This is a topic of great social significance.
Two days ago, a friend asked me:
"Why don't young people now want to get married, and they don't even want to talk about love?
I found that the better the family conditions, the more so, why is this?
Parents are worried about it, how to solve this? ”
In fact, human society will inevitably move towards the coexistence of multiple family forms, and whether to marry or not is no longer something that people must do to live.
In the future society, more and more people will choose to be single and live alone.
This situation is more pronounced in people with better economic conditions and higher personal qualities.
Today, more than 50 percent of adults in the U.S. choose to be single, and 31 million of them live alone, or 1 in 7 adults. The population living alone accounts for 28% of the total number of households in the United States.
That is to say, in the United States, the most families are families that do not have children after marriage, and the second most are families that live alone, far exceeding the number of nuclear families with parents with children, families with generations of people, and family models such as roommate cohabitation.
These solitary people are concentrated in modern cities, spread across various states in the United States, including New York, San Francisco, Washington and other cities.
In today's China, this phenomenon is gradually becoming apparent.
Yes, they are not bad personally, can fully find a partner, but enjoy being single more.
People familiar with the human marriage system know that in the era of lack of material resources, family cooperation is needed to ensure the quality of life, and marriage is born.
Most people today, most of them just live inertia, watching others get married and no longer consider why they should do it.
However, at present, whether it is social development or the development of individual consciousness, it has been greatly different from traditional society, and people's lifestyles will change with changes.
Therefore, more and more people choose to live alone or alone, which is not a problem at all and does not need to be solved.
You're surprised only because we're at the point of social change.
The social changes that have taken place
It's not that society is at fault, it's just evolving normally.
1. The promotion of women's status
The spread of education has enabled women to stop relying on men.
In previous societies, women had low levels of education and low numbers. A large number of women are unable to earn money and rely on their families and men.
Folk will popularize such a saying: marry a man, dress and eat.
But now, with the popularization of higher education and the change of social concepts, more and more women have mastered a skill that can survive and are willing to go out of the house and participate in social labor.
With independent financial resources, more women will not endure torture in bad marriages in order to find a long-term meal ticket.
2, the emergence of the Internet makes people not lonely
It is often said that living alone can be lonely. There will be this kind of thinking, which is compared with the traditional family before.
In the traditional family, you have to face your family all the time, just ask, under the bustle of a group of people, personal loneliness is more, right?
In fact, living alone and single is not isolated and isolated from the world.
It only means that he has the freedom to choose, wants to be quiet at any time, and wants to communicate with the outside world at any time.
People can present their views to countless people on the Internet through microblogs, blogs, and interact with people from all over the world.
Loneliness is a psychic feeling, and the Internet allows people to communicate instantly around the world with people who can really talk to each other.
3. The maturity of urbanization has changed the way of life
In an era when the economy was underdeveloped and urbanization had not yet begun, people had to live in their homes.
The people who usually communicate are also family members, and the interpersonal relationships are mainly family members.
Once they leave the family, they leave the group, the individual cannot survive, and they are cut off from the outside world.
But the development of urbanization has led to high-density people living together.
People who live alone, in their leisure time, can go to many places, bars, bookstores, cafes, residential areas, movie theaters, cultural salons, friends gathering.
People no longer need to confine themselves to fixed groups and fixed rooms.
4, human life extension
Some people say that if you don't get married and don't have children, you will know loneliness when you are old.
It's inertial thinking, and the person who speaks doesn't pay any attention to the real reality at all, and only relies on the indoctrinated ideas to draw conclusions.
You see, who are now sixty or seventy years old who live with their children every day and communicate non-stop?
The concept of raising children and preventing the elderly was born in the era of underdeveloped social economy.
A person who truly loves his children will not attach his old age to his children, depriving the other party of the independent space of life.
With the development of medical technology, human beings are living longer and longer, and one day they will live alone.
Women tend to live longer than men, and according to statistics, in 1900, 10% of older women living alone in the United States, by 2000, it had reached 63%.
Indeed, even if they are widowed, people are reluctant to live with their children or to marry someone else again.
According to a survey in the United Kingdom, elderly people living alone have better health, more connection to life services, and less mental and physical exertion.
