April 18, 2007
“Only Monkeys”
That’s what my long-time friend Melanie used to call ‘only children’ way back in the Wayback Days.
And I’d been thinking about posting a couple of questions even before Deron’s post addressing the flip side of the coin.
See, I’m an only monkey, and I’m wondering about others of you out there. (Andrew, you’re one of the tribe, yes?) And I’m wondering: How was it — how is it — for y’all? And what do the rest of you folks think of us folks?
Not to generalize . . .
comments
I’m the oldest of three so it’s hard to say how I feel about single children or if I would have preferred it.
My wife’s father is ‘one’ and he is known as the little prince.
My mom is the eldest of six. Her siblings used to call her ‘The Duchess’. I reminded her of this once, and she shot back a good quip, referring to me as ‘The Princess’.
I’m the younger of two; my sibling is a brother. My mother is the younger of two; her sibling is a brother. My dad was the younger of two; his sibling is a sister. Two of my three best girl friends are the younger of two, both having brothers. Et cetera. I don’t have many close friends who were only monkeys, nor many with same-sex siblings.
But what I think–and I never thought about this until I was trying to describe my closest only-monkey girlfriend to someone a year or so ago–is that when you’re an only monkey, you have no way to test hypotheses out in your family without acting on them. And this shapes the way you interact with the world.
That is, when I was a kid, it was very easy to tell how to be good: observe whatever my brother was doing, and don’t do that. He had to figure out the rules by breaking them; I got to learn by watching. And I’m sure that to some extent his behavior was a reaction to mine–he’s less loud than I am, for instance, me being called “The Foghorn” when I was little.
Also, in learning to circumvent parental regulations, two heads were definitely better than one. We could pool ideas, and conspire, and collaborate, even though we didn’t (and don’t) exactly get along.
A singlet, on the other hand, may only get to try out a couple of ways of interacting with her family. Maybe she figures out how to get along with them early on, and everything’s cool. Or maybe she gets off to an awkward start or never figures out how to wrangle her parents effectively. It’s not necessarily bad, but I’d imagine it’s a lot harder to learn the rules if you’re the only player.
First off, India, I am delighted by your adoption of my quirky parlance. “My closest only-monkey girlfriend”, indeed. That’s a good’un.
Second, I think you’re onto something with respect to the business of learning-by-observing vs. learning-by-suffering the consequences. This only monkey detects in herself a propensity either for steaming ahead in a damn-the-torpedoes fashion or hanging back and waiting till the grown-ups aren’t looking, then doing what she wanted to do all along, albeit in a surreptitious fashion.
Constant surveillance is what I came to think of as the downside of only-monkeydom. Sure, I didn’t have to wear a sister’s hand-me-downs or share a bedroom, but parental attention was never ever focused on another luckless monkey. I garnered my share of praise, but I never evaded my share of blame.
. . . all of which is more or less water under the bridge (I hope). It’s not stuff I pick over obsessively. My parents were pretty good folks, and I guess I turned out pretty much okay. Just nosy about other people’s upbringing and curious to know what they might think of mine.
Great comments, India.
I think as an oldest sibling I share some of that inability to learn by observing. As the oldest, you’ve just got to jump in and see what the repercussions are, of course, it’s interesting to watch how things shift for the younger siblings and there is always that balance between caution and leadership.
I have two older brothers (and other siblings). One thing I’m sure of is that they made me better. Growing up, they were my two constant companions, and I was forced to do most things at their level: sports, music, etc. It gave me no small advantage.
I do have to say that although I’m content with the upbringing my parents gave me and that I don’t fret over “what if . . . “, there was a time when I was a youngster that I yearned for an older brother.
. . . though who knows how that would have turned out . . .
Probably no better nor worse than what came to pass. Just different.
Deron, yes, my brother (or, as Mom sometimes calls him, “The Flagship”) did have to figure shit out on his own. And he turned out to be a very independent entity (or, as I tend to express it, “a Martian”). I’m independent enough (or more than enough, to some people’s taste), but in different ways. And I’m pathetically timid in many other ways.
