Living solo at midlife: Can the pandemic de-stigmatize living alone in India?

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Highlights

  • The creative ability to construct a “narrative of the self” amid the pandemic is evident among a select group of upper middle-class professional women (ages 50-60 years) in India.

  • It argues that self-actualization is not a deliberate attempt to “cope” with the pandemic-led isolation, but is largely an outcome of living alone

  • It offers refreshing ways to think about how women in their midlife craft new ways of belonging by relying on a more fluid network of non-kin ties-friends, lovers and neighbors.

Abstract

In this piece I argue that the pandemic with its emphasis on social distancing as a desirable civic norm can reconfigure popular understanding of mature female singlehood in India- a condition that is often described in the language of lacks and social failures. The pandemic, I argue, has reaffirmed the everyday practices of upper middle-class professional women (ages 50–60 years) lending them as positive agentic subjects who are invested in self-actualization and an appreciation of intimate solitude. Overall, by specifically focusing on subjectivities and social aspirations of my interlocutors during the pandemic, I illuminate ways in which middle aged selfhood is lived in all its fragility, ambivalence and emergent possibilities.

Section snippets

Going solo

Unlike the United States, where (state-wise) recent estimates show single-person households ranging from 19% (Utah) to as high as 45% (Washington DC), living alone is neither a “normal” nor a familiar habitus for most Indians (https://www.statista.com/). Similarly, single living dominates demographic trends in Europe where almost 32% of households with women and men aged 65 and older live alone (Abell & Steptoe, 2019). Hence, while American sociologist, Eric Klinenberg (Klinenberg, 2013) notes

Stories and lives: navigating sociality, solitude and selfhood in the times of the pandemic

All the four women (ages between 50 and 65) that I interviewed were members of an online, social media based (Facebook) community called JOY (Just Older Youth). This community comprises of singles between the ages 50–60 who are “active seniors planning to live together in a community and be of support to each other as they age” (SilverTalkies, May 26, 2018). The goal of this community is to discuss and develop models of community living that ranges from sharing a common space with non-kin

Concluding thoughts

To argue that the narratives of these women support the de-traditionalization thesis (disembedded from traditional loyalties of marriage and procreation) or in a Giddens, 1992) sense, a democratization of personal relationships through self-reflexive processes, will mischaracterize both the motivations and subjectivities of solo-livers. Nonetheless, the creative ability to construct a “narrative of the self” (p.75) in the midst of the pandemic crisis is evident. It is not because my

Acknowledgements

The author is grateful to her study participants for sharing their lives' stories as they navigate the everyday challenges of the pandemic. The helpful comments of the reviewers are duly acknowledged. The author received no funding for this paper.

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