Book Review - One and Only

meo34

Maybe this has been discussed before but did any one read this? I didn't find it a good read and was bored by the constant spouting of staistics and studies and I think it was really skewed and a bit jaded about parents who have more than one. Any opinions?

hopefulmom81

Hmmm...I found it to be the opposite.  I thought it was a great read, and was an intellectually thought out point of view for having an only.  I found myself going, "Yeah!  Preach on, sister" throughout the book.  There are so many forces out there trying to make parents of onlies and onlies themselves feel like we are selfish or outsiders and it was refreshing to get the other side with some great arguments.

That being said, I went into it excited to read another book about having (and being) an only child, so I kind of set it up to be good, so that may have skewed my view.

Some of the Amazon reviews say the writing style was poor, I don't quite remember that, but I read it a while ago.

Now you have me wanting to go back and read it again!

meo34

I struggled through it. I would agree with the reviews that said it was not well written. It did not flow for me and jumped around quite a bit. I defintely would not want to re-read. Interesting to see someone else's prespective though. I guess my expectations went the opposite as I was really looking forward to it and had built it up and so was disappointed.

kristennd

I was fine with the writing style but I did think she was a little heavy with the 'only children are superior' view.

PhantomPower

I didn't enjoy it.  I agree with the previous poster that she came across heavy with her "only children are superior" view. 

I will give it credit for making me consider a couple things. It really made me face the fact that Cooper won't have the sibling to lean on when we're older. That section of the book was very dificult for me to get through but it is something that I really did have to face.

She also pointed out that "only child" is almost a negative term in itself ("only" have one?) and I had never thought of that before. 

kristennd

One of the main points to the technical aspects is that so many people pull the "Well scientific studies have proven that only children are damaged because..." so they'll only consider other science to counteract that.

hopefulmom81

kristennd said:

I was fine with the writing style but I did think she was a little heavy with the 'only children are superior' view.

But we are