ABSTRACT
At the beginning of this century, G. Stanley Hall, a founder of modern American psychology, reportedly said that, “Being an only child is a disease in itself” (Fenton, 1928, p. 547). His views were shared by other psychologists of his generation. For example, Frank and Lillian Gilbreth, early industrial psychologists, were efficiency experts who wrote several classics of American industrial management in the early part of this century, including The Primer of Scientific Management, in 1912. Two of their 12 children, Frank, Jr. and Ernestine (Carey) wrote the American classics, Cheaper by the Dozen (1948) and Belles on their Toes (1950), which chronicled the lives of these two psychologists and their children. It seemed to both generations of Gilbreths that the one-child family was inefficient: Why should two adults devote their resources to 1 child when, with the same resources, they could produce 12?
