You don't need brothers or sisters to be sociable

THE stigma attached to only children – that they have weaker social skills – is unwarranted. So say Doug Downey and Donna Bobbit-Zeher of Ohio State University, Columbus, who found that kids with siblings make no more friends than those without.

Concerns about poor social skills among children raised alone stem in part from a paper Downey published in 2004, which asked kindergarten teachers in the US to rate the social skills of children, aged around 5, in their care. He found that children with siblings received higher ratings…