For example, I was terrified that I wouldn’t get into the same high school as my brother (we went to a science and math school that had a tough entrance exam), not because I had any interest whatsoever in science or math–I totally didn’t–but because I was sure I wouldn’t be able to find my way to school, and around the building once I was in it, and he wouldn’t be able to tell me which teachers to avoid, or where to get lunch in the neighborhood, and so on. I did get in, and then we avoided each other for most of the next two years, as usual, but it was a huge relief knowing he’d vetted the place. I still hate going to any new place–a party, a restaurant, a country–without some kind of guide. I’m a pitiful traveler, always wanting to go wherever I’ve already been and eat whatever I ate last time.
And, yes, Sheila, we not only got to keep our parents’ undivided attention off of each other, but we also got to deflect it entirely after a certain point. My brother was supposed to be keeping an eye on me a lot of the time, which really meant that nobody was keeping an eye on either of us. There were costs and benefits to this–most pressing to me at the time was that if I wanted to hang out outdoors, on the streets of Manhattan, I had to hang out with my brother. I grew up as a latchkey kid six blocks from where Etan Patz disappeared (I was eight when that happened), and I’m sure I wouldn’t have had so much freedom if there hadn’t been two of us. But if I wanted to hang out with my brother, that meant I had to hang out with an all-boy crew, because the only girls on our block were absolutely no fun and wore dresses and stuff. And if I wanted to hang out with the boys, I needed to keep them from constantly remembering that I was a girl. So I developed some expertise in spitting, for example. And, probably, that’s where the swearing came from.
But if I’d been an only child, I might still have been trying to fit in with the boys, because the girls, as I said, were lame. But I probably would have had to work harder at it.
I don’t know. Speculation is futile, of course, but I must say, I don’t think I ever wished to be an only child. I probably wished I had a sister instead of a brother, or maybe a sister and a brother. I’m glad I wasn’t an only monkey. But maybe if I were one, I’d feel the reverse . . . ?
“I probably wished I had a sister instead of a brother, or maybe a sister and a brother.”
India, I always wished for an older brother. I had a much older half sister (11 years) and a younger (3 years) sister. I wanted a brother between my older sister and myself. We were always girls and in the gender environment you describe, applied as a older-middle-ish sister, I learned some quality swearing but also found myself in gaggles of girls competing for each other’s attention regardless of any frolicking boys.
Sheila, I’ve had some good friends who are only-monkeys and believe them to be both quality rebels and diplomats.
I’m a one and only monkey child.
I was an emotional, lonely kid, but pretty self-reliant in such departments as making my own fun (books! music!) and getting into stupid trouble with my over-protective mother (everything I’ve ever done was going to ruin my life and hers) and supportive but mostly absent father (as long as I wasn’t gay or high on drugs or asking for money, he was in my corner).
My mom has a younger brother and my dad an older sister, but neither of them are particularly close to their siblings.
I’ve often wondered if having an older bro or sis might have eased some of my messed-up relations with my folks, who divorced before I started school.
My social skills still leave a lot to be desired, too, but I do believe that my comfort with isolation has helped me in my art, if that’s what you can call it.
If it’s any consolation, Brian, I, too, was “an emotional, lonely kid, but pretty self-reliant in such departments as making my own fun.” And “my social skills still leave a lot to be desired.”
What’s always amazing to me, in the tiny, unpleasant amount of time I’m forced to spend around my friends’ sprogs, is how distinct their personalities seem to be even when they’re very young–too young to speak or do much more than blink. The impressions I had of my friends’ kids when they were a few months old pretty much jibe with what they’re like now that they’re five or six. And I know that although my brother obviously wasn’t happy about acquiring a sibling when he was three (dropping me off the top of the bunk bed was an only slightly less ambiguous message than “Okay, you can take her back now,” which he said shortly after I was brought home from the hospital) he was essentially The Way That He Is from a very early age–well before I was born, according to our parents.
So, I don’t think our personalities would have been fundamentally different had we had more or fewer siblings. But I do think our relationships with our parents and others would have differed, in some unknowable way. As my friend Rose says, “It’s important to be an individual, but it’s through our interactions with other people that we define who we are.” Does that make any sense?
