Going Solo

by Eric Klinenberg

  9. Ibid.

  10. See Howard Chudacoff, The Age of the Bachelor: Creating an American Subculture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999). The data on single men between ages twenty-five and thirty-four are from George Chauncey, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890–1940 (New York: Basic Books, 1991), p. 136.

  11. Quoted in Paul Groth, Living Downtown: The History of Residential Hotels (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), p. 7.

  12. Quotes are from Groth, Living Downtown, p. 23. Walt Whitman, in Emory Holloway and Ralph Adimari, eds., New York Dissected (New York: Rufus Rockwell Wilson, 1936 [1856]), pp. 96–97. Harvey Zorbaugh, The Gold Coast and the Slum: A Sociological Study of Chicago’s Near North Side (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983 [1929]), pp. 73–80.

  13. Zorbaugh, The Gold Coast and the Slum, pp. 73–80.

  14. Christine Stansell, American Moderns: Bohemian New York and the Creation of a New Century (New York: Metropolitan, 2000), pp. 6–7. Ross Wetzsteon, Republic of Dreams: Greenwich Village: The American Bohemia, 1910–1960 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998).

  15. Stansell, American Moderns, pp. 14, 27–28, 33. Judith Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).

  16. “The place where everything happens first” is from Wetzsteon, Republic of Dreams. See Anna Alice Chapin, Greenwich Village (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1917); and Luther Harris, Around Washington Square: An Illustrated History of Greenwich Village (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003). On converting tenements and houses into small apartments, see Caroline Ware, Greenwich Village, 1920–1930 (New York: Octagon, 1935), p. 19. Groth (Living Downtown, p. 63) writes that by the 1920s women were the majority residents of many hotel residences, from New York City to Seattle. It’s worth noting that Shakespeare’s Benedick ultimately reverses his position on matrimony. By the end of Much Ado About Nothing, he is ready to commit to Beatrice.

  17. See Ware, Greenwich Village, pp. 38–43.

  18. Chauncey, Gay New York, chapter six.

  19. Richard Sennett, The Fall of Public Man (New York: Norton, 1974), pp. 40–41.

  20. Helen Gurley Brown, Sex and the Single Girl (New York: Bernard Geis, 1962), p. 13.

  21. On Brown, see Jennifer Scanlon, Bad Girls Go Everywhere: The Life of Helen Gurley Brown (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009); Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (New York: Norton, 1963); and Brown, Sex and the Single Girl, pp. 12, 18.

  22. Brown, Sex and the Single Girl, pp. 12, 16.

  23. Sharon Marcus, “Placing Rosemary’s Baby,” Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 5 (1993), no. 3: 121–40.

  24. Brown, Sex and the Single Girl, p. 16.

  25. Bill Osgerby, “The Bachelor Pad as Cultural Icon,” Journal of Design History 18 (2005), no. 1: 99–114; Barbara Ehrenreich, The Hearts of Men (New York: Vintage, 2005), p. 42.

  26. See Susan Thistle, From Marriage to Market: The Transformation of Women’s Lives at Work (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), p. 102. Mitra Toossi, “A Century of Change.”

  27. The divorce statistics are published by the National Center for Health Statistics, “Advance Report of Final Divorce Statistics, 1981,” Monthly Vital Statistics Report 32 (1984), no. 9: 5. The statistic on divorces from 1970 to 1977 is from Chudacoff, The Age of the Bachelor, p. 271.

  28. Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, The Divorce Culture: Rethinking Our Commitments to Marriage and Family (New York: Knopf, 1996), pp. 4–5.

  29. Nikolas Rose, Powers of Freedom (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 84; Anthony Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991), p. 89; Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim, Reinventing the Family: In Search of New Lifestyles (Oxford: Polity, 2002).

  30. David Sarasohn, “Modern Love: A Joint Account That Underwrites Our Marriage,” New York Times, December 11, 2009.

  31. John Adams, Housing America in the 1980s (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1988), p. 48.

  32. The data are from the U.S. Census, and are available at www.census.gov/hhes/www/housing/census/historic/livalone.html.

  33. The data on rooms per child are from Rosenfeld, The Age of Independence, p. 135; the data on square feet in the typical home are from the National Association of Home Builders.

