Going Solo

by Eric Klinenberg

  9. These numbers are based on an original analysis of the GSS data from 2002 to 2008, conducted by the sociologist Erin Cornwell. According to the psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky, “Studies have shown that, relative to married people, singles are closer to their friends and have more frequent contact with them and that lifelong single older women tend to have close to a dozen devoted decades-long friends.” See Sonja Lyubomirsky, The How of Happiness: The Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want (New York: Penguin Press, 2007), p. 147.

  10. The data on loneliness come from Cornwell’s analysis of the GSS.

  11. Ibid.

  12. See T. M. Luhrmann, “The Art of Hearing God: Absorption, Dissociation, and Contemporary American Spirituality,” Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality 5 (2005), no. 2: 133–57.

  13. The data on church attendance are from Cornwell’s analysis of the GSS. See Herbert Anderson and Freda Gardner, Living Alone (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1996), p. 24.

  14. Support for this skepticism about the quality of life within marriage comes from the General Social Survey. One recent study found that “only one-third of all marriages were both happy and intact after sixteen years.” Paul Amato, Alan Booth, David Johnson, and Stacy Rogers, Alone Together (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007), p. 2.

  15. See Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982); and Deborah Belle, “Gender Differences in Children’s Social Networks and Supports,” in Deborah Belle (ed.), Children’s Networks and Social Supports (Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley, 1989), p. 179.

  Chapter 4: Protecting the Self

  1. William Deresiewicz, “The End of Solitude,” The Chronicle of Higher Education: Chronicle Review 55 (2009), no. 21; and Dalton Conley, The Elsewhere Society (New York: Pantheon, 2009), p. 7.

  2. See Sandra Smith, Lone Pursuit: Distrust and Defensive Individualism among the Black Poor (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2007), p. 22.

  3. Phil’s account of the benefits of going solo are reminiscent of the arguments made by the late psychologist Anthony Storr in his book Solitude. Storr’s thesis was that solitude, used wisely, allows a “return to the self” that enhances the creative abilities of great writers and artists. He quotes Edward Gibbon: “‘Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius; and the uniformity of a work denotes the hand of a single artist.’” Storr, who was careful to note that solitude can take a constructive or destructive course depending on the way it’s used, reports that “many of the world’s greatest thinkers have not reared families or formed close personal ties.” Storr, Solitude, p. 1.

  4. On the reluctance of employers to hire men with criminal records, particularly African Americans, see Devah Pager, Marked: Crime, Race, and Finding Work in an Era of Mass Incarceration (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007).

  5. See Porter and O’Donnell, “Facing Middle Age”; and Richard Fry and D’Vera Cohn, “Women, Men, and the New Economics of Marriage.”

  6. The University of Wisconsin sociologist Alice Goffman makes a similar observation in her ethnographic study of young black men with criminal records in Philadelphia: “Suspicious even of those closest to them, young men cultivate unpredictability or altogether avoid institutions, places, and relations on which they formerly relied.” Few of these men actually live alone, but the fact that their survival strategies involve avoiding potentially helpful networks and institutions means that they are less likely to get out of poverty. See Alice Goffman, “On the Run: Wanted Men in a Philadelphia Ghetto,” American Sociological Review 74 (2009), no. 3: 339–57.

  7. Psychologist Randy Frost and social work scholar Gail Steketee estimate that 2 percent to 5 percent of the American population—between 6 million and 15 million people—hoard enough to affect their lives, and argue that hoarding has become a significant problem in cities. They note that, like Mary Ann, hoarders shift their behavior to emphasize interaction with objects rather than people. See their book Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010).

  Chapter 5: Together Alone

  1. Ethan Watters discusses the problem of organizing around the stigmatized “singles” concept in chapter five of Urban Tribes.

  2. Kris Marsh, William Darity Jr., Philip Cohen, Lynne Casper, and Danielle Salters, “The Emerging Black Middle Class: Single and Living Alone,” Social Forces 86, no. 2: 750, 753.

  3. Natalie Nitsche and Hannah Brückner, “Opting Out of the Family? Social Change in Racial Inequality in Family Formation Patterns and Marriage Outcomes among Highly Educated Women,” presentation at the convention of the American Sociological Association, 2009.

