Nuclear Implosion

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As only children, Peggy and Shanti won't be objects of curiosity at school. But they are of interest to psychologists, who wonder how the swelling ranks of children growing up without brothers and sisters will develop. Decades of expert advice cast these singletons as problem citizens — solipsists with difficulty forming relationships. Now the balance of scientific opinion is swinging away from that idea. Professor Toni Falbo of the University of Texas has researched the subject for 30 years and, she says, found no disadvantages to children without siblings. That's because what counts is not a traditional family structure but the opportunity to form relationships with adults and contemporaries. "Parent and peer contact can compensate for the lack of siblings," says Falbo.

Parents of only children are ingenious in developing family structures to provide that contact. A child's best friend can often be co-opted as an honorary sibling; or the extended family can be plundered for playmates and more adult role models. Professor Melanie Howard, the director of the London-based consultancy, the Future Foundation, describes what results as "analogue family." "You may find that friends, godparents and the like become absorbed into the family structure," she says. "The nature of family is becoming much more networked and loose."

Nuclear Explosions
Ironically, Maggie Alderson's latest work of fiction, Cents and Sensibility, centers on a family light-years from her own tight, nuclear unit. It's a patchwork, stitched together from the remnants of previous partnerships; Alderson's tale involves so many offspring that the heroine's father's sixth wife keeps track of her 13 siblings and stepsiblings on a flow chart.

Felix Zavelberg might find such a chart useful. The 15-year-old hails from the small agricultural town of Morenhoven, Germany, and is the child of a broken marriage. His paternal grandparents have died, but he has a second set of maternal grandparents, courtesy of his dad Dieter's second wife Astrid. That marriage has also produced twin half brothers, Marius and Daniel, aged 5, while his biological mother Eva has gone on to have a daughter, Anna, 7, with a new partner.

Felix lives with his father but spends most weekends and holidays with his mother. His father puts a positive spin on the situation. Felix now has regular contact with Astrid's family, some of whom are Protestant clergy. This is "a real enrichment for Felix. They are completely different from my family and offer him a new environment," says Dieter Zavelberg.

With divorce rates skyrocketing, even in Catholic southern Europe, the urge to look for silver linings is strong. Italy, for example, has seen a leap of 71 per cent since 1994, according to the research institute Eurispes. In 2003, there were nearly half as many separations and divorces as there were marriages.

Increasing numbers of children are born out of wedlock. Not too long ago, such children — and their mothers — were stigmatized. Not any more, says Grazia Francolini, a director of corporate strategy for TNT Italy, who lives in San Donato, near Milan. At age 36, her mother had married and given birth to four children. At 37, Francolini herself had her first child, a daughter named Bianca, and was unmarried — the father was her divorcé boyfriend, Andrea Brusoni. He already had a 12-year-old son by his first marriage. "I believe in the family but I don't think it's the marriage that says the family is steady," says Francolini. "We are children of our epoch. We are different from our parents, not because of our choices but because our society has changed."