Academic Performance and Personality Traits of Chinese Children: "Onlies" Versus Others

Abstract

This study was undertaken to determine whether the academic and personality outcomes of only children in China are similar to those of only children in the West. Several reviews of the extensive Western literature indicate that only children are remarkably similar to children with siblings. The few differences between them are concentrated in academic areas, where only children have the advantage. In China few children grew up without siblings until 1979, when to one-child policy was initiated. Since then, over 90% of newly formed families in the large urban areas have only one child. The incidence of one-child families in the rural areas is much smaller. The results of our 1987 survey of 1,460 schoolchildren and their parents and teachers, in the urban and rural areas of Changchun, a large industrial city in Jilin Province in northeastern China, contain many findings similar to those of surveys in the West, with one exception. Among urban children, those without siblings have higher academic scores than those with siblings, but these advantages are not found among rural children. Moreover, when only children are compared to firstborns, no differences are found once appropriate background controls are introduced. Also consistent with Western results, only children do not appear to differ from children with siblings in terms of two personality dimensions representing childhood adjustment in China, as judged by both their mothers and teachers.