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Life

You don't need brothers or sisters to be sociable

18 August 2010

91av. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine.

No siblings, lots of friends

(Image: Gideon Mendel / In Pictures / Corbis)

THE stigma attached to only children – that they have weaker social skills – is unwarranted. So say and 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

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