After the full opening of the two children, the only child has gradually become a unique term of our time. However, the social prejudice against the "only child" has not disappeared because of the policy change. It seems that the "only child" was labeled as "spoiled" and "selfish" at birth. However, according to recent research, these statements have been exaggerated. So where do these prejudices come from?
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E. W.Bohannon, an educator at Clark University in Massachusetts, published a research report on 19 century special children. According to the behavior characteristics of the only child, the research report collected the information of 200 subjects through questionnaire survey. According to the report, 196 testers said that only children are more likely to have bad personalities such as willfulness, indulgence, selfishness and unsociable. Bohannon's colleagues agreed with his research results, so the idea came into being.
With the decline of fertility rate of middle-class families and the unstable growth of population class structure, people's general suspicion of the only child is further strengthened.
At the beginning of the 20th century, some people worried that children who grew up without brothers and sisters would be very sensitive and vulnerable emotionally. When parents focus all their worries and fears on one child, the child will become overly sensitive and prone to suspected diseases such as neurasthenia.
However, the latest data compiled in 2 1 century shows that these accusations against the only child are nonsense and the only child has no serious defects.
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Toni Falbo, a psychologist at the University of Texas at Austin, has conducted more than 200 thematic studies in 1986 on the topic of "the integrity of the only child". Research shows that there is no significant difference in personality characteristics between the only child and the non-only child. The only difference is that the only child seems to have a closer relationship with his parents than the non-only child.
Falbo's theory was confirmed by Andreas Klocke and Sven Stadtmuller of Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences in 20 18. They tracked and analyzed 1 10,000 German only children and non-only children through longitudinal data analysis based on parent-child relationship.
It is found that 25% of only children are satisfied with the relationship with their parents, while less than 24% of non-only children, including the eldest son and daughter, 20% of the second son and daughter, and 65,438+08% of the youngest child, have a positive attitude towards family parent-child relationship.
Although the only child is closely related to his parents, most of them regret not having brothers and sisters. Li Sen Roberts of West Carolina University and Priscilla Brandon of the University of Tennessee asked young respondents to look back on their childhood. Many interviewees said that what annoys them most is that they don't have a trustworthy playmate.
In fact, due to the lack of playmates who can talk and play in life, 65% preschool only children tend to create imaginary playmates with whom they can interact. They rehearse what they know about interpersonal communication patterns in conversations with imaginary playmates, which enables them to deal with real interpersonal relationships more confidently.
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In China, the one-child policy has dominated family planning for nearly 40 years. Qiu Jiang, a psychologist from Southwest University, led a group of China researchers to test the intelligence, creativity and personality of 126 only-child and 177 non-only-child college students. In the behavior test, the only child scored higher in flexibility, which is one of the indicators to measure creativity, but the affinity and endurance were lower. There are signs that only children are even less willing to compromise with others.
In addition, the tester also conducted a Torrance test on Creative Thinking if compiled by psychology professor E.P.torrance. The experiment shows that only children seem to be better at lateral thinking, which means that they are more capable of solving problems with creative thinking, especially the flexibility of using thinking. Professor Qiu Jiang explained that only children often have to rely on themselves, so they are forced to cultivate their creativity in the process of solving problems independently.
On the other hand, researchers found in MRI that the only child has more gray matter in the cerebral cortex area related to creativity and imagination, which means that the only child's thinking is more flexible and creative. However, there are fewer gray matter cells in the frontal lobe of the only child, which may mean that the emotional control ability and affinity are weak.
Is it better to be an only child or not? Whether a child can grow up healthily does not depend on whether he is an only child, but on whether his parents correctly educate and carefully train him. Parents of the one-child family should put more time and energy into the growth of the only child, so that the child can get more emotional satisfaction in spirit, thus cultivating the child's "prosocial mood". Creating an environment full of love and peace seems more important than how many children a family has.
References:
Corina Hartman (published on 20 1 9,21year1month). Is the one-child syndrome true? . Scientific American. Retrieved from
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