  4. Marsh et al., “The Emerging Black Middle Class,” p. 740.

  5. Page Gardner, “Twenty Million Women, Twenty Million Reasons,” Huffington Post, November 8, 2007.

  6. The Women’s Voices, Women Vote report on the 2008 trends, “Unmarried Women in the Electorate: Behind the Numbers,” is available at www.wvwv.org/assets/2010/1/19/Unmarried_Women_in_the_Electorate_-_Behind_the_Numbers.pdf.

  7. Women’s Voices, Women Vote/Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, “Unmarried Women Change America,” November 2008.

  8. See Women’s Voices, Women Vote, “Unmarried Women in the Electorate: Behind the Numbers.”

  9. Packaged Facts, “Singles in the U.S.,” p. 16.

  10. Euromonitor International, “Single Living.”

  11. See David Brooks, “The Sandra Bullock Trade,” New York Times, March 29, 2010. The response on DePaulo’s Psychology Today blog, Living Single, appeared later the same day. See “David Brooks + Sandra Bullock = Matrimonia” at www.psychologytoday.com/blog/living-single/201003/david-brooks-sandra-bullock-matrimania.

  12. Available at http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/26/3/836.short.

  Chapter 6: Aging Alone

  1. See the U.S. Administration on Aging report, “A Profile of Older Americans 2009,” at www.aoa.gov/AoARoot/Aging_Statistics/Profile/2009/6.aspx; the European Commission report, “Independent Living for the Ageing Society,” at http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/policy_link/brochures/documents/independent_living.pdf; and the Japan Times report at http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20100514x2.html; on China, see Xin Meng and Chuliang Luo, “What Determines Living Arrangements of the Elderly in Urban China,” 2004, http://people.anu.edu.au/xin.meng/living-arrange.pdf; on South Korea, see Young Jin Park, “The Rise of One-Person Householders and their Recent Characteristics in Korea,” Korea Journal of Population and Development 23 (1994), no. 1: 117–29.

  2. The data on aging in Europe come from Henry Aaron, “Longer Life Spans: Boon or Burden?” Daedalus, Winter 2006: 9–19. And see Robert William Fogel, The Escape from Hunger and Premature Death, 1700–2100: Europe, America, and the Third World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 1.

  3. The classic study of increased mortality among the recently widowed is C. Murray Parkes, B. Benjamin, and R. G. Fitzgerald, “Broken Heart: A Statistical Study of Increased Mortality Among Widowers,” British Medical Journal 1, no. 5646 (March 22, 1969): 740–43.

  4. About 1.5 million Americans live in a nursing home on any given day, and about 3 million people reside in them over the course of a typical year. Although many nursing homes maintain a high level of quality care, many others—including a disproportionately high number of those recently acquired by private equity groups—do not; federal oversight of them has been criticized by the U.S. Government Accountability Office. See Charles Duhigg, “At Many Homes, More Profit and Less Nursing,” New York Times, September 23, 2007.

  5. See Benjamin Cornwell, Edward Laumann, and L. Philip Schumm, “The Social Connectedness of Older Adults: A National Profile,” American Sociological Review 73 (2008): 185–
203. The paper showing constant rates of reported loneliness in England is Christina Victor, Ann Bowling, John Bond, and Sasha Scambler, “Loneliness, Social Isolation, and Living Alone in Later Life,” Research Findings no. 17, Growing Older Programme. Economic & Social Research Council, 2003, www.growingolder.group.shef.ac.uk/ChristinaVic_F17.pdf; the study on the health of people aging alone is Steven Iliffe et al., “Health Risk Appraisal in Older People II: The Implications for Clinicians and Commissioners of Social Isolation Risk in Older People,” British Journal of General Practice 57 (2007), no. 537: 277–82.

  6. On the gender disparity in aging, see Deborah Carr, “Widows and Widowers,” in Dennis Peck and Clifton Bryant (eds.), Encyclopedia of Death and the Human Experience (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 2009), pp. 989–95. On the desire to date, see Deborah Carr, “The Desire to Date and Remarry among Older Widows and Widowers,” Journal of Marriage and Family 66 (2006), no. 4: 1051–68.

  7. Paula Span, “They Don’t Want to Live with You, Either,” New York Times, March 24, 2009. The data on widows living with children are from V. Joseph Hotz, Kathleen McGarry, and Emily Wiemers. “Living Arrangements among Elderly Women in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics,” PSID Conference on Pensions, Private Accounts, and Retirement Savings over the Life Course, November 20–21, 2008.

