Lau­ren San­dler is an only child with an only child of her own, who found that dis­cussing the choice to stop at one kid was loaded with anx­i­ety, doubt, mis­in­for­ma­tion, and judg­ment. After inves­ti­gat­ing what only chil­dren real­ly are like and whether stop­ping at one child is an answer to rec­on­cil­ing moth­er­hood and moder­ni­ty, she learned a lot about her­self — and a lot about our cul­ture’s assump­tions. In this heart­felt work, San­dler demys­ti­fies the per­ceived prob­lems of the only child and legit­imizes a con­ver­sa­tion about the larg­er soci­etal costs of hav­ing more than one. We ask when peo­ple are hav­ing kids — nev­er a kid, nev­er one child at a time. If par­ents no longer felt they had to have sec­ond chil­dren to keep from roy­al­ly screw­ing up their first, would the major­i­ty of them still do it? And, if the lit­er­a­ture tells us — in hun­dreds of stud­ies — that a child isn’t bet­ter off with a sib­ling, and it’s not some­thing par­ents tru­ly want for them­selves, then whom is this choice serv­ing? One and Only exam­ines these ques­tions, explor­ing what the rise of the sin­gle-child fam­i­ly means for our economies, our envi­ron­ment, and our free­dom. San­dler con­sid­ers hun­dreds of stud­ies and inter­views, trav­el­ing around the world to dis­cov­er that only chil­dren are just fine, their par­ents often hap­pi­er, and our plan­et is bet­ter off for them.