  34. Waln Brown and Thomas Newman, “Latchkey Kids,” Tallahassee, FL: William Gladden Foundation, 2005.

  35. European Commission, “Demography Report: Meeting Social Needs in an Ageing Society,” chapter two. Data for Canada come from Statistics Canada; for Japan, see the Statistics Bureau and the Director-General for Policy Planning of Japan; for the increase in floor space within homes, see Ann Waswo, Housing in Postwar Japan: A Social History (London: Routledge Curzon, 2002), p. 110; and for the U.S. see the Bureau of Labor Statistics (www.bls.gov/opub/uscs/1950.pdf).

  36. Annette Lareau, Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), p. 39.

  37. Benjamin Spock’s book is now in its eighth edition, and is currently called Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care. See the discussion of this in Rosenfeld, The Age of Independence, p. 133.

  38. Richard Ferber, Solve Your Child’s Sleep Problems (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986), pp. 38–40.

  39. See Lisa Chapman, “MU Housing Creates Dorm Singles to Meet Students’ Privacy Demands,” The Miami Student, February 17, 2006; Shimmy Edwards, “Single Dorms Are in High Demand,” The GW Hatchet, March 3, 2008; Tracy Jan, “BU Dorm Offers a Study in Luxury,” Boston Globe, September 2, 2009.

  40. Quoted in Tracy Jan, “BU Dorm Offers a Study in Luxury.”

  Chapter 2: The Capacity to Live Alone

  1. Bella DePaulo, “How I Discovered That Living Single Was My True Happily Ever After,” Onely blog, September 26, 2009.

  2. Ethan Watters, Urban Tribes.

  3. See Lori Gottlieb, “Marry Him! The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough,” Atlantic Monthly, March 2008; and the book by the same name (New York: Dutton, 2010).

  4. In fact, as DePaulo reports, those who stay single and live alone over time are relatively successful at managing the challenges that stem from their lifestyle. Consider a long-running (more than twenty years) German survey that asks more than 30,000 participants to rate their happiness annually. On average, those who remain single throughout the study self-report slightly lower happiness than those who get and remain married, but they also report higher happiness than those who marry and then divorce or become widowed. A similar study, conducted by Dutch demographers over eighteen years, got similar results. Respondents who had remained married or remained single reported relatively high happiness, whereas those who had coupled up and then separated experienced a sharp drop in life satisfaction, followed by a gradual increase over time. DePaulo discusses the German study in Singled Out: How Singles Are Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored, and Still Live Happily Ever After (New York: St. Martin’s, 2006), pp. 35–40; she also compares the two studies in her Psychology Today blog at www.psychologytoday.com/blog/living-single/200912/another-longitudinal-study-satisfaction. The Dutch study is Judith Soons, Aart Liefbroer, and Matthijs Kalmijn, “The Long-Term Consequences of Relationship Formation for Subjective Well-Being,” Journal of Marriage and the Family 71 (2009), no. 5: 1254–70.

  5. Rose M. Kreider and Jason M. Fields, “Number, Timing, and Duration of Marriages and Divorces: 1996,” U.S. Census Reports, 2002.

  6. See Matthew Bramlett and William Mosher, “First Marriage Dissolution, Divorce, and Remarriage: United States,” U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2001. The statistics on never-married Americans are reported in Eduardo Porter and Michelle O’Donnell, “Facing Middle Age with No Degree, and No Wife,” New Yo
rk Times, August 6, 2006.

  7. See Laura Kipnis, Against Love: A Polemic (New York: Pantheon, 2003), p. 23.

  8. See Matthew Crawford, Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work (New York: Penguin Press, 2009); Daniel Pink, Free Agent Nation: How America’s New Independent Workers Are Transforming the Way We Live (New York: Warner, 2001), pp. 10–11, 103.

  9. For an extensive report on the appeal of social life in professional office spaces, see Arlie Hochschild, The Time Bind: When Home Becomes Work and Work Becomes Home (New York: Metropolitan, 1997).

  10. One important study of social networks and time use found that “persons living alone appear to be no less attached outside the household, and in some instances have higher levels of such contact.” Duane Alwin, Philip Converse, and Steven Martin, “Living Arrangements and Social Integration,” Journal of Marriage and the Family 47 (1985): 319–33.