A daunting thread.
I find it interesting, Sheila, that you were inclined to think I was an only monkey.
In fact, I am have sister who lives in NYC, two blocks from Union Square, who teaches Spanish in Brooklyn. She is three years younger and has certainly learned all my tricks. I would think, however, she, too, exudes an “only monkey” aura because of the sort of posture we both have towards/away from our parents.
This parable, although intended to illustrate problems with contemporary philosophy, is a great illustration of this posture. It is autobiographical.
yep, India, blank slate my ass
“The Foghorn and The Flagship” — a title in the multi-volume Amos family chronicles?
(By the way, Andrew, I’m at a loss as to how I came to think of you as a “one and only monkey child”, to quote Brian. I don’t believe it’s an impression I drew from your posts or correspondence. More likely I conflated a detail from another ‘Flocker’s auto-bio — perhaps Brian’s? — with what I recall of yours.)
India, et al:
I didn’t mean to pimp the zoo for empathy.
At 37 I may be only a larger, mightier version of the husky kid I was at 7, but I really can’t imagine life any other way.
The phenomenon of the individual, from early months to old age, intrigues me because I feel I can trace nearly all of my behaviors back to my parents, though almost always they seem to be altered by my interests, which have no precedent in my family.
My girlfriend of eight years (so she’s experienced a lot with me) insists that I’m like a Martian sent to live among and observe my kin.
When I return home each year around the holidays, that’s how it feels, too.
In other news:
What might it mean that I’ve chosen not to have kids, thus ending the line?
clusterflock. come for the posts. stay for the comments.
I have three sisters–two older, one younger. I always wanted a brother; older or younger didn’t matter. I had a lot of cousin-boys, two of whom where nearly my age and whom I saw a lot of, but it didn’t feel the same to me as I imagined having a brother would have. I suspect I didn’t cause my parents nearly enough grief–I was afraid to!
Brian’s question (“What might it mean that I’ve chosen not to have kids, thus ending the line?”) kinda sorta brings us back to Deron’s post about research on number of kids and parental happiness, eh?
I’m almost scared to consider it, given that I’ve made the same choice as my fellow only-monkey-’Flocker. On the other hand, my own decision could simply mean that I’m realistic in perceiving that I make a much better ‘Aunt Sheila’-figure for other people’s kids than I would ‘Mother’ to my own full-time young’uns.
A related oddity: Of my Gang of Six lifelong pals — my alt.family, in a sense — only one of us among the three men and three women has ‘produced issue’. And she had one child when she was a year or so past age forty. I daresay we’re an atypical crew.
Come for the posts. Stay for the comments. Indeed, Deron.
Comments are often the best part of the best blogs. The Making Light thread on seatbelts is at six hundred sixty-nine comments as of this moment. I stopped reading around 450, but not because it stopped being interesting; I’ve just been too busy.
Meanwhile, parents and individuality. Yeah. My sense is that my brother and I think in very similar ways, strongly influenced by our fascinating parents through a combination of example and genetics, but we arrive at completely different conclusions through that shared process. For example, we seem to have the same work ethic, but our ideas of what constitutes suitable work are completely different, if not opposite (he’s an investment banker). I don’t see him very often (once this year, so far, though he lives a mile from where I’m sitting right now), so I’m short on examples right now, but trust me, they’re there. On those rare occasions when we are together, I’m shocked by how similar we are. Except that he’s, you know, a Martian.
As for reproducing, I feel guilty for not wanting to spawn, as we have terrific genes and are so goddamn good-looking. But I didn’t like kids when I was one, and the thought of ever having to live with a child again truly horrifies me. Not to mention, you know, carrying around a giant parasite for nine months and then squeezing it out the hard way. Eeesh. You have to want them. I mean, but really, really want them. And I can’t imagine, barring some serious head trauma, ever waking up one morning with that desire.
it’s funny. I always assumed I would have children, but as I’ve grown up and gotten married, our lives have become our children.
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