[LMB] Single children (Was China)

[James Burbidge]

On 07/09/2007, Elizabeth Holden <azurite at rogers.com> wrote:
[snip]
>
> Surely that's in the hands of the adults?  It's hard for me to imagine such a situation, being
> from several generations of small and late families. But I have also observed that people tend to
> jump to the conclusion that only children will be spoiled even when there is absolutely no
> evidence of this, and I really - not just for egotistical reasons - don't think it's true.
>

There's an observed tendency, though, for eldest boys (not just when
they are the only child, although this would intensify the effect)  to
be spoiled in Chinese and some other Far Eastern cultures, although
I'm sure there are many exceptions.

My only detailed exposure to this was in a foster care situation where
the boy _was_ insufferably spoiled, and his (elder) sister was badly
enough treated that there had been a CAS intervention in the case.

The plural of anecdote is not data, but I've run into the observation
often enough, in a number of cases from Chinese friends, that the
generalization is at least supportable when applied to China.

Of course, in a large male population, only a small subset of the
males in question will be able to _go on_ being spoiled, which will
lead to later cognitive dissonance problems for many of them.