A lonely society? Loneliness and liquid modernity in Australia.
Franklin, Adrian
Introduction
Recent studies of loneliness suggest that it has become more
prevalent in contemporary societies (Franklin & Tranter 2008; Baker
2012). This trend has important social costs and policy significance,
since loneliness has been linked to corrosive impacts on physical and
mental health, the functionality of communities and city life, and
overall levels of happiness and satisfaction (Mellor et al. 2008;
Franklin 2010). Despite this, the phenomenon of loneliness is still
barely visible or talked about, with few policies in place to
specifically address its structural causes. Perhaps our experience of it
as an ambiguous and little understood emotion means that it has failed
to attract the same sympathy and policy attention as phenomena such as
social isolation, social cohesion, community building and social
inclusion. We lack a causal framework for linking individual,
aged-related and life cycle loneliness to social structural and cultural
change. Certainly, there is much evidence that when people suffer from
loneliness they are more likely to think of it as a mental, personal
disorder and to seek help from mental health specialists, than to
appreciate its complex origins in the social and cultural fabric of the
societies they live in (Andersson 1998; Franklin & Tranter 2008).
Indeed, why should they make such a connection when it has so far eluded
most sociologists and social theorists?
Drawing on robust data obtained from several recent surveys in
Australia (Flood 2005; Mellor et al. 2008; Franklin & Tranter 2008,
2011; Baker 2012), this paper considers the hypothesis that Australia
may have become a society prone to loneliness; and that loneliness may
already be endemic through the reproduction of multiple and overlapping
features of modern Australian society and social structure. It asks new
questions: is Australia especially prone to loneliness, and has
Australia now become a 'lonely society'? It aims therefore to
open up discussion and research on loneliness into its wider social and
economic contexts, because this is where social theory suggests many of
the solutions may lie. In order to do that, it builds on the theoretical
work of Zygmunt Bauman, particularly a recent series of books developing
his concept of liquid modernity and liquid life (Bauman 2000, 2003,
2005). It will be argued that contemporary loneliness is not reducible
to changes in the distribution and pattern of social relationships and
social networks so much as the nature of social relationships
themselves. To all intents and purposes, recognisable forms of social
relationships persist into the present time, but no longer function in
the way they once did. They no longer deliver or sustain the same
emotional qualities or intensities that make people feel they belong,
they matter, and that they are cared for (Mellor et al. 2008).
The paper generates connections between the pattern of loneliness
in Australia and Bauman's broad description of liquid modernity. It
also argues that the pattern and experience of loneliness in Australia
emerging through recent surveys exposes some problems that cannot be
explained by the liquid modernity thesis alone. Bauman's thesis is
largely gender neutral in its ascription of loneliness, its description
of loosening social bonds, and how people might address loneliness as a
problem. In this paper, I offer new evidence suggesting that awareness
of the gendering of loneliness is critical knowledge for the many caring
professions who are trying to help lonely people. However, I also offer
new arguments that point to the possibility of quite different national
and cultural patterns to contemporary loneliness, and why Australia in
particular might have experienced a profound growth in loneliness.
What is loneliness?
The socially churning nature of the postwar economic restructuring
began to generate the first concerns for loneliness in the 1960s and
1970s, with the break up of longstanding industrial communities and
their redistribution into largely experimental forms of architecture and
urban/residential design (Franklin & Tranter 2011). A new emotional
sociology of the modern city emerged, ranging from the exuberant
freedom, mobility and expressiveness of new youth sub-cultures, to
'change orientated' baby boomer revolutionaries and their
social movements, through to the social isolation, boredom and domestic
tyrannies of the suburb (Franklin 2010). Loneliness was a noted risk
factor for both those who were left behind by outward migrations from
the de-industrialising city centres (particularly the elderly), and
those scattered to the emerging social margins of new estates, new towns
and suburbs, among whom women were particularly well-represented
(Tunstall 1963; Bryson & Thompson 1972; Townsend 1973; Young &
Willmott 1973; Raban 1974). These studies emphasised the negative impact
of changes in the physical/spatial redistribution of social networks,
their impact on levels and types of social support, and the relatively
new spectre of people who, like prisoners, were forced to spend long
periods of their life apart from their formerly vibrant social worlds.
They paint a picture of people who do not so much lack social support as
lack a mechanism for coping with social deprivation.
