Is Being An Only Child Really So Bad?

Elizabeth Hurley has admitted she regrets not giving her son a sibling. Here, we find out what life without brothers and sisters is really like

Most women know what they want out of life – and that includes the number of children they’ll have.

But actress and model Elizabeth Hurley has admitted she regrets not having more. Despite the strong bond she has with her son Damian, 16, Liz, 53, has revealed she’d have liked him to have siblings to ‘squabble with and love’. ‘They’re very different, single children,’ she says. ‘More insular but at ease with themselves, self-possessed and focused.’ But is she right to worry? Or is being an only child something that should be championed? We speak to an only child – and her mum...

Natalie Kerr, 34, lives with her sons in St andrews, Fife.

Watching my sons Harley, four, and Grayson, two, happily sharing their building blocks, I feel so lucky. Yes, I know that there will be times as they get older that aren’t so harmonious. not too far into the future, my house will – apparently – become a battlefield. Friends assure me that there will be arguments about everything – from whose turn it is to choose what’s on TV, to who gets to sit where at dinner – oh, and there will be fights, too.