‘Triangle families’ on the rise, but only-child stereotypes persist

She felt the stigma when she and her son were younger and people would ask about siblings.

“Sometimes I felt the need to say ‘not by choice’, and other times I would leave it,” Longworth said. “It was how they kind of reacted to it, whether it was just in the tone of their voice or their body language.”

Australian Institute of Family Studies senior research fellow Dr Lixia Qu said contributing factors to the trend was that women were postponing childbearing until later and partnering with someone who already had children.

“It’s consistent with the general trends in fertility,” Qu said. “We know the average family size has been declining for a long time and the fertility rate has fallen below replacement level.”

Qu, commenting on published studies rather than her own research, said there was no conclusive evidence that only children differed from other children in personality including sociability.

In fact, some research on only children found positive outcomes. For example, they achieved slightly better in education and tended to have higher levels of education and have more prestigious occupations.

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Qu said in the early 20th century only children were portrayed as “selfish”, “lonely” and “maladjusted”, but mental health professionals no longer believed this.

The first president of the American Psychological Association, who oversaw an influential study of only children in 1896, said that “to be an only child is a disease in itself”.

In 1922, the psychologist A.A. Brill wrote: “It would naturally be best for the individual and the [human] race if there were no only children”.

Qu said negative stereotypes about only children persisted and there was a strong cultural belief that having two children was the ideal family size.

Two out of five women in their 40s reported having two children in the 2021 census, the biggest by far. In 1981, three children was the most popular family size.

Having one child is still less common than having no children at all. In 1981, the proportion of women aged 40 to 44 who had never had children was 8.5 per cent, while in 2021 it was 18 per cent.

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