According to the survey, more and more elderly people are willing to choose to live alone.
Living alone is a luxury option
Being able to choose to live alone and single is actually a luxury option.
Everyone has the freedom to choose their own way of life, and there are no advantages or disadvantages to the way of life.
If a person just finds a person of the opposite sex to live with and has children, as long as he wants, it is very easy.
Choosing to live alone and single requires self-sufficient economic ability and a rich spiritual world, so it is a luxury choice.
(Some people will say, don't we choose to marry people who have no financial ability and spiritual world?) Heck, I don't waste time explaining stupid logic problems like that. ）
1, the need for spiritual world enrichment
A person who cannot live on his own cannot live alone.
The spiritual world is rich, and when you are alone, you can immerse yourself in reading, watching movies, creating, thinking, and feeling, so that you don't care whether time passes and whether there is no one around.
2. Economic independence
Young people in big cities who choose to live alone can often live the life they want to live on their own.
According to research, some people living alone are fully capable of providing housing and housing on their own and meeting their living needs. There is no need for another person to share the risk with him.
3. Change in family concepts
Early human beings needed families because the economy was not developed and the social division of labor was not meticulous.
The family assumes all the functions of human life, such as emotional communication, child-rearing, housework, co-productive labor, and joint resistance to external disasters.
So people need a large family with a large number of people. I am also willing to give up the freedom of my personal life for the sake of the above conveniences.
Now, in the city, the social division of labor is meticulous.
It has been found that individuals no longer need family members to help each other and can live on a multifaceted social service organization.
The concept of the family must begin to fade, and gradually pursue the freedom of personal life.
Avoiding the stress of living with others, he gradually began to explore new and various individualisms.
There are several perceptions that need to be transformed
1. Living alone does not mean living in isolation
Thoreau, who wrote Walden, lived on the shores of Walden Lake for two years, and rarely had a complete isolation.
The cabin where he lived, less than two miles from the small town of Concord, would take him within thirty minutes to walk into the town.
He often visited friends and family, and his friends often visited him on the shores of Lake Walden.
He often asked friends to drink in taverns, and often ate food sent by his mother.
Life on the shores of Lake Walden allowed the thinker, while maintaining familiar social activities, to have a personal time that he could freely read and immerse himself in the world of thought.
2) It doesn't make sense to put society before the individual
In fact, there is no need to say this, but there are too many bars and can only be explained.
Some people say that people who don't marry are selfish, and not having children is not contributing to society.
In fact, the emergence of society is born of people.
Society from nothing to existence, to system, order, until today's structural refinement, are all for people living in society to be able to live more convenient, higher quality of life and exist.
I believe that no parent has a child in order to contribute to society.
Basically, they love their children, or they want children in order to raise children and prevent old age.
Society arose because of human needs, and it was not because of social needs that human beings appeared.
3) Everyone has the freedom to choose their own way of life
This article is not advocating living alone.
It's just saying that people choose to get married, or be single, and live alone, are all freedom of choice about their personal lives.
There is no right or wrong, and others have no right to interfere.
More and more people choose to live alone, which is only an inevitable process of social evolution.
Some people find it difficult to accept, but it is just a conflict between their own ideas and reality. It's not that there's something wrong with this change.
The rise of the solitary society is a social phenomenon of innovative forces.
People change their understanding of themselves, about intimacy.
The freedom that comes with living alone gives them more space to try new, interesting experiences and enrich their journeys.
Protecting privacy and independence from the constraints of their marriage partners, people will focus more on exploring the meaning of their lives.
Living alone helps people find sacred modern values, individual freedom, control over their own power, and personal fulfillment.
Thoreau, after moving into a wooden house he had built on the shores of Lake Walden, said:
"I am as independent as living on the prairie, I have my own sun, moon and stars, my own small world."
Thoreau was not alone in that situation:
"For people who live alone surrounded by nature and are still conscious, the so-called black depression does not exist.
I never felt lonely, not even the slightest bit of oppression from loneliness."
This is an era of material abundance, an era of cognitive awakening.
Everyone has the freedom to choose their own way of life.
Taking control of one's own life and respecting and appreciating the differences of others are the qualities that a modern person should have.