Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me ... must be a saying thought up by somebody extremely privileged. For everyone else, words wound, and there are certain groups that are seemingly, bafflingly, forever considered fair game. No matter how PC the world becomes, they’re immune from progress, and it apparently remains permissible to make comments, assumptions and jokes about them, and to attach outdated stereotypical attributes. Only children aren’t unique in having to tolerate this, of course, and they won’t like that. After all, they don’t like sharing anything, do they?

Badoom-tish! Hilarious, no? Well, no, not to me. I am an only child with an only child, so colour me double-offended. Actually, not offended – bored. As anybody would be, hearing the same tired, lazy “gags” over and over again.

This discourse is especially tedious because the only-child army is growing. New figures show that 50% more generation X women are having only one baby than their OK boomer mums. The proportion of women who have one kid rose to........

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