Life is better with siblings
There are virtues in growing up in a pack.
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The benefits of siblings reach further, into the harder corners of adolescence and beyond.
PHOTO: ISTOCK PHOTO
Catherine Ruth Pakaluk
We have a word for children without parents: orphaned. We have a word for those who lose a spouse: widowed. There is no everyday word in English for growing up without siblings – until now, we’ve rarely needed one.
That is changing. Over the past 50 years, the share of American mothers with only one child has nearly doubled, from 11 per cent in 1976 to about 20 per cent today.