  11. See the Pew Internet & American Life Project report “Social Isolation and New Technology: How the Internet and Mobile Phones Impact Americans’ Social Networks,” Washington, D.C., November 2009, pp. 3–4.

  12. See “Singles in the U.S.: The New Nuclear Family,” Rockville, Md.: Packaged Facts, 2007.

  13. The concept that loneliness is a social pain comes from the psychologist John Cacioppo, who has also argued that those who feel lonely are not more likely to be alone than those who do not. In fact, one important scholarly article based on a random national sample of 2,248 adults age eighteen and over found: “Contrary to what would be predicted . . . unmarried persons who live alone are in no worse, and on some indicators are in better, mental health than unmarried persons who live with others.” See Michael Hughes and Walter Gove, “Living Alone, Social Integration, and Mental Health,” American Journal of Sociology 87 (1981), no. 1: 48–74. The authors look closely at the question of whether there is a selection bias that determines who lives alone—i.e., are people who live alone different from those who live with others, and are differences that are unrelated to their residential status the things that most affect their mental health. Their conclusion: “The data clearly suggest that in a representative population, a process of social selection related to poor mental health does not appear to play a significant role in determining who will live alone” (p. 62).

  14. This is an overstatement, since recent research shows that men over forty produce less sperm than their younger counterparts and that their children face higher risks of conditions such as autism and schizophrenia. See Roni Rabin, “It Seems the Fertility Clock Ticks for Men, Too,” New York Times, February 26, 2007.

  15. Erving Goffman, Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1963).

  16. Waite and Gallagher, The Case for Marriage, p. 77.

  17. Gretchen Livingston and D’Vera Cohn, “Childlessness Up Among All Women; Down among Women with Advanced Degrees,” Washington, D.C.: Pew Research Center, 2010.

  18. See Richard Fry and D’Vera Cohn, “Women, Men, and the New Economics of Marriage,” Washington, D.C.: Pew Research Center, 2010.

  19. See Judith Jones, The Pleasures of Cooking for One (New York: Knopf, 2009).

  20. Kari Bodnarchuk, “A Woman Traveling Alone? The World Can Be Your Oyster, Too,” Boston Globe, March 15, 2009.

  21. Other hotels are also starting to market to solo tourists. The Fairmont Miramar hotel in Santa Monica has a “Single and the City” package, which includes tips on how to tour the city on your own, and the Westin St. John resort offers a three-night “solo-cation,” complete with private pool. A number of new travel agencies offer group trips designed for those in search of romance as well as special offers, such as the Solo Super Saver from Singles Travel International, for those who just want a good deal when they are alone. These changes are outliers. Solo travelers see all the special things the travel industry does for couples and families and say that it has yet to make singles feel at home when they are away.

  22. Ellen Rand, “When Single Women Buy Homes,” New York Times, December 20, 1981.

  23. Data on home buyers are from the National Association of Realtors, “Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers,” 2009; the quote is from Liz Lemmer, “Singles Taking Stride in the Home Buying Market,” Medill News Service, February 17, 2007.

  24. Fry and Cohn, “Women, Men, and the New Economics of Marriage.”

  25. The National Consumer Survey data used in the Packaged Facts study show that 24 percent of singles self-report as “TV addicts,” compared to 19 percent of married individuals (“Singles in the U.S.,” p. 165).

  26. According to its Web site, Single Mothers by Choice “is not an advocacy group. It is not fair to urge a woman who may not have the emotional or financial resources, or who does not feel she would be able to handle single parenting, to get into an impractical or overextended situation. Single parenting is difficult enough for the woman who is sure and prepared. In the absence of a good partnership, and with the rate of divorce as high as it is, we feel that being raised by a caring and competent single parent is definitely a viable option.” See www.singlemothersbychoice.org/about/philosophy/.

  27. Katherine Grier, Pets in America: A History (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), p. 315; Alan Beck and N. Marshall Meyers, “Health Enhancement and Companion Animal Ownership,” Annual Review of Public Health 17 (1996): 247–57.

  28. The census data on pet ownership are available online at www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2010/tables/10s1204.xls.

