Just before I read your email I was listening to a radio discussion of singles living alone. The presenter [Sally Loane] suggested that single people might be an untapped source of social capital, as if this was a novel idea, and not a point that Paul made nearly 2000 years ago!
Recent forecasts from the ABS show that the number of people who live alone in Australia will increase significantly in the next 20 years, and that the largest part of this growth will be younger people. Since 1971, the number of people aged 25-45 who are living alone has increased by 250%. The ABS report attributes this increase to declining fertility, increasing longevity, decreases in marriage and higher education.
I wonder if the trend to living alone is another symptom of our emphasis upon the individual, of the continued promotion of individual ambition (aspiration seems to be the word favoured by social commentators at present).
Perhaps another symptom is the number of late twenty and thirty something men and women who are not in any form of long term relationship. I'm particularly surprised by the number of women in that age range who are single and who have in some cases broken a long term relationship (including marriage) because they could not work out how to make their career ambitions coexist with the demands of an intimate relationship.
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