My One and Only: The Special Experience of the Only Child

The author, a reporter for Time and herself an only child, avers, ``There is no single `authorized' version of what it's like to be an only child, just many interpretations.'' The great majority of the more than 100 only children interviewed here--including Dick Cavett, Betty Rollin, Roger Staubach, Mary Catherine Bateson (Margaret Mead's daughter)--express satisfaction with being either a lone child or the parent of only one child. Probing also for the disadvantages experienced by the interviewees, McGrath speaks not as an advocate, but as a challenger of stereoptical assumptions often made about only children, in the process revealing some of her own perceptions of growing up without a sibling. The book is an insightful and enjoyable illumination of prevailing sociological beliefs on the subject. (July)