Compare the view of myself to Forer's and Wither's opinion, I think they just considered typical case of the relation between birth order and personality. Forer argue that the only child can be grow up as a dependent adult who recognize himself as a child in a group. In Wither's essays, he mentioned "onlies" expect someone to take care of him and they can be accustomed to accepting help, somewhat reliant to other people. I believe that all the cases of only child would not follow their opinions and there would be other factors that change our personality, such as parents and peer relationship.
I partially agree to Forer's ideas that parents give constant attention to me and I think myself as beloved child when I was young. To only child, parents can have the significant effects, because when parents do everything to their child can spoil them and finally grow up to dependent adult. In my case, I was only child and I left home alone, when my parents both go out to work. So I have to do things by myself, by my own capacity. Furthermore, my father was very strict, he always emphasized "do it your own." He tried to raise me as a independent child. In this case, I grew up being responsible to my own decision and behaviour. Therefore, child is not always reliant and personality can be change by how parents educated their child.
Additionally, peer relationship also do important role for forming child's personality. People have jaundiced view to only child that they are unsocialble. However, as spending a lot of time with friends, we can learn how to consider other people, how to communicate with others and why should we have to be responsible to ourselves and to people around us. In this respect, only child's personality cannot be always self-absorbed, but have possibility to change to self-reilant and independent by peers.
In sum, only child has no siblings to interact, so it is hard to say that the birth order is the only fact that affects to personality. There would be other factors such as, parents' education methods or peer's effects. I believe that these things can change personality while they are growing up, and in these reasons, I am not totally agree to Forer and Wither's discussion about child's personality.
I think you're idea is reasonable. I don't agree with the author's opinion either. I've been constantly insisting from the beginning of this chapter... I see no reason to believe that Forer's idea is acceptable because it is descriptive but yet not based on empirical evidences. I regard the essay nothing more than a mere assumption...Besides, even if it is based on many evidences, there could possibly be many outliers or deviant cases that do not fit into "birth-order and personality relationship" theory. It's interesting to see you writing as the only child. I appreciate your hard work!
ReplyDelete201200283 Kim Keunho from prose¶graph summer session class