Concern for these two groups was reflected in the way loneliness
came to be viewed in Weiss's study of 1973. He distinguished
between emotional loneliness (which derives from the absence of an
intimate figure or figures, such as a partner), and social loneliness
(which relates to the absence of social support in the form of a broader
network of friends and others, often a result of physical relocation)
(de Jong Gierveld & Havens 2004). While this distinction might point
to important social processes, it is not at all clear why the absence of
social support should necessarily involve feeling lonely. It is entirely
possible that one might be well supported socially (for example by the
state, kindly neighbours etcetera) and still feel lonely. Equally, one
might lack the social support one properly needs in terms of dense and
complex ties and obligations, and yet not be lonely at all (for example
because one has strong social bonds that ameliorate it). Strong social
bonds can therefore be distinguished from social support in that the
former deliver a sense of belonging to an enduring social relation,
often enshrined in customary obligations, whereas the latter is an
artefact of social scientific surveying that sought to measure types of
social services exchanged in communities, whether emanating from
customary, state or voluntary sources (often surveys were responding to
a putative decline of custom and community). The former emanate from
ethnographic contexts, while the latter is a taxonomic form of social
accounting associated with state social policy planning in particular.
Sociological research has shown that tangible emotional experiences
of loneliness are not linked to the net sum or type of social contacts a
person has, but to normative expectations; that loneliness is influenced
by cultural norms and such things as 'feeling rules'
(Hochschild 1979; Mellor et al. 2008). In conjunction with social
support, the measured number of social contacts a person has is often
combined into a scale and taken as a proxy measure for loneliness, for
example, in such measures as the UCLA Loneliness Scale (Russell 1996).
However, several studies confirm a widespread discrepancy between an
individual's loneliness and the measured number of connections in
their social network (Berscheid & Reis 1998; de Jong Gierveld &
Havens 2004; Perlman 2004; Rokach 2004; Franklin & Tranter 2008;
Mellor et al. 2008; Cacioppo et al. 2009). Social psychologists such as
Mellor and colleagues (2008) argue that most people need a minimum
number of lasting, positive and significant interpersonal relationships
that provide a sense of belonging. When these needs remain unmet, a
person descends into loneliness and 'a failure to have
belongingness needs met [which] may lead to feelings of social
isolation, alienation, and loneliness' (Mellor et al. 2008: 213).
Worryingly, their research has shown that 'people living with
others have just as many unmet belonging needs and are just as lonely as
people living alone' (Mellor et al. 2008: 217). In other words,
what is missing in a widespread sense is a depth of
qualitatively/emotionally satisfying relationships, rather than a number
of relationships per se. Other studies show that loneliness commonly
existed within marriages (Kiley 1989; Stack 1998). Mellor and colleagues
thus see cultural expectations and associated psychological variation as
drivers of the way people report and account for loneliness.
Ettema and colleagues (2010) argue that 'existential
loneliness' [EL] coexists alongside social bonds everywhere as a
universal feature of the human condition. Through their systematic
literature review of loneliness studies (mostly dating from the 1970s)
they argue that EL represents an apparently acknowledged fact that we
all come into the world and exit it on our own. In positioning
loneliness is a universal element of the 'human condition'
they recognise a fundamental ontological separability of each individual
from all others throughout every stage of the life course, and
especially during moments of danger and the onset of death. They
conclude that EL is,
'an intrinsic aspect of being human and an omnipresent feeling
of alone, against which one defends oneself for much of the time but for
which there is no permanent remedy. Although one may, distract oneself
with love relationships, tasks, or vacations, one's defenses may
prove inadequate in the face of certain disruptive events such as death
or separation' (Ettema et al. 2010: 144).
However, this notion of EL is abstract and philosophical rather
sociological, and does not constitute a fair summary of the
anthropological record which asserts that almost all human beings are
'always-already' locked into a complex ties of ascribed
relationships, duties and obligations that define people's lives.
It suggests that most human beings have not, in fact, gone to their
death feeling it was any kind of departure from their kin.
