Here’s a lovely piece from Fidelia’s Sisters by Rabbi Leah Berkowitz about working on the Sabbath and also honoring it in her own home.
I hadn’t heard about Fidelia’s Sisters before. I’ll have to hang out with those chicks more often.
Now, about this book Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal Of Living Alone by Eric Klinenberg. Despite the cheery title, it reads to me like a sociological study that’s trying really hard not to make derogatory assumptions about singletons but that can’t manage to overcome its opinion that people who live alone are kind of pathetic and really must be secretly depressed about their “predicament.” Klinenberg’s research is good but I am disappointed by his insistence on framing the decision to live alone as super courageous or in some way almost radical. Maybe it’s because living alone is so overwhelmingly my own natural preference that I just don’t related to what he describes.Demographically, yes. Emotionally, not really. I think if he was giving a talk on the subject, his “Wow, singletons are such PIONEERS, here’s what we’ve learned about these fascinating creatures” lens would probably cause me to get up and leave. Not because he’s offensive, but because I just can’t relate to that attitude. It actually makes me feel like a weirdo for living alone, when I never feel like a weirdo for living alone.
Klinenberg’s basic assumption is that people go it alone as young people mostly to further their careers, and then live alone later in life only because other relationships have failed. Never once in his book does he interview someone like me, for whom solo living is much the preference, and for whom co-habitation feels upsetting, difficult and even traumatic (because no matter how much we love and adore someone, we’re just not suited to live together). Nowhere does he acknowledge that for millions of people, the ability to live alone is one of the things they most cherish about modern life. Klinenberg seems to have no historical or feminist consciousness, which might help him understand that solo living for women is a freedom for which we are profoundly grateful every day. He makes statements like this, “Anchoring oneself in work and a tribe can help make going solo a rewarding experience, but it’s rarely an enduring one. Most people who live alone into their thirties eventually find their community weakened as close friends get married and have children, and that work, however rewarding, cannot satisfy their deepest needs.”
I think religious people need to read that statement as a vocational invitation. First of all, it is not single people’s responsibility to make sure that community stays strong, but everyone’s. We all need to make commitment to our tribe, as parenting and marriage can lead to terrible isolation just as surely as living single can. Secondly, if we shift our definition of “work” to encompass our life’s calling and not just what earns us a paycheck, I think we can argue that living into the callings of our souls is, in fact, a time-honored way to satisfy our deepest human needs. We can do this as single people or as partnered people.
Every day that I unlock the parsonage door and let myself in to the blessed silence, beauty and order of my home, I say a prayer for all those who have to open the door in fear or anxiety, rather than in joyful anticipation. Every day that I lived with boyfriends — no matter how much I adored them — was awkward and self-conscious for me, as I did not know how to find peace with another person in such close quarters. I hated being a child and sharing a family home for the same reason — as a super sensitive kid, I felt every ripple and wave of my beloved family’s ups and downs too keenly to be able to ever relax. When I had roommates, I did enjoy many aspects of our life together and would actually do that again as long as we had more than one bathroom among the four of us!
Being single is really hard. It is hard not because I am alone, but because most of society hasn’t gotten the hang of being in true community yet, and we all find it challenging to make time for each other, to open our doors to each other, to balance our need for privacy with the impulse to open our personal borders, to share our loneliness whether we are single or partnered, and because consumer culture has trained us all in patterns of consumption that it takes real thought and effort to break.
I think, as always, of Susan Elliott, a woman I taught with in St. Paul who had a big family home that was never locked. Her many siblings hung out there in various configurations, and I could go over any time and find a place at the kitchen table, coffee in the pot, and someone to chat with. I was living with a boyfriend at the time, and I loved him dearly, but nothing replaced that open door, sense of family and genuine hospitality. I had no idea then how special and rare that household really was, I just knew I wanted to have something like it when I “grew up.” I think I’m getting there, little by little.
Hey, I think this is the first post that gets a Halo of Praise AND a Mutually Supportive Ranting in one post!
“We all need to make commitment to our tribe, as parenting and marriage can lead to terrible isolation just as surely as living single can.”
And many of us who live with others have a very strong need to preserve alone-time. There is a reason I’m up at 4:45 a.m. This quiet time when I have the house to myself is vital for my well-being.
The tone you describe reminds me of some attitudes about LGBT people and how BRAVE and STRONG we are to live in this way. Well, yes, some people have to be, but those of us who aren’t being persecuted or shamed are actually just doing what makes us happy. I want to shake the author and say, “Yo, we’re not an alien species.” Or maybe buy him a beer and get him to relax a little. Not everyone who lives differently than the author is secretly miserable about it.
I have preached a few times on marriage & various forms of singleness (single, divorced, widowed, I have started to remind my married comrades to stop asking super-personal questions that I used to hate: “Why aren’t you married?” “Dating anyone?” Etc. Not everyone minds the latter question, but it used to bug the daylights out of me, especially if they seemed to be asking out of “concern”. [Yes, I always flip it around in my head and think, “How’s your marriage?” “Do you feel free enough in your life?” – PB]
Sorry I can’t find your original post on Lady Death,but I thought you might be interested in this book review:
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2012/03/14/review-r-andrew-chesnut-devoted-death-santa-muerte-skeleton-saint
“Anchoring oneself in work and a tribe can help make going solo a rewarding experience, but it’s rarely an enduring one. Most people who live alone into their thirties eventually find their community weakened as close friends get married and have children, and that work, however rewarding, cannot satisfy their deepest needs.â€
And what of the people who are isolated by patterns of behavior? Hang on – this is a bit of a shaggy dog story.
