To the Editor:
Re “Life Is Better With Siblings,” by Catherine Ruth Pakaluk (Opinion guest essay, July 5):
As one of 11 children born in the post-World War II era to middle-class parents, I can affirm what Dr. Pakaluk argues in this essay. At the same time, what’s good for siblings is not necessarily good for moms.
My 10 siblings and I regularly acknowledge our awe for our parents for raising all of us — keeping us fed and clothed, giving us a moral direction and getting us to to school each day. Mismatched socks, Friday (only) grocery buys petering to a trickle by Monday, no money for composition pads, clothing shopping just once a year.
We groused but accepted all this as normal, while teaching one another how to tie shoelaces, change a squirming baby’s stinky diaper, break into our dad’s Hershey’s chocolate bar stash and parallel park for our driver’s test. A sibling is a live-in friend.
But the unpaid, 24-hour-a-day work of child care is still borne disproportionately by mothers. Another child will often mean not just a loss of sleep, but also a loss of professional advancement, control over money and other opportunities that affect one’s entire life. Most women of the post-World War II generations will rightly not be coerced by religion or the larger culture’s desire for more children when making this decision.
Patricia Ard
Morristown, N.J.
The writer is a professor emerita of literature at Ramapo College.
To the Editor:
Many readers of Catherine Ruth Pakaluk’s essay may reasonably wonder what comes next as these large families disperse into a self-centered world. I, the oldest of six, and my wife, the second oldest of 10, have found that the connections with our siblings not only continue, deepen and mature but also multiply.
Proof of principle: Our four children and their more than 40 cousins often use social media to consult one another other while coping with challenging life situations. Shared decision making is the result.
Dr. Pakaluk is right in saying that the intimate social network of siblings and their offspring provides an antidote to isolation and depression, with or without material wealth.
John A. Schmidt Jr.
Spring Lake Heights, N.J.
To the Editor:
When Catherine Ruth Pakaluk implies that children without siblings need a label signifying tragic loss — by equating them with widows and orphans — she reveals a bias that undermines objective discourse.
More important, though, Dr. Pakaluk weakens her argument by basing her conclusions only on interviews with parents of large families and on her own experience as one of nine siblings, without presenting comparable evidence from parents of only children. Nor does she address the well-documented challenges of raising large families. Anecdotes are not scientific evidence.
In more than 45 years of psychiatric practice, I have not found only children to differ systematically from those with siblings in moral development, empathy, self-esteem, ambition or vulnerability to mental illness. What has mattered far more are the quality of parenting, family relationships and the emotional environment in which a child is raised.
Publishing broad conclusions without stronger evidence risks stigmatizing only children while overlooking the factors that truly shape healthy psychological development.
Richard Gabel
New York
The writer, a psychiatrist, is a clinical assistant professor at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine.
To the Editor:
We should balance Catherine Ruth Pakaluk’s opinion that life with brothers and sisters is better than life as a single child with the reality that our ecosystems are collapsing under the pressure of an excess of humanity.
As delightful as humans may be personally, each additional one of us contributes an average of five tons of greenhouse gases per year to the atmosphere. (The figure in the United States is far above that, at roughly 14 tons.) California burns, Europe sizzles, oceans rise, glaciers melt, droughts persist, and hurricanes rage, but few ask if we should make an effort to return to population levels of the 1970s to save the planet.
Having one child instead of 14 may create a little less camaraderie, but saving the planet may be worth it.
Carl Mezoff
Stamford, Conn.