  8. Deborah Carr, “The Desire to Date and Remarry.”

  9. Yvonne Michael, Lisa Berkman, Graham Colditz, and Ichiro Kawachi, “Living Arrangements, Social Integration, and Change in Functional Health Status,” American Journal of Epidemiology 153 (2001), no. 2: 123–31.

  10. This is consistent with findings from some qualitative research on the dating practices of elderly women. See Kate Davidson, “Gender Differences in New Partnership Choices and Constraints for Older Widows and Widowers,” Ageing International 27 (2002): 43–60.

  11. The Stanford psychologist Laura Carstensen has developed the socioemotional selectivity theory to explain this transformation among the elderly. See Laura Carstensen, “Social and Emotional Patterns in Adulthood: Support for Socioemotional Selectivity Theory,” Psychology and Aging 7 (1982) no. 3: 331–38.

  12. See Martha Albertson Fineman, The Autonomy Myth: A Theory of Dependency (New York: New Press, 2005).

  13. For instance, in his classic study of urban social networks, Claude Fischer reports that “old men were the most isolated” of all social groups. Claude Fischer, To Dwell Among Friends: Personal Networks in Town and City (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), p. 253. Erin Cornwell’s analysis of recent General Social Survey data reveals the same pattern.

  14. The Commonwealth Fund Commission on Elderly People Living Alone, “Aging Alone: Profiles and Projections.” Baltimore, Md., 1987.

  15. Among elderly women, roughly 4 in 10 Latinas and African Americans who live alone are impoverished, compared to about 2.5 Asians and 1.5 whites. The trends are similar for solo-dwelling elderly men: 3.5 in 10 Latinos are poor, compared to about 3 African Americans, 2 Asians, and 1 white. These figures are from the 2009 American Community Survey and are reported in Deborah Carr, “Golden Years? Poverty Among Older Americans,” Contexts, Winter 2010: 62–63.

  16. Neal Krause, “Neighborhood Deterioration and Social Isolation in Later Life,” International Journal of Aging and Human Development 36 (1993): 9–38.

  Chapter 7: Redesigning Solo Life

  1. Dolores Hayden, Redesigning the American Dream: Gender, Housing, and Family Life, 2d ed. (New York: Norton, 2002).

  2. See, for instance, the ratings available on the U.S. News and World Report Web site: http://health.usnews.com/senior-housing.

  3. See “Nursing Homes: Business as Usual,” Consumer Reports, 2006, www.consumerreports.org/health/healthy-living/health-safety/nursing-homes-9-06/overview/0609_nursing-homes_ov.htm. The report on Illinois nursing homes is David Jackson and Gary Marx, “Illinois Nursing Homes Mix Felons, Seniors,” Chicago Tribune, September 29, 2009. In Heat Wave, I reported on a similar practice in Chicago’s public housing for seniors. Residents I interviewed complained that the presence of violent neighbors discouraged them from using public spaces and kept them locked in at home.

  4. Duhigg, “At Many Homes, More Profit and Less Nursing.”

  5. Nicholas Roy, Gregory Baltus, Dieter Fox, Francine Gemperle, Jennifer Goetz, Tad Hirsch, Dimitris Margaritis, Mike Montemerlo, Joelle Pineau, Jamie Schulte, and Sebastian Thrun, “Towards Personal Service Robots for the Elderly,” 2000, available at several Web sites, including http://www.ri.cmu.edu/publication_view.html?pub_id=3390.

  6. Robert Sparrow and Linda Sparrow, “In the Hands of Machines? The Future of Aged Care,” Minds and Machines 16 (2006) no. 2: 141–61.

  7. Ibid.

  8. The Kompaï is profiled in Brian Horowitz. “Will Robots Help the Elderly Live at Home Longer?” Scientific American, June 21, 2010.

  9. See George Ford and Sherry Ford, “Internet Use and Depression among the Elderly,” The Phoenix Center, 2009, Policy Paper 38, www.phoenix-center.org/DepressionOct152009.pdf.

  10. See Jim Moore, “Deep Economic Impact,” Assisted Living Executive, January–February 2008: 10–15; and Paula Span, “Assisted Living: Back to the Future,” New York Times, December 28, 2009.

