Richard Reeves
BODY LANGUAGE
It is the study which proves the point of a thousand conversations between women every day: they really are better off without men. With the decline of the traditional family, post-2000 is set to be the singles’ century – but while live-alone women are thriving, enjoying a rich social life and new opportunities for learning and self- development, single men are sinking into a life of lonely takeaways, videos and computer games.
A project, Britain Towards 2010, by the British Economic and Social Research Council, explodes the myth of the “new ladette” mimicking male behaviour, and shows that the lifestyles of single men and women are heading in opposite directions. Single-person households will be predominant in Britain by 2010, but starkly split along gender lines.
“There is a growing segregation between the lives of single men and women,” said Richard Scase, visiting professor at the Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Essex, author of the report. “Thirty and fortysomething single women have well- developed social networks and are involved in a wide range of social and other activities,” he said. “Men, on the other hand, appear to be sad, isolated, lonely cases. The hard truth seems to be that living alone is good for women, but bad for men.”
The different lifestyles of single men and women is highlighted by the research into ownership of consumer durables and use of spare time, said Scase. “Home alone” men are much more likely than single women to own a video recorder, a computer and a hi-fi.
The new, confident single woman is more likely to have been to the theatre or cinema in the past month, visited or been visited by friends – and much more likely to have attended an evening class or local group. Single women are also in the forefront of a new movement towards greater self-awareness or spirituality, said Scase, which will continue to build up a flourishing “psychotherapy industry”.
Alex McKie, a social forecaster, said the female-dominated growth of spiritual awareness books and classes reflected the growing choices available to women. “It is socially acceptable for women to pursue this kind of interest,” she said. “Women have a huge range of choices now about how they live their lives and the roles they play.
“It is very different for men, whose role is ambivalent. The chivalrous gentleman is a laughing stock.”
McKie said the differing attitudes of men and women to paid work explained the growing separation of the singletons. “Men have always been taught to define themselves in terms of their job, rather than other activities,” she said. “Women are better at relationships and activities outside the work sphere.” For single men, the typical pattern is becoming a long and stressful working week, followed by a weekend of bingeing on food, drink and drugs, the research paper says.
‘The way that gender is constructed has left men much more dependent on a wife for emotional and psychological support – a wife who is no longer there in many cases,” Scase said. “Women have always been less dependent on one person in the emotional sphere.”
As a result, affluent women are ditching the traditional role of wife and mother and replacing it with chosen childlessness and serial monogamy, the report suggests. “Living alone will not pre-suppose the absence of emotional relationships,” said Scase.
“Personal relationships will figure in the lives of managerial, professional and entrepreneurial women living in urban areas.” Introduction agencies will see booming demand for their services. But he added that, for lower-paid women, switching partners at will would be harder because of the economic consequences.
The gender segmentation of single lifestyles has implications for advertisers, marketing teams and manufacturers, said Scase. “The signs are already emerging that there are two distinct markets here among the 30- to 50- year-old single men and women. In cars, for example, the BMW roadster is targeting these men, while Peugeot and Renault are going for the female market.”
At the same time, the growing number of people living alone is likely to increase fear of crime and the demand for home security technologies, such as video surveillance.
If the separation continues, single men and women could even start to live in different parts of cities, said McKie. “I don’t know if we will get gender ghettos exactly,” she said. “But it could well be that people will want to live with people in the same social networks as them.”
McKie said that, for men, sport was becoming an essential comfort blanket in the face of huge social and economic change, and in particular the erosion of the “man as breadwinner” and “man as father-figure” roles. “Sport provides men with certainty, with rules and clear goals and authority figures.”
But Scase has a different theory for the growing popularity of sport among men. He said: “Men do sport so that they can drink all the beer afterwards.”
The health implications of the degenerate singles male could be considerable, the report will warn. While women invest in their mental health and practise yoga, the men are investing in takeaways and going to the pub. “In the next century, the impact of this could be startling,” said Scase. “Poor diet, lack of exercise, depression are all on the rise among men.”