All over the world, more and more adults are living alone...

Books: “Going Solo”byEric Klinenberg

by Francis Phillips

Not just in America, but all over the world, 

more and more adults are living alone. 

Should we celebrate their freedom or be dismayed?

By any measure, Going Solo is a significant book, though one with a sombre message. It can be summed in one statistic provided by the author: in the US in 1950, 22 percent of adults were single; today, more than 50 percent are in this position; 31 million people live alone. Eric Klinenberg, professor of sociology at New York University, sets out to analyze this statistic and to draw conclusions from it.

I find the conclusions more disheartening than Klinenberg does. Although at the start he quotes Genesis – “It is not good for man to be alone” – and discusses the long evolution that resulted in the nuclear family, it is clear that he is optimistic about the evolving social future of the human species – even as it moves further away from the traditional family unit.

What is happening to American society when, for the first time in its history, “the majority of all American adults are single”? Is it a problem, a sign of “narcissistic fragmentation”?
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