  11. Jane Gross, “The $500,000 Dilemma,” New York Times, July 2, 2009.

  12. Ibid.

  13. See, for instance, Debra Dobbs, J. Kevin Eckert, Bob Rubinstein, Lynn Keimig, Leanne Clark, Ann Christine Frankowski, and Sheryl Zimmerman, “An Ethnographic Study of Stigma and Ageism in Residential Care or Assisted Living,” The Gerontologist 48 (2008), no. 4: 517–26. The fact that there is cruelty in these cultural practices should not call into question the extent to which these residential communities also provide care and support. But it does mean we shouldn’t romanticize them. See Arlie Hochschild, The Unexpected Community: Portrait of an Old Age Subculture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973); and Barbara Myerhoff, Number Our Days: A Triumph of Continuity and Caring among Jewish Old People in an Urban Ghetto (New York: Touchstone, 1980).

  14. See the 2009 report “Coming Home: Affordable Assisted Living” by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

  15. Jo Williams, “Innovative Solutions for Averting a Potential Resource Crisis—The Case of One-Person Households in England and Wales,” Environmental Development and Sustainability 9 (2007): 325–54.

  16. David Owen, “Green Manhattan: Why New York Is the Greenest City in the U.S.,” The New Yorker, October 18, 2004.

  Conclusion

  1. There is a myth that Sweden has a high suicide rate, and another that the high rates of living alone there are partly responsible. But the most recent World Health Organization statistics debunk them. The reported Swedish suicide rate, 26 per 100,000 residents, places it far below the top twenty-five high-risk nations. The nations where suicide is reported to be more common include Austria, Belgium, China, Finland, France, Japan, Poland, Russia, South Korea, Sri Lanka, and Uruguay. See www.who.int/mental_health/prevention/suicide_rates/en/.

  2. David Popenoe, “Beyond the Nuclear Family: A Statistical Portrait of the Changing Family in Sweden,” Journal of Marriage and Family 49 (1987), no. 1: 180.

  3. See Lars-Erik Borgegård and Jim Kemeny, “Sweden: High-Rise Housing for a Low-Density Country,” in Richard Turkington, Ronald van Kempen, and F. Wassenberg (eds.), High-Rise Housing in Europe: Current Trends and Future Prospects (Delft: Delft University Press, 2004), pp. 31–48.

  4. All the major Swedish political parties, including the neoliberals, who advocate more laissez-faire economic policies, support sustaining a welfare state that is far more generous than those found in nations in Europe and North America where collective living is more common. They have to, since the overwhelming majority of Swedish voters believe that robust public programs (for housing, health, education, and the like) allow them to become strong and auto
nomous individuals, and they demand that their political representatives, even the conservative and libertarian ones, promote the common good.

  5. A news story about the report is here: www.dn.se/sthlm/s-lovar-50000-nya-bostader-i-stockholms-lan.

  6. See the building’s site at www.fardknappen.se/fardknappen.se/In_English.html.

  7. The study of supportive housing in San Francisco is Tia Martinez and Martha Burt, “Impact of Permanent Supportive Housing on the Use of Acute Care Health Services by Homeless Adults,” Psychiatric Services 57 (2006): 992–99. The study in Seattle is Mary E. Larimer, Daniel K. Malone, Michelle D. Garner, et al., “Health Care and Public Service Use and Costs Before and After Provision of Housing for Chronically Homeless Persons with Severe Alcohol Problems,” JAMA 301 (2009), no. 13: 1349–57.

  8. The New York City study is “The Impact of Supportive Housing on Surrounding Neighborhoods: Evidence from New York City,” Furman Center for the Study of Real Estate and Urban Policy, New York, 2008.

  9. See “Medicaid Payment for Assisted Living: Current State Practices and Recommendations for Improvement,” National Senior Citizens Law Center, 2010.

  10. The quote and the claim that there are about 38 million uncompensated family caregivers come from the White House Middle Class Task Force, www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/Fact_Sheet-Middle_Class_Task_Force.pdf. Advocacy groups estimate that the annual value of the care given by family members is approximately $375 billion.

  11. For instance, the commentator Paul Begala calls baby boomers “the most self-centered, self-seeking, self-interested, self-absorbed, self-indulgent, self-aggrandizing generation in American history.” See Paul Begala, “The Worst Generation,” Esquire, April 2000.

  12. These numbers are based on an original analysis of the GSS data from 2002 to 2008 conducted by the sociologist Erin Cornwell, and on the data in the Packaged Facts report “Singles in the U.S.”