Roona Simpson

Solo-Living, Demographic and Family Change: The Need to know more about men

Solo-living is analytically separate from ‘being single’ and merits separate study. In most Western countries more men are solo-living than women at ages conventionally associated with co-resident partners and children. Discussions of ‘demographic transition’ and change in personal life however typically place women in the vanguard, to the relative neglect of men. We draw on European Social Survey data and relevant qualitative research from Europe and North America demonstrating the need for further research.

The Intimate Relationships of Contemporary Spinsters

Several theorists of social change have argued that there are profound transformations in social interactions emerging in the context of wider social, cultural and economic change, including a shift to greater choice and fluidity in personal relationships. Alongside this, there has been widespread academic support for the notion of individualism as a major explanation of family change, with several commentators raising concerns that changing familial forms signal increasing self-centredness and a decline in commitments to others. Remaining single can be seen as paradigmatic of such individualisation, and single women in particular risk being characterised by their lack of connection to significant others. However, there has been relatively little empirical attention to the relationships of single people. This paper draws on research on never-married single women in Britain and analyses their relationships with both kin and non-kin in relation to claimed transformations in intimacy prevalent in contemporary debates. It concludes by considering the implications of the main findings of this research for sociological debates about the changing conceptions of both intimacy and ‘the family’.

Fertility and social change: the neglected contribution of men's approaches to becoming partners and parents

Attitude survey and interview data are mobilised to address neglect of mens contribution to low fertility and wider social change in families and relationships. Mens attitudes are as relevant as womens to understanding fertility behaviour. However, fertility behaviour can only be understood in the context of a package of changes in gender relations and family life. Data from a random sample of men aged 18–49 surveyed in the Scottish Social Attitudes (SSA) survey 2005/06 are combined with in-depth interviews conducted in 2007 with 75 men aged 25–44 identified through the Scottish Household Survey as not living in co-resident partnership arrangements. Both datasets encompass the age span conventionally associated with having children and men who were the potential partners of women delaying a first child until their 30s. They allow consideration of the impact of social contact with parents and children on mens fertility intentions and how the role of provider features in mens views about parenting. The interviews focus on men who have fallen out of, or have not entered, co-resident partnerships and examine the relationship between partnering and parenting. In combination the data suggest how men act as a complementary or contradictory downward drag on womens fertility and that their role has been underestimated in understanding the package of family change of which low fertility is a part.

Singleness and self-identity The significance of partnership status in the narratives of never-married women

Demographic trends in recent decades such as the delay and decline in marriage and increase in divorce have meant more men and women experiencing periods of singleness. For women in particular, singleness has long been considered anomalous: normative femininity, bound up with marriage and motherhood, has meant single woman being represented in terms of deficit or deviance. The increase in singleness is one aspect of wider social changes that have implications for the categories of identity available to single women. In this article, I draw on in-depth qualitative interviews with never-married single women in Britain to examine the single self-identities evident in their narratives. I consider the extent to which these suggest shifts in the centrality of partnership status in the context of the latter half of the 20th century.

Solo-living and Connectedness

We begin this chapter by looking at existing research on the relationship between living alone and individual well-being at older ages. Recognition of the importance of social embeddedness to the well-being of older people has led to a body of research which considers the role of living arrangements alongside marital and parenting histories. We consider what this literature may indicate about the likely futures of those living alone at older ages in decades to come. We then move on to data from our UK study on the social connectedness of men and women living alone at working age. Looking across the diverse circumstances of the lives of those living alone, the data allow consideration of different dimensions of respondents’ social networks, including frequency and type of contact, the relative weight placed on particular relationships and the extent to which interviewees felt they could rely on others or be relied on for support. Evidence of considerable variation in the social networks of those in our study counters simplistic generalizations about the social connectedness of those living alone.

Geographies and Biographies of Living Alone

This chapter draws on census and large-scale survey data1 to explore the geography of living alone. We start by looking across countries at trends in the proportions of one-person households.2 Attention is also given to the biographical context of living alone. This includes drawing on a range of literature considering living alone in relation to other life course transitions and using trend data on first marriage, first child-birth as well as data on fertility rates and the proportion of women who remain childless.

Living Alone, Consuming Alone?

The previous chapter indicated variation in whether and how people living alone consciously express themselves through their home and showed that practices of ‘consuming’ the home often remember and display relationships to family and friends. This chapter extends the discussion through a focus on the consumption of food and holidays, topics that provide particularly interesting insight into the interdependence of the self and social relationships, as seen and managed in the subjectivity and social practices of people living alone. The environmental consequences of consumption were not explicitly raised in our study, but the interlinking of high carbon-emitting systems, food and holiday consumption were occasionally spontaneously acknowledged and this is also noted in the chapter.

The Future of Living Alone

The number of people living alone is likely to continue to increase globally, both among the elderly and the working-age population, although it remains much more unthinkable and practically impossible in some regions of the world. In some parts of Europe and the United States, recession may cause pause and reversal, but, in general, where the trend has more recently started, it is more likely to continue towards higher levels, albeit not necessarily achieving the current levels in northern Europe. Gradations in the levels of living alone will continue more or less mapping onto the family-sex-gender systems outlined by Goran Therborn. It will remain very low for working-age adults in regions where family-sex-gender systems are more securely patriarchal, exercising tighter control over women and young people. It has long been anticipated that the growing opportunities for waged work of global capitalism and the more rapid global flows of discourse, including the celebration of gender equality and intimacy, will weaken patriarchal arrangements. However, such predictions have often underestimated their resilience. There are still many contexts in which young people have limited or no access to a period of independence beyond parental control and prior to marriage.

Solo-living with and without Partnering and Parenting

People who live alone across the ages normally associated with child rearing are not necessarily turning away from couple relationships or parenting. Some have partners, some have children and those who are childless may not be making a lifestyle choice. This chapter explores the orientation of people living alone in early to mid-adulthood to partnership, parenting and the presumed intimacy that they bring. It is structured by comparison between men and women, across three different biographical situations: people living alone who have no partner or children; people living alone while in a couple relationship with someone who lives elsewhere; and parents living alone while their child or children’s main residence is elsewhere. These biographical circumstances can overlap, since some parents are also in couple relationships and, exceptionally, those who are single and childless sometimes take up a parenting role to a child or children of friends or family.

Place, Mobility and Migration

In this chapter, we consider the role that residential history and locality play in the embeddedness of men and women living alone in relationship to people and place. Urban and rural localities provide different opportunities to enjoy resources such as housing, employment and social spaces. How do these differences modify the experience of living alone? Some academic discussion of solo-living has particularly associated this trend with enhanced mobility and urban living (Buzar et al., 2005; Hall and Ogden, 2003). As was demonstrated in discussion of Japan (Chapter 2), solo-living has increased in both heavily and sparsely populated areas in some countries. The United Kingdom also demonstrates that solo-living can be a significant rural as well as an urban phenomenon.1 We develop the discussion introduced in the previous chapter on the social connectedness of men and women living alone to consider sense of attachment to a particular locality, and how this might differ by factors such as gender and class. To what extent do people living alone see themselves as ‘free agents’, liberated from conventional ties to people or place? How far do they see living alone as significant in shaping a sense of belonging?