  29. For some who live alone, cats do occasionally substitute for human companions. On the blog Onely, which promotes and affirms the solo lifestyle, a graduate student confesses: “I have two new men in my life . . . I spend all my non-work hours with Alvin or Theo. Several times in the last week I’ve postponed phone calls to friends and family so that I could hang out with, cook for, or cuddle with a new flame. I’m sleep deprived because we stay up too late laughing and talking. When people do call to find out where I’ve been, I barely ask about their lives, but instead I blather on and on about how handsome Theo is or how smart and funny Alvin seems . . . Alvin is adventurous and brings out my wild side, but Theo is more shy and has a chronic worried look on his face that makes me want to comfort him. I’m lucky I don’t have to choose between them, because they seem to enjoy sharing my lap. Oh, my poor matchmaking coworkers, who don’t have kittens . . . I will try to comfort and support them.” See “OMG, I’m One of THEM” at http://onely.org/2010/02/06/omg-im-one-of-them/.

  30. Donna Haraway, The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness (Chicago: Prickly Paradigm, 2003), p. 12.

  31. Beck and Meyers, “Health Enhancement and Companion Animal Ownership,” pp. 247–53.

  32. Lee Rainie and Mary Madden, “Not Looking for Love: Romance in America,” Washington, D.C.: Pew Research Center, 2006.

  Chapter 3: Separating

  1. In 2008 about 30 million of the 93 million unmarried Americans were either divorced (25 million) or separated (5 million). Within five years, nearly one in four marriages in the United States results in separation or divorce. These data are from U.S. Census, “Number, Timing, and Duration of Marriages and Divorces: 2001,” 2005, p. 6, available at www.census.gov/prod/2005pubs/p70-97.pdf.

  2. Cherlin, The Marriage-Go-Round, p. 4.

  3. The data on remarriage come from a 2002 report by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and are available online at www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/series/sr_23/sr23_022.pdf.

  4. For one careful analysis, see Richard Peterson, “A Re-Evaluation of the Economic Consequences of Divorce,” American Sociological Review 61 (1996): 528–36. Peterson shows that the typical decline in men’s and women’s standard of living after divorce is 10 percent and 27 percent, respectively, numbers that are substantial but actually lower than many previous estimates.

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p; 5. The survey, which was conducted by Knowledge Networks, is based on a nationally representative sample of 1,147 people. See Xenia P. Montenegro, “The Divorce Experience: A Study of Divorce at Midlife and Beyond,” Washington, D.C.: AARP, 2004. The statistics on frequency of sexual activity appear on pp. 45–49. An academic study of American sexual practices published in the British Medical Journal adds support for the AARP’s findings. Drawing on two nationally representative samples of the U.S. population, scholars at the University of Chicago found that men and women who live with a partner are significantly more likely to report being sexually active in the previous six months than those who live alone, and the disparity increases with age. For instance, 72 percent of men ages twenty-five to fifty-four who do not live with a partner report sexual activity in the previous six months, compared to 58 percent of women. Among those ages sixty-five to seventy-four, 38 percent of solo-dwelling men but only 4 percent of solo-dwelling women report sexual activity in the previous six months. See Stacy Tessler Lindau and Natalia Gavrilova, “Sex, Health, and Years of Sexually Active Life Gained Due to Good Health,” British Medical Journal 240 (2010): c810.

  6. The study published in the British Medical Journal confirms that gender differences in interest in sex are widespread, and that they grow with age. Among those between fifty-five and sixty-four years old, 50 percent of men who live without a partner say they are “interested in sex,” compared to 24 percent of women who live without a partner. Among those ages sixty-five to seventy-four, 31 percent of solo-dwelling men and 8 percent of solo-dwelling women say they are “interested in sex.” Lindau and Gavrilova, “Sex, Health, and Years of Sexually Active Life,” p. 5.

  7. The data on remarriage come from Cherlin, Marriage, Divorce, Remarriage; and the AARP study “The Divorce Experience.”

  8. In their study of elderly Londoners, Haines and Hurlbert found that women with broad social networks were actually more likely to experience distressing events, such as the death or illness of a friend, than women with fewer ties. See Valerie Haines and Jeanne Hurlbert, “Network Range and Health,” Journal of Health and Social Behavior 33 (1992): 254–66.