The number of one-person households is rising steeply all over the world and a growing proportion of these 'new singles' are women. It is estimated that one woman in three lives on her own. This development reflects general social trends, ranging from rising divorce rates to the growing professionalization of women and their dissatisfaction with a traditional model that offers them a future organized solely around 'husband-baby-home'. At the same time, the attractions of that model still linger and the fairytale prince is by no means a figure from a story or a remote past. Even in an age in which the internet promises that love is 'just a click away', many women still wait for their prince to come.

Jean-Claude Kaufmann's sympathetic study of the lives, aspirations and sometimes despair of the 'new single women' is based mainly on an analysis of a sample of the hundreds of letters sent to Marie-Claire magazine after it published a first-hand account of the single life. Funny, touching and at times profoundly sad, the letters paint a collective portrait of the single woman and her life that is both intimate and socially significant. Kaufmann concludes by situating their stories in a broad comparative context and considering the possible impact of novel phenomena such as the recent vogue for 'mail-order brides'.

About the Author
Jean-Claude Kaufmann is a Sociologist and Director of Research at the CNRS (National Centre for Scientific Research) in the University of Paris V, Sorbonne.

Reviews
"Kaufmann is a wise and clever microsociologist, inspired by Erving Goffman, by fashion magazines, and by kittenish and cougarish women. He is the voice of the annoyed, the vexed, the fearful, and the comforted."
Contemporary Sociology

"Freedom and autonomy have their glories and their miseries. Jean-Claude Kaufmann has composed a thoroughly researched inventory of both, while analysing in depth the present-day condition of women and its impact on the male half of humanity. As women replace self-effacement with newly gained self-confidence, the lynchpin is driven out of the family and the private sphere, and the hard-to-reconcile drives to autonomy and companionship result in the increasing fragility of commitments and fear of loneliness for both women and men. In masterly fashion, Kaufmann records the ongoing transformations in the human condition that follow. His findings hit at the very heart of the harrowing dilemmas which most men and women confront these days and struggle to resolve."
Zygmunt Bauman, Universities of Leeds and Warsaw

"Anyone seeking to understand the fastest growing trend in personal life - more people living alone - should read this book. Jean-Claude Kaufmann moves elegantly between broad-brush historical overviews of changes in family life and fine-grained scrutiny of the narratives of women ensnared in the drama of these new demographics. Paradoxically, the opening up of personal choices for everybody seems to close down the options for many women, who are finding it harder to find the partners they long for."
Lynne Segal, Birkbeck College, author of Why Feminism?

"This is a brilliant book on the everyday effects of the rise in female singledom. Kaufman provides fascinating insights into the pressures that single women experience today, from society's disapproval of female autonomy as a threat to traditional family models, to the hopes and disappointments of the modern dating world."
Veronique Mottier, University of Lausanne

Book Information
ISBN 9780745640501
Author Jean-Claude Kaufmann
Format Paperback
Page Count 200
Imprint Polity Press
Publisher John Wiley and Sons Ltd
Weight(grams) 435g
Dimensions(mm) 230mm * 153mm * 18mm