The figure of the EL-prone individual then, whose life project is
to defend himself against the fact of his inevitable existential
aloneness, could only exist in the ethnographic sense in a society where
the multiple and cross cutting ties that bound them to others had been
severed. The very fact of their conjuring up 'defensive
strategies' to keep this unwelcome unpleasantness at bay seems to
suggest that the severance may have been recent, and that the social
institutions and practices they seek to maintain may be lingering on,
but perhaps only just; one is reminded here of Beck and
Beck-Gernsheim's (2002) term 'zombie institutions'. If
loneliness has become less tied to the absence of specific kinds of
relationship and a more distributed feature of the contemporary human
condition, how can we account for it?
Loneliness and liquid modernity
Accounts of changes in the family, marriage, partnerships,
neighbourhood and locality in the period after the 1970s have all
charted, in one way or another, major transformations in those
relationships that are implicated in loneliness. However, few of these
mention loneliness and even fewer identify loneliness as a growing
feature of social life in Western societies (Elias 1985; Lasch 1985;
Giddens 1991; Sennett 1992, 1998; Castells 1996; Putnam 2000; Beck &
Beck-Gernsheim 2002; Elliott & Lemert 2008; Illouz 2008).
Putnam's (2000) metaphoric book title Bowling Alone observes trends
in the social constitution of ten-pin bowling in the United States, and
draws a general conclusion about the decline of American social life in
general. Whereas in the 1960s ten-pin bowling was invariably a family or
a social game, by the late 1990s a significant number of games were
played by just one person. The book shows in a convincing way that this
pattern is repeated across the length and breadth of American social
life, tracing a revolutionary general transformation in social life. But
what was this change and what had promoted it? More than anyone else,
Bauman has sought to explicate this transformation.
Zygmunt Bauman's series of books that put forward and
elaborate on his concept 'liquid modernity' describe the
emergence of a new social figure in contemporary societies. He pictures
an individual who wishes to avoid creating social bonds that are too
binding, too tight, too demanding of obligations and duties, too
enduring, too inflexible, too final, or in other words, too solid. This
individual and their concern to avoid commitment is not merely a lover
or a spouse; it is a friend, a person from the neighbourhood, an
employer, a bank manager, a local or national politician, a daughter son
or grandchild. Relationships in general, but perhaps social bonds in
particular, have become 'until further notice,' in that there
is greater scope and willingness for any party to terminate them, or not
enter into them in the first place.
According to Bauman (2000, 2001, 2005, 2007), this state of affairs
is not the result of the arrival of a nightmarish inhumanity so much as
the accretion of multiple elaborations of the twin principles of freedom
and choice. Many freedoms have been wrested from tyrannies that emanated
from overly tight, one-sided and unequal bonds. Greater legal freedom to
divorce has given all people the right (subject to economic constraints)
to choose not just their partner, but also their living conditions,
where they live, how they live and how often they make changes to their
life. Loneliness is interesting here, because sociologically we might
say it is an emotionally intense residue emanating from the absence of
bonds of belonging, even though, ironically, those bonds have been
willingly broken.
Bauman's sense of loneliness here is more than just the
greater likelihood of people becoming lonely under new conditions. It is
a sense of loneliness emanating from a fully distributed principle that
few can escape; that few want to escape from. The implication of
Bauman's analysis is that loneliness cannot be theorised as an
exceptional experience of modern social change impacting significantly
but selectively on a number of vulnerable at-risk groups. Rather, it is
a dominant emotional feature that originates from the social structural
nature of a radically new form of modernity which impacts upon
everybody. It is precisely because few relationships embody the solidity
and enduring nature of earlier social bonds--as they are not actually
bonds at all, but flexible, alterable arrangements--that they cannot
provide the ontological security that is implied by the certainty of
belonging, nor meet belongingness needs (Giddens 1981, 1991; Mellor et
al. 2008).
The question now arises as to what the basis is for making and
negotiating of social relations in liquid modernity. According to Bauman
(2001), contemporary forms of individualism are increasingly structured
by the criteria of markets and consumerism. Neo-liberal forms of
governance create markets and commodities, and substitute the logic of
markets where relationships were once characterised by bonds formed
through local, familial, collegial, craft, or industrial ties, or
through professional regimes of organisation and management. Equally,
consumerism has ushered in the logic of choice as a principle that can
guide more than just the selection of fridges, cars and hair dryers.
