Before you read any further, here's what I'd suggest: Think about the question, what is the place of family in the lives of people who are single and have no children? After you've come up with your own thoughts about the matter, then take a look at what I wrote. If I didn't think of what you did, please let me know!

THE OUTLINE OF THE CHAPTER

I. Families of Origin in the Lives of Single Adults with No Children

II. Beyond Families of Origin: Who's Your Family?

A. Public Families
B. Private Families

III. Created Kinship and Personal Communities

IV. What's Special About the Personal Communities of Singles without Children?

A. Should We Use the Language of Kinship to Describe People Who Are Not Kin?
B. What Are Personal Communities For and What Are Their Special Strengths?
C. What Are the Special Vulnerabilities of Singles Who Have No Children?

V. Conclusion and a Look Toward the Future

BRIEF SUMMARY OF SOME OF THE POINTS TO BE INCLUDED IN THE CHAPTER

Single, No Children: Who's Your Family?

Now that Americans spend more years of their adult lives unmarried than married, and as women continue to have fewer children than they did in the past (or none at all), the question of the place of family in the lives of singles without children becomes increasingly important.

Do single people without children even have families? Many assume they do not. I'll consider different concepts of family, and evaluate the place of each in the lives of singles without children.

Families of Origin in the Lives of Single Adults with No Children

Of course, single adults have families of origin. What do we know about single people's interactions with their families of origin across the course of their adult lives? Here I'll review the research (such as that by Ingrid Connidis) on singles' contacts and communication with their siblings and parents (and other categories such as step-parents and step-siblings, if I can find relevant research), and how that changes with age and with life events. My focus in this section will be on communication during ordinary times. Contact and caregiving under conditions of dependency (for example, when parents become frail) will be reviewed in the section under public families.

Beyond Families of Origin: Who's Your Family?

I'll discuss family in the lives of singles from the perspective of Andrew Cherlin's distinction between public and private families.

Public Families

Cherlin's definition of public families (from the 3rd edition of his textbook) is: "One adult, or two adults who are related by marriage, partnership, or shared parenthood, who is/are taking care of dependents, and the dependents themselves." Dependents include "children, the chronically ill, and the frail elderly."

Cherlin includes an important note about public families: "The family members usually reside in the same household, but that is not essential." The implication is that even singles who live on their own can have public families.

So the key question becomes, to what extent are singles involved in the care of dependents? I'll review research showing that singles are often expected to take on the responsibility of caring for aging or ill parents. I'll also describe results from the National Survey of Families and Households (Sarkisian & Gerstel, 2008, Journal of Marriage and Family), addressing contact and communication with parents, more broadly construed (not just with frail parents). The authors found that, compared to the divorced and always-single, "the married are less likely to live with parents, stay in touch, and give or receive emotional, financial, and practical help. These differences hold even when we control for structural characteristics, including time demands, needs and resources, and demographic and extended family characteristics."

In The Widening Gap, Jody Heymann reported the results of a nationally representative sample of adults who kept a daily diary for a week of their experiences as workers and caregivers. On the key measures of cutting back on paid employment in order to care for others, she found that adults with no children took cutbacks for children such as nieces and nephews. In fact, they were just as likely to do so as were adults with their own children under 18. They were more than three times as likely to take time off from work to care for parents. With regard to cutting back to care for adults who were not their parents, 46% of adults without children did so, compared to just 13% of adults with minor children. (I wrote about the long-term care of one friend by another here.)

Private Families

Cherlin's definition of private families is: "two or more individuals who maintain an intimate relationship that they expect will last indefinitely - or in the case of a parent and child, until the child reaches adulthood - and who live in the same household and pool their income and household labor."

By this definition of private families, at least two people need to live in the same household in order to qualify. So I'll review the latest Census data on the living arrangements of people who are single. Only a minority of single people live on their own. Others live with children, family, friends, or various combinations. There are some high profile examples I'll mention here, such as the two sisters from Canada, single all their lives, who lived together for decades, expected to live together for the rest of their lives, and were interdependent in all the ways that married couples are, except for the sex. The siblings petitioned for the same protections and benefits under the law that married couples receive. Their case made it all the way through the court system, and garnered much attention, only to be turned down at the highest level. It is cited frequently in law review articles and by advocacy groups.

In this section, I will also question whether sharing a residence should still be a criterion for qualifying as a private family. I'll describe recent trends, such as "living apart together," that suggest otherwise.

Created Kinship and Personal Communities