"Oh,you must have been a spoiled   kid.You must be really bossy.I wonder what you're going to be like to deal with?" That's often the response Angela Hult gets when people find out she's an only child,she told ABC News.Despite such negative   remarks,Hult has decided to have only one child herself.And she's not alone. According to the US' Office for National Statistics,women approaching the end of their childbearing years had an average of 1.9 children in 2004,compared with 3.1 for their counterparts in 1976.The percentage of onechild families in Britain had risen from 18 percent in 1972 to 26 percent in 2007. But even though only children are becoming increasingly common,the traditional view that they're selfish,spoiled and lack social skills holds strong.Even parents of only children,like Hult,are made to feel guilty about having only one child.Worried that they're being selfish and endangering their child's future,they flock to online discussion forums seeking advice.Soon,however,they ask themselves:is this social prejudice really reasonable? "There have been hundreds and hundreds of research studies that show that only children are no different from their peers  ," Susan Newman,a social psychologist at Rutgers University in the US,told ABC News. This raises another question:why are only children still viewed with such suspicion? "There is a belief that's been around probably since humans first existed that to have just one child is somehow dangerous,both for you and for the continuation of your race," Toni Falbo,a professor of educational psychology,told the Guardian."In the past a lot of children died.You'd have had to be crazy to only have one." Times,of course,have changed and infant mortality   has largely reduced.So what do only children themselves say? Kayley Kravitz,a blogger for The Huffington Post,grew up as an only child and highly recommends the experience."Being an only child taught me the most valuable skill of all:the ability to be alone," she said. An only child like Kayley  _  .
must be difficult to persuade can possibly learn to be alone should value special skills need ignore bad experience