According to Bauman (2005), consumerism has been extended into the realm
of human relationships so that they too can be reduced to the same
criteria. Consumerism now organises our individual stance to things in
general; everything, including relationships, is aestheticised and
evaluated in terms of their capability to offer beauty, desire and
pleasure Everything and consequently everybody becomes disposable (or
exchangeable), and the experience of being disposed of (or exchanged),
the ever-present fear of immanent disposal (or replacement), and the
background steady state of disposability all serve to undermine, erode
and ultimately destroy human bonds. We now live in a constant state of
potential loneliness, and we enter into states and periods of loneliness
more frequently and suffer the emotional condition of loneliness, more
often alone (Franklin 2009: 345).
The unintended consequences of such changes have been to detach
individual biographies and life paths from specific and relatively fixed
social and cultural contexts. What began with the baby boomer generation
in the 1960s as social mobility through education became a dynamic state
of self-remaking in the 1990s, one that has led to what Ben Thompson
(2004: 25) calls 'the disorientation of a world in which all doors
seem to be open'. Specifically, two related changes liquefied known
and knowable life paths: i) those wrought by economic and labour market
restructuring and flexibilisation such that retraining, redeployment,
relocation and career-change created unpredictable and volatile career
paths, and, consequently ii) the destruction of stable, mappable social
identities that had once been anchored by social class and occupational
cultures. They gave rise to an increasing lack of satisfaction with
current iterations of self and a more or less steady state of
reinvention and self-improvement. New and multiple opportunities to
pursue different life courses opened up alongside the new culture
industries of reinvention, fashion makeovers, therapies for dynamic
personalities, new lifestyle niches, age and culture related
life-worlds, and a multiplicity of leisure and consumption based
identity options. As such, there were many factors other than family and
community breakdown that left people feeling they were a) drifting away
from the social bases of past social bonds and yet b) not yet adequately
(that is, substantially) connected with others. The often-missed
corollary of this is that individuals began to spin highly specific and
specialised sets of interests and identities around the uniqueness of
their own life paths. Access to greater resources, texts, culture
industries and globally available information on associational options
produced for generation X and Y in particular, very rich and exclusive
micro-cultures of belonging, such that it became increasingly unlikely
that anyone in their physical world would be fully a part of their
'scene'. Whereas youth culture options in the mid-20th century
were restricted in number, territorialized and essentially local, by the
1990s the cultural aspirations and possibilities for identity had become
infinite, global and most fully realizable in virtual reality.
Bauman sees loneliness as the emotionally blighting force behind
'networking' and the burgeoning field of online
relationship-making. New technologies of friendship, community,
sexuality and social networking have extended our connectivity with
others, and done much to reduce the tyrannies of distance and physical
immobility. Nonetheless, according to Bauman (2005) we should not
confuse this intensity of connectivity and quantity of social
connections with the social bonds they seek to replace, nor can it serve
as any kind of panacea for our loneliness. For Bauman, these
technologies, including mobile phones, make it even easier to be in
control of and determine our connection, or, conversely, to be included
or rejected by others, at will. Such flexibility frees us from
commitment and obligation, and even the tedium of listening to or
sharing with others when we do not feel like it.
Bauman writes of loneliness as the existential and social
structural human condition of liquid modernity, but his influential
writing in the sociological hermeneutics style does not draw on any
empirical studies of loneliness, for there has been little systematic or
longitudinal data created for loneliness in most national social trend
surveys. Bauman's books of the early 21st century have also drawn
little substantial or empirical criticism, which is remarkable given
their breadth and scope. In trying to account for key trends in human
behaviour and the social conditions that give rise to them, he is
intellectually inclusive yet avoids the search or the apparent need for
theoretical synthesis (Davis 2008). Rather, he encourages a constant
return to 'reappraise' and to 'leave interpretations open
to further scrutiny' (Davis 2008: 5) and this should apply to his
concept of loneliness.
Results from those few surveys of loneliness that have been
conducted are telling. Summaries by Andersson (1998: 266-70) show the
pattern of loneliness throughout the life course can be expressed as a
shallow 'dish-like' curve. Loneliness was accentuated in early
adulthood as individuals left the security of their family and embarked
on a new life elsewhere; it lessened in middle age 'prime of
life', and then increased again in later old age when lifetime
partners died, friendship circles dwindled, and as mobility and social
ability began to fail. Such findings run counter to Bauman's
theories, in that the extra turbulence created for those in liquid
modernity impacts most strongly upon the middle years of life, and
should result in higher rates of loneliness amongst persons of this age.