Years ago I was invited to visit long time college friends. Since they had two pre-school boys, we arranged to meet at a Farmers’ Market/Community park event – free, low key, running around room, and no big deal if we had to bail out in a hurry. I arrived and waited. Ned (name changed) arrived a bit late and said there was a change in plan – their car had broken down and was at the Day Care center. We packed the bike into the car, went to the Day Care, arranged the car seats in the appropriate vehicles, and got the children home. Nellie (name changed)went with the AAA tow truck to the autoshop. I went back to pick up Nellie and bring her home. We get settled in and the older boy says that he is not feeling well. Shortly thereafter he vomits. While getting the paper towels etc, the younger boy’s diaper explodes. In the instantaneous diversion, I noticed that the dog was sitting by the explosion got spattered and was startled, so I tried to wipe down the dog and keep him from running through the house. We cleaned everything up and got the children to bed. At the end of the evening my friend said (through tearful laughter)
“You’re the only one who will come to visit us.”
I think that you have correctly identified the true issue. It is not whether or not one lives in a prescribed role. It is whether or not one lives in community and has ties to people in all phases and stages of life. I think of that evening and it did all of us good. My friends were aware of the isolating tendencies of where they were in life. I got to be a part of their world and while I continue to treasure their friendship, I am very thankful for the peace and quiet at home.
I read with interest an interview with Klinenberg (haven’t read his book — it’s on my ‘to read’ list, but so are 359 other books) in which he noted that the thing that got him into studying people living alone was the Chicago heat wave of ’95 in which a number of elderly people who lived alone died and were not discovered for days. With THAT as his entry point into a subject, it’s remarkable that he was able to produce a volume that’s as positive about single living as he did, but also not surprising that there was still an underlying tone that living alone is dangerous or depressing and that those who thrive in that life are heroic pioneers. [AHHH, thanks for the context. Because the whole time I was reading I got the distinct feeling that he was assuming that I might meet my end in just that way: surrounded by cats and crushed under a large electric fan or something. Listen, I have plans. Why do you think I joined the board of a hospice home? *taps head* Always. Thinking. Ahead.- PB]
Excellent post. As much as I’m a yenta (3 long-term couplings to my credit), I now try to emphasize to folks that their loneliness/disconnection will not be solved by coupling. The couple as primary kinship tie and the nuclear family are social arrangements that are failing us on many points.
hey there…..
Eric Klinenberg did an interview on AfterWords on BookTV (yep…I’m a nerd). You should be able to watch it on the BookTV website. The interviewer asked questions about the things you are concerned with, and while I think he was surprised that the book could be read differently than he assumed, he answers those questions forthrightly and with concern that people understand that the book is truly sociological and not policy position or moral philosophy.
The interview has made me more interested in the book and hope that more books focused on we singletons come onto the market.
Alright, nerd warning here 🙂 I study some of this stuff in my doctoral program, and Klinenburg is a sociologist at NYU, so I feel as though I may be able to provide this book a bit more context. That and… I LOVE these topics 😀
I would note that sociology, as a discipline, does not tend to find favorable outcomes for single people relative to married ones. That likely informs his starting point and that’s why his book is publishable at all. His book on the Chicago heatwave is one example. The first thing sociology students learn is that in the 1700s, Durkheim found that single people were more likely to commit suicide, and the explanation is that they are not as embedded in the community. Social ties have protective outcomes for well-being in the case of stressful events and the most prominent one is being married (source: my own research, unpublished). It doesn’t look like he was studying single parents, for instance, but the poverty and health outlooks for them are repeatedly found to be worse than married parents. That’s confounded by marriage rates being stratified by socio-economic status but I digress. Single men have worse health outcomes than married ones, and higher scores of depression. Et cetera. So that’s the discipline’s starting point. His book is published because singleness is increasing dramatically and changing social structures, and that he is positing that it’s not necessarily bad is another non-intuitive finding.
Of course, these are findings on the aggregate level, as sociologists tend to do. We’re not psychologists, after all. They call it an “ecological fallacy” to take aggregate findings and try to apply them to individuals because you have no idea where any particular individual fell in the distribution. So for that reason, it’s not completely surprising that you found his book difficult to relate to because your experiences are yours, you know?
I’d have to read his book to comment on how he found his interviewees. An interview here said he did 300 interviews – which is FAR above what is typical for a qualitative sample in sociology. If it’s snowball sampling, then one reason he did not find someone who chose their singleness could be that he networks of affinity, or there is selection bias for those willing to take part in the study. If he used probability sampling than it may be because chosen circumstances are an outlier. I cannot imagine how he would be able to get a probability sample for such specific circumstances without it being incredibly expensive, but 300 interviews would have also been expensive, so maybe he had a big grant. Alas, the Amazon preview did not include a methods section 🙂
I’ll have to read this book now though. I am interested in that. (When I said nerd warning…:D)
[We LOVE nerds here at BTFM!! Thank you for weighing in with such a terrific, thoughtful and informed post! – PB]
I’m so glad to see that Rabbi Leah Berkowitz’s piece has made it out into the blogosphere- as the editor of the single rev’s column at Fidelia’s Sisters, I found her writing to be honest and faithful and I was glad when she agreed to write for us. The Young Clergy Women Project just migrated hosts last night, so the new link is here: http://www.youngclergywomen.org/category/fidelias-sisters/
Thank you so much, PB, for your thoughts on singleness!
What I don’t understand is how Klinenburg can apparently fail to see — judging from the press coverage of the book — that living alone is an expensive privilege that many of us are unbelievably relieved and excited to finally get to do after having to squeeze in with annoying roommates for all of our 20s.