There is so much mythology about only children that we have known is false for decades now. It is really remarkable. This is one of the things that surprised me the most in my research is how much we accept as a given that only children are lonelier, that they are not well-adjusted socially and that they are spoiled and selfish. Because what we have actually found out over hundreds of studies and decades and decades is that only children are not any different than anyone else in these regards. We are different in some ways. I am not saying the experience of being an only child is exactly the same as growing up with a sibling, but the notions of the lonely, selfish ill-adjusted only child are fallacies and yet we all tend to believe it as a culture.