "I want it NOW" behavior, lack of politeness, etc., may indicate that a child is "spoiled," i.e., that his/her character/treatment of others has been impacted by having been given too much. If my siblings or I had behaved that way, our parents would have made very clear how quickly "having" could turn into "not having."

You sound like a good parent, MorningGlow. :thumbsup:

[MorningGlow]

53. Well there goes my theory then!

:rofl:

If my siblings or I had behaved that way, our parents would have made very clear how quickly "having" could turn into "not having." So very true!

Thanks for the compliment, Heidi. Just doing my best, for the kid's sake! :hi:

[Iggo]

39. Our house had 4 kids.

And that amount was pretty much low-to-acceptable back in the early 60's.

[Broken_Hero]

41. second oldest of 12, nt

[blondeatlast]

42. My son is an only nad seems happy although he wishes he had siblings.

I'm fairly certain that if he had siblings, he's wish he were an only. I was lucky just to have him due to lifetime insulin-dependent diabetes and heart murmur.

He's quite simply the spark in my life. Dad's no longer in the picture much at all, and I just cherish him so. Pardon the gush... :cry::bounce:

[mrmpa]

44. Only girl of 4

One older brother, 2 younger. The most spoiled is the eldest of the 2 younger. The one right after me. He is the epitome of the middle child. He honestly can do no wrong. He's happily married with 3 children, gainfully employed and a volunteer. Occasionally he screws up, but Mom is always there to defend him, e.g. he backs out of family commitments, he didn't tell us about the failure of his first marriage and divorce, until 3 months after it was finalized The 3 of us just laugh about it all the time. My parents were blind to this.

[Liberal_in_LA]

57. A friend of mine hid her divorce from her relatives. "he's on the road"

She'd say when they would visit.

[cry baby]

46. only child spoiled with love and attention, not material things.

A sibling or two would have been nice. All my parents hopes and dreams for a perfect child were on my shoulders, instead of all the good qualities parents want in children being spread out among several kids. I'm 53 and my parents are still expecting perfection, and I'm still disappointing them. =( I feel their disappointment, but I also feel their love despite my failures.

It was wonderful having all the love and attention and my parents are, and grandparents were, super-loving and wonderful.

It would have been nice to have a sibling swim at the beach with me.

Edited to add that only children are alone in their efforts to take care of elderly parents, whereas siblings can share in that effort. It isn't a burden, but a heavy responsibility for one person. I'm not complaining, because my parents are a delight, but sometimes I wish there was a sibling to help.

[SOS]

47. Checklist

Only child - yes
Spoiled - No
Happy - formerly

[WinkyDink]

49. I am an OC. I have met many self-centered people who have siblings.

Just sayin'.

[Skidmore]

51. Eldest of 8.

[uppityperson]

52. Having sibs vs being only child is different. Not nec happier or sadder. It depends

My sibs are my best friends. My kid is an only child. Both ways have strong points and weak points. Only children typically get more, get to do more, are more involved with adults, learn to deal with people in different ways than those of us with many sibs.

It all depends.

[Gormy Cuss]

54. I am now

but when I was a kid I was one of a cast of thousands.