Growing up an only child can be a blessing, or a challenge – usually both. The same can be said, I’m finding, of being an adult only child.

I was talking with a colleague just the other day who said he’s been unable to focus on work because his mother had to go into the hospital recently. He’s an only child, so he’s been dedicating a lot of time to helping her deal with the paperwork, insurance, finances and general bureaucracy of the California (MediCal) and federal (Medicare) health care systems. If only there was an online group he and others could tap into to share knowledge about this stuff.

I empathized with him, and in the back of my mind I was thinking, this is exactly the reason I bought the adultonlychild.org domain – I just didn’t know it at the time. I may very well go through this same type of challenge, eventually – and I’m sure other people (only children or otherwise) who have navigated these types of issues before could share a lot with people in this position…like how to help our parents through retirement and health issues that occur later in life. Lots of adults go through the same types of things as their parents get older, but only a fraction of them are only children, or don’t have other siblings to help share the responsibility. And I think that creates a distinct set of circumstances that make dealing with these situations uniquely challenging for adult only children.

This is not to say that being an only child is all strife – it’s certainly not. But I’d be happy if this website could serve as a source of help for issues specific to adult only children.

Update (1/20/10): AdultOnlyChild.org has officially been converted from a plain old website into a “social network.” Well, it will be a network as soon as the 2nd member joins, I guess. Go ahead…join!