Americans Can’t Decide What It Means to

Grow Up

Recently, someone I’m close to made a confession: He felt embarrassed to

still be living with roommates in his early 30s. I assured him that was absurd,
but given that I also live with two of my friends, I knew what he meant; I’ve
noticed the same societal clock ticking, and I’m a few years younger. I don’t
feel pressure to find a spouse or start a family—my social circle is filled with
single people, the prospect of homeownership seems laughable, and I can’t
keep a spider plant alive, much less a human baby. But I have watched as
more and more of my peers start to rent their own apartments. So I search
for studios online, balk at the prices, and shut the tab.
Over the course of the 20th century, solo living grew significantly more
common for Americans. In 1940, only about 8 percent of households in the
U.S. had just one person in them; by 2020, that number had risen to nearly
28 percent. And the trend is growing fastest among young adults. The number
of 18-to-34-year-olds living alone grew tenfold from 1950 to 2010—from
500,000 to 5 million (though it inched back slightly from 2010 to 2020). The
researchers I spoke with seemed to agree on why: People are getting married
later. Today, the median age for women to first wed is nearly 29; for men, it’s
30. Having a decade or so between high school and marriage, then, to
develop one’s own identity, career, and bank account is not unusual. And, as
the NYU sociologist Eric Klinenberg notes in his book Going Solo, many
people—especially young professionals in urban centers—have come to see
living alone as “a rite of passage and a reward for success” along the way.
But as rites of passage go, it’s a strange one. Though some people live solo
throughout their adult life, for the large majority, the arrangement is just a
stopover before they start a family. It might feel like an achievement, and it
can teach you independence, but it doesn’t have much to reveal about the
messy intimacy inherent to becoming an adult. And the value American
society ascribes to it is evidence of how confused we are about what growing
up really means.
Historically, living alone has been unusual in the U.S.—especially for women.
Steven Mintz, a University of Texas at Austin professor and the author of The
Prime of Life: A History of Modern Adulthood, told me that women in
colonial times “couldn’t really survive” without marriage. By the late 19th
century, more remained single, but, unable to support themselves, they
commonly lived with extended family or in boarding houses. Men struggled to
function on their own too, not knowing how to keep a home. Even through
much of the 20th century, people tended to have little time, if any, between
living with parents and living with a spouse.
But now solo living has been quietly normalized. Children are far more likely
to have a separate bedroom. More and more college students, Mintz said,
live in their own room. And in adulthood, the ideal remains pervasive even
among those who can’t afford it. Virginia Thomas, a psychologist at
Middlebury College who studies solitude and the transition to adulthood, told
me that when she asks her students what makes someone an adult, “always
on the top of their list is financial independence and self-sufficiency.” They
see their early 20s as a time for rooming with friends, and imagine having a
spouse and kids years down the line. But before they settle down, “they want
to move into this fuller expression of adulthood,” she said. “Living alone kind
of encapsulates that.” Unfortunately, that association might be misguided.
Solo living, to be fair, has a lot of benefits. For one, many young adults find it
satisfying to know they can handle responsibility—rent, utilities, water leaks—
on their own, Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, a Clark University psychologist, told me.
And autonomy can, in some ways, lead to emotional maturity, Thomas said.
You can develop not only hard skills but also the confidence that you can
learn them. You might grow comfortable spending time with yourself—a good
way to avoid ending up in codependent relationships, she told me, because
you won’t look for someone just to occupy empty moments. Plus, you won’t
always be on your own: Klinenberg has found that young solo dwellers tend
to be busily engaged in the world beyond their walls. But the arrangement
does allow you to curate your social existence, choosing when to be alone,
when to invite people over, and when to go out; you can call your own shots.
This is a deeply American value. Living alone has become more common in
other countries too, even in some cultures we might consider more
collectivist. But in the U.S., the trend also fits into a long tradition of
individualism. Older adults in the U.S., for example, tend to value “intimacy at
a distance”—they don’t want to be far from loved ones, but they also don’t
want to live with them, Susan Brown, who directs Bowling Green State
University’s Center for Family and Demographic Research, told me. Now
young adults seem to want that too: connection they can control, love that
doesn’t impinge on freedom, socializing that fits on their calendar. That’s
basically the opposite of sharing a home, which tends to be chaotic and
annoying, even when it’s great.
Living alone just doesn’t set you up for what often lies ahead. After a few
years on their own, people who move back in with others (perhaps especially
those who eventually have a family) might have to relearn some tough
lessons. You’ll need to be flexible, to work with others, to make peace with
not getting your way—the exact skills you might gain from sharing a home.
“You can’t just decorate the place the way you like,” Arnett told me. “You can’t
spend money on anything you want.”
We didn’t always equate growing up with self-sufficiency. Most people used
to mature with their spouse. Now people tend to see marriage not as a step
toward adulthood but as the culmination of it, Mintz told me. Of course, you
don’t need a romantic partner to find your identity. But we shouldn’t assume
that we can do all of that growing on our own. Discovering what you care
about, gaining familiarity with others and the world, making and learning from
mistakes—those strides are easier with other people’s perspectives and
support.
Ultimately, your career might be the true beneficiary of early independence;
young adults are, in fact, the cohort most likely to move between geographic
locations, commonly to follow jobs. But that can be a bleak kind of freedom.
Mintz mentioned the 1950s sociologist Talcott Parsons, who idealized the
nuclear family as a “productive unit” that would allow people to travel to find
work, without the trouble of bringing along a whole extended family. Young
solo dwellers, who don’t have to consider roommates or live-in partners, might
be an even more isolated version of Parsons’s productive unit. “Without any
ties or obligations, you can adapt to the marketplace freely,” Mintz said. “And
everybody around you is sort of an interchangeable part. And wherever you
go, you’ll find friends who sort of replace old friends that you left behind.”

Where growing up once was marked by parenthood, now it’s marked by

participation in the economy, Satya Doyle Byock, a psychotherapist and the
author of Quarterlife: The Search for Self in Early Adulthood, told me.
Under this new model, living alone is seen as a symbol of success. But having
your own place doesn’t actually signify all that much, other than that you can
pay your (likely high) rent—or that your parents can. In many cases, it’s a
mark of wealth, not maturity.
Still, Brown told me, as people continue to marry later and less, the number
of Americans living alone will probably keep increasing. But hopefully our
accepted paths into adulthood keep multiplying too. After all, growing up is
about becoming a specific human playing a role in a particular community,
shaping and being shaped by others as you go. Living alone can be part of
that process—but no 401(k) or promotion or even a coveted one-bedroom
apartment should be confused for maturity itself. Maybe in the future, when
Thomas asks her students what makes someone an adult, she won’t get a
consensus at all—she’ll get a debate.
 Essential words for speaking and writing

1. Confession – a statement that a person makes, admitting that they are

guilty of a crime; the act of making such a statement
After hours of questioning by police, she made a full confession.

2. Ascribe – to consider or state that a book, etc. was written by a

particular person
This play is usually ascribed to Shakespeare.

3. Pervasive – existing in all parts of a place or thing; spreading gradually

to affect all parts of a place or thing
A sense of social change is pervasive in her novels.

4. Solitude – the state of being alone, especially when you find this
pleasant
He shut himself away to pray in solitude.

5. Codependent – (of two people in a close relationship) relying too much

on each other emotionally, especially when one person is caring for the
other one
Codependent relationship

6. Impinge – to have a clear and definite effect on something/somebody,

especially a bad one
He never allowed his work to impinge on his private life.