In an unprecedented global economic crisis, the number of families with only one child continues to increase. In the case of Korea, a survey result already came out 10 years ago that showed that the percentage of families who could not have a second child because of money exceeded 60%.
Scholars are studying the impact of the increase in one-child families on society and the country from various angles. In particular, research results show that children who grow up alone have different brain development patterns than those with siblings. Some warned that a country like China, where the state enforces one child, could become a problem in the long run.
A 2017 study on the brain development of an only child is famous in a thesis from Southwestern University in China. According to a study by Namseo University published in the international journal ‘Brain Imaging and Behavior’, single children tend to be more creative but less sociable than children with siblings.
The research team investigated the effects on a child’s brain of the Chinese government’s 36-year stringent population control policy from 1979 to 2015. The research team randomly recruited 250 college students, scanned their brains, and measured personality, creativity, and intelligence.
As a result, the subjects who grew up as an only child outperformed those who had siblings in terms of creativity. However, items related to sociability tended to have low scores.
The research team concluded that the brain structure and developmental status of children in single-child families was clearly different from that of children in families with no children. This is because these characteristics of children in one-child families were confirmed not only through questionnaire scores but also through brain scans.
The reason why subjects from single-child families performed relatively well on creativity scores was speculated to be differences in parietal lobe development. The parietal lobe controls sensory perception, such as spatial perception, and is particularly involved in higher-order mental activities.
In general, a high amount of gray matter in the parietal lobe is advantageous for creative work. College students who grew up without brothers or sisters generally had a higher amount of gray matter in the parietal lobe, which is advantageous for increasing flexibility in thinking and displaying imagination.
The medial prefrontal cortex of their brains was also slightly different from that of college students with siblings. The amount of gray matter in the prefrontal cortex area related to self-recognition in relation to others was relatively small.
Scholars are in the position that these differences in brain structure come from different home environments. Several scholars claim that parental discipline and environment, as well as the presence or absence of siblings, have a distinct effect on a child’s brain growth from a neurological perspective.
In conclusion, children from single-child families have more active parietal lobe development, so they tend to have high intelligence, excellent creativity, and excellent school performance. However, there is a possibility that it is difficult to communicate with the other person by monopolizing the parents’ attention. It is related to the structure of the brain that parents with one child are careful not to grow up egotistical.
Reporter Yoonseo Lee lys@sputnik.kr
