The classic American idea about only children, nurtured in suburbs where two children could seem too few, is that they’re oddballs—coddled, spoiled, lonely. Raised without the camaraderie and competition of sibling society, they’re simultaneously stunted and overdeveloped—a repository of all their parents’ baggage (hello, Chelsea Clinton).

While sitting down to a family meal tomorrow, why not ponder your place in the birth order? If you're an only child like me, even the phrase "birth order" may seem cryptic. For only children, the birth order is all about you, baby, and this has its ups and downs, as chronicled in this New York magazine article. While my childhood didn't resemble those of the metropolitan wunderkinds the article describes, I could relate to the paragraph above. Being an only child is sort of like winning a genetic lottery--lots of perks, which you didn't ask for (eg, you get all the presents)--but it also means that you get all the problems, if your family has any, and most of them do. It also means having to put up with the perceptions and misperceptions of the rest of the world about only children. I was poor at sports as a kid, but I was a pro at listening to people generalize that only children were spoiled, stunted, and/or weird and then studiously trying not to look or act spoiled, stunted, or weird.

No one understands the lot of an only child like another only child. Fortunately for me, I married one. We're fine with each others' only-child quirks, like needing to go off by ourselves sometimes. And we can understand some of the problems the only child faces later in life, like coping with aging parents. Are we spoiled, stunted, or weird? No worse, I suppose, than anyone else.