This is, after all, the period of life when commitments and bonds are
required and are so crucial for the longer-term purpose of family
building, but when most people negotiate flexible and multiple journeys
through work and associational careers, and when leisure lives and
consumption peak.
In liquid modernity, we would expect to see loneliness being
expressed by more people already within intimate and ongoing
relationships as well as by normatively sociable people, since the
emotional chill of loneliness is a function of the quality of their
social connections rather than their connectedness. We might expect to
see those who opted for looser de facto relationships to be more prone
to loneliness, since in many cases their relationships are based on less
formalised and flexible bonds. We would also expect to see the net
quantum of loneliness increasing, since more people would be caught in
multiple, compounding and perhaps serial relationships that do not
extend clear, unambiguous invitations to belong. In addition, if Bauman
and Beck and Beck-Gernsheim (see Bauman 2000: 6; Beck &
Beck-Gernsheim 2002) are correct in their diagnosis of family and other
relationships as 'zombie-like'--still here but barely alive,
still entered into but not delivering what was hoped for--then we would
expect there to be considerable confusion in the attribution of the
cause of loneliness. After all, it emanates as much from the lonely as
from those who eschew making bonds with them.
Loneliness in Australia--a review of survey evidence
The empirical study of loneliness in 21st century Australia began
with Flood's (2005) detailed study of loneliness among young
adults, which was prompted by de Vaus's observation that single
person households were one of the greatest changes in the familial
fabric of Australia in the previous 30 years. Although there had been
numerous mentions of loneliness in the past (for example, Bryson &
Thomson 1973; Richards 1991), Flood (2005) began with the observation
that 'longitudinal data with which to trace changes in perceptions
of loneliness and social support over time is not available' for
Australia.
Franklin and Tranter (2008, 2011) were the first to report surveys
for representative samples of Australians of all adult age bands
allowing analysis across the life-course. Several questions were
developed to examine loneliness in Australia and were included as a
module in the 2007 Australian Survey of Social Attitudes (AuSSA). Using
mail-out, mail-back questionnaires, they asked if people were ever
lonely, how often they were lonely, how seriously they were lonely and a
range of questions about the causes of their loneliness and what they
did about it. Similar questions were included in the 2009 AuSSA survey,
and connections between loneliness, housing and health were explored
(Franklin & Tranter 2011). Together with Flood's useful
analysis of loneliness among 25-44 year old Australians using HILDA
(Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia) data from 2001-3,
and Baker's analysis of longitudinal HILDA data, these form the
main source of nationally representative data on loneliness in
Australia. There are other smaller surveys that have examined features
of loneliness within smaller sub-samples (for example, Mellor et al.
2008), but these can make no claim to represent the situation of
Australians as a whole.
Social causes, distribution and trends
Results from Franklin and Tranter (2008) showed that trigger events
of the sort widely associated with loneliness such as relationship
breakdown, death of a loved one, geographical migration of self or
friend only accounted for less than half (45 per cent) of reported
causes of loneliness, while vaguer categories of 'Other' (34
per cent) and 'Don't know' (21 per cent) accounted for
more than half of all cases (55 per cent). Since the trigger causes must
account for most of the forms of loneliness (emotional and social
loneliness) identified by Weiss in the 1970s, this leaves a great deal
of unexplained variation in the data on loneliness, which is consistent
with Bauman's ideas on socially derived, generalised and multiple
causes of loneliness, and with the difficulty for individuals in liquid
modernity to pinpoint the causes of their loneliness. Clearly, this
finding needs to be followed by in-depth qualitative research that
reaches back into the detailed biographies of individual loneliness to
explore how loneliness is attributed in causal terms, but this evidence
is not inconsistent with the liquid modernity thesis.
Franklin and Tranter (2008) also show that the frequency and
seriousness of loneliness in Australia was not particular to those
groups (the very old and very young adults) who have always featured as
the most at-risk in previous international studies (Andersson 1998).
