The Future of Your Only Child: How to Guide Your Child to a Happy and Successful Life

I wanted a book to give me some idea of what it might be like to raise an only child without being bias. This book does exactly that. It address potential challenges and resolutions.

I'm an only child and have an only child. This book made me realize that my personality had a lot to due with being raised an only child. I would recommend this to anyone who has an only child or was an only child.

As the father of two, I found The Future of Your Only Child stunning - if too late for me. As Pickhardt notes early in the book, the first child is an only child for a time. And the consequences of this fact are not trivial. Had I possessed his book before my eldest had a sibling, would I have been a better father? Almost certainly. I would have become aware of things that I in fact ignored. For example, the fact that a parent can become too closely tied to a child, become too much the child's friend and confidant, for the child's own welfare. Would I also have become aware of how difficult it was for me to do otherwise? I think so, and I would probably have entered therapy much sooner. Although Pickardt doesn't really talk about how parental neuroses impact on the context parents create for children, this is implicit. When he suggests to parents that a particular set of behaviors might impact more healthily than another, the other set lies barely in the shadows. It is up to the reader to choose to perceive and deal with them. Pickhardt is confident than most parents will do so. I think he's probably right.