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Homeward Bound: The Rise of Multigenerational and One-Person Households
Garret Keizer
The New York Times, Mar 2 — So these two sociologists go into a bar and the man says to the woman, “What have you been up to?” “I’ve been studying what I call ‘accordion families,’” she says. “Right now something like three and a half million American parents are sharing a house with adult kids who’ve either come back home or never left.”
MoreThe New York Times, Feb 10 — The trend is huge, says Eric Klinenberg, the N.Y.U. sociology professor and author of the new book “Going Solo.” In 1950, 22 percent of American adults were single. Now that number is almost 50 percent. One in seven adults lives alone. Half of all Manhattan residences are one-person dwellings. Elizabeth Weil, the author of a new book on marriage, "No Cheating, No Dying,” asked the professor to help decode the singles boom: how solo living is exploding and becoming less stigmatized, how it’s a privilege as well as a liability, how at certain points in modern lives, living alone may very well be the more desirable state.
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