It’s been a few months since we had to remove the ‘social’ features of this website due to spammers. But we’re back…with a new ‘Discussions‘ feature on the site. You’ll need to register for an account (this is needed to keep out spammers), and after that you’ll be able to post comments and questions, post stories, or whatever you want. The idea is to encourage communication among fellow adult only children. Let us know what you think!

Discussions >>

Hi, everyone. We’ve been attacked by spammers, so for now we have shut down the ‘social network’ part of AdultOnlyChild.org. We’re keeping this blog up so we can keep you posted and announce when we’re back online. This site’s social network will be re-launched to protect against spam.

The brief history of AdultOnlyChild.org is that it started as a simple blog, and then was expanded to include some ‘social networking’ features around late 2009. Unfortunately the amount of spam (false user registrations) we received was overwhelming (250+ spam registrants for every 1 real person registrant), and even caused the site to be shut down a couple times. It might be that the software we’re using is more susceptible to exploitation, so we’re comparing other options. Meanwhile, feel free to leave comments on blog posts like this one, and communicate with us and other visitors that way.

Thanks for your comments, and for your enthusiasm about this site, which is dedicated to adult only children.

A recent Wall Street Journal podcast and article caught listeners’ attention by helping perpetuate an inaccurate only child stereotype, describing their story as “What [parents can] do to make sure their only children don’t grow up to be selfish and spoiled,” as if it’s a foregone conclusion that only children grow up to be “selfish and spoiled” unless parents work to ensure otherwise. In the same article, however, one will find the following:

“In a meta-analysis covering 115 studies of only children conducted from the 1920s to the 1980s, Toni Falbo, a professor of educational psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, and her co-author, found that only children were generally as well-adjusted, intelligent, accomplished and sociable as those with siblings.”

This follows on the subject of our last blog post about the Time magazine article about “debunking” the only child “myth.” One superficial difference between these two articles, however, is that the Time article asserts that there is a myth to be debunked, whereas the Wall Street Journal article uses that myth as a teaser for their article. Either way, though, it’s good to see studies that show only children as ‘normal’ getting some mainstream media coverage .

Time magazine published an article this week, titled “The Only Child: Debunking the Myth.” It was written by the mother of an only child, who argues that the stereotypes of the “lonely only” and the “spoiled, selfish, solitary misfit” is old and outdated, yet perpetuated partly by repetition in the media.

As an only child myself, the article does ring a bit true. Only children do get a bad rap – that’s the nature of a negative stereotype. So it’s good to see an article on this topic making the cover of Time.

I feel like a fairly well adjusted only child, and I know quite a few others as well (who are anything but misfits). But that’s not to say I haven’t struggled to control some only child characteristics – like selfishness. The bottom line, though, is that only children can do quite well in this world, and it’s fair to let that be known.

Also see: Pictures of Famous Only Children

Thanks to all of you who have registered, participated, and shared your stories here on AdultOnlyChild.org. This site is still very new, and therefore leaves a lot of room for improvement. So please, share your feedback, and let us know how we can improve the user experience here. Are certain areas of the site confusing to use? What would you like to see more of? Thanks for any and all feedback – good, bad, or indifferent! Actually, scrap the indifferent stuff – we need opinions

Sorry to anyone who was having trouble registering as a new user last week. This site was attacked by spammers and over 300 fake accounts were registered in a matter of hours, so I had to disable the whole site for a short while. After I brought the site back up I neglected to re-enable the ‘registration’ feature. It’s back up and running now, though, and I would like to thank the patient member who notified me of this mixup, and came back later to register.

Want to become an AdultOnlyChild.org member? Register here: http://adultonlychild.org/register

This new website, which just a few months ago had just one member (me), now has 15 registered members and several hundred visitors…more each week. I’m glad to see some of you are participating in conversations with one another, commenting on posts and in forums, and sharing your stories in blog posts (like GroverCleveland did). With your contributions this website could grow to become a valuable community for still more adult only children like ourselves.

If you’re not sure how to get started using the site, read how to participate. If you’d rather just watch/read, that’s fine, too. Thanks for stopping by. Also, here’s a reminder of why I started this site.