Being a single person as a lifestyle in the contemporary society

Abstract

Society in its essence is dynamic and it undergoes constant transformations as a result to development of civilisation in broad definition of this expression. Currently, one can thus say about deep changes concerning, for example, social division of labour (organic solidarity of Emile Durkheim, service society), culture (globalization and wide dissemination of media) or social relations (liberalisation affecting the increase of human subjectivity and values pluralism). Undoubtedly, those transformations influence family. Marriage as a traditional form of family life is being depreciated, as opposed to cohabitation- non formal relationship or single life. The introductory part is dedicated to forms of family life, which human is “made to choose from”. In the next part, the author defined the notion of “single person” by adopting universal determinants: marital status (single); social aspect (lack of close intimate relationship), personal area (subjective perception of one’s self as a person living alone- running single household). The author presented classifications of single people, created by experts in this topic, which are the most adequate to current reality of social life. The text shows positive and negative aspects of living alone, in the light of scientific research. The article seeks to characterize lifestyle of a single person and its components, based on obtained research results. It is worth to point, that it would be inappropriate to generalize the conclusions drew on the basis of analysis of obtained results, as the study group included N = 110 people. Nevertheless, the research may be the cause for further observations.