Franklin and Tranter showed that the highest proportion of Australians
experiencing loneliness at least once a week were actually those aged
between 25 and 44. Multivariate analysis expressed as odds ratios showed
that Australians aged 35-44 were almost 3.5 times more likely to
experience loneliness as a serious problem than those aged 65 or older
while those aged 25-34 were 3.67 times more likely. By contrast those in
the younger 'home leaving' group aged 18-24 were only 1.77
times more likely. Similar results were also found for frequency of
loneliness (see Franklin & Tranter 2008: 16). These results were not
consistent with the older view of loneliness as lifecycle related, which
is to say related in modern societies with life events commonly
perceived to create problematic disruptions to social networks and
important relationships. Loneliness of such severity in this middle-age
group today is consistent with Bauman's prognosis for liquid
modernity. It is precisely among this age cohort that many of the social
trends he seeks to identify and explain are most evident or elaborated,
particularly with regard to consumerism, mobility, the proliferation of
choice, avoidance of relationship commitments, and seeking to live alone
(Bauman 2007).
It is for the latter two reasons that Flood (2005) chose to
investigate loneliness among this age cohort (in his case, 25-44 year
olds). In the 30 years prior to Flood's study, the number of men
living along rose by 224 per cent while the number of women living alone
rose by 264 per cent (de Vaus 2004). As a proportion of all households,
single person households in Australia increased from 18.8 per cent in
1986 to 24 per cent in 2001, and currently range from between one-third
to half of all households in metropolitan areas and outnumber households
with children (ABS 2004). Surprisingly, two-thirds of the people living
alone in Flood's sample were men who had never lived long term with
an intimate partner, while three-quarters of 25-44 year olds who live
alone had never married or been in de facto relationships.
This age redistribution of loneliness gives a very different shape
to its place in society, and suggests that Australia may be different
from other nations, a point not suggested or implied by Bauman's
universal claims for liquid modernity. For example, Franklin and Tranter
have shown how the intensity of loneliness falls away on either side of
the 25-44 year old age group, giving Australia a shallow dome-like curve
across the life course as opposed to the shallow dish-like curve
reported in older studies of other nations for the United Kingdom, the
United States, Canada, France and the Netherlands (Andersson 1998).
Because Flood's study was based on a single wave of HILDA data
(Wave 1), he was unable to gain a sense of whether loneliness in
Australia was increasing, even though there were grounds to suspect that
it was. Whereas in 2001 Flood found that 16 per cent of his sample
agreed with the statement, 'I often feel lonely', by 2007
Franklin and Tranter found that 22 per cent claimed to be lonely
'at least once a week' and 34 per cent who reported their
loneliness to be 'a serious problem at times'. Repeat surveys
by Franklin and Tranter (2008, 2011) showed that more age groups,
particularly those around mid-life with families were contributing to
the numbers claiming to be lonely in society. Given corresponding higher
rates of relationship breakdown, separation and divorce compared to
previous generations, these figures not only point to substantial and
sustained rates of loneliness, but also fit Bauman's claim that
they are based on marital/familial relationships that have become
increasingly difficult to maintain.
Using longitudinal HILDA data that had not been available to Flood
in 2001, Baker (2012) was able to look for patterns of loneliness over
the 10 year time period 2001-2012. He measured how long episodes of
loneliness last and how they relate to life events. Critically, he was
able to measure a transition rate comprising those entering and those
exiting episodes of loneliness in any year. He concluded that
'[T]hat transition rate is increasing, so more people are moving
into loneliness' (Baker, quoted in Short, 2012: 9). Further, Baker
(2012: 6) argued that 'the increasing numbers of people moving into
and out of loneliness points to a growing social problem' but the
scale of its impact on society are not yet clear.
Based on the HILDA data, Baker suggests the total number of
Australians becoming lonely each year has almost doubled from 2.2 per
cent in 2002-03 to 4.3 per cent in 2007-08. His methodology showed that
the proportion of lonely Australians may have risen to only nine per
cent of the population, but he notes that all other empirical surveys
use different survey questions, such as Lauder and colleagues'
study in Central Queensland, and Franklin and Tranter's two
national surveys found substantially more (over 30 per cent in all
cases). A 2010 Australia Institute survey (Baker 2012: 5) found
significantly more lonely Australians than the HILDA data (17 per cent),
which suggests that the HILDA measure may be inherently conservative in
ascertaining levels of loneliness in Australia. The discrepancies seem
most likely to relate to two important methodological differences.
First, as Baker (2012: 6) acknowledges, his methodology only assigned
loneliness to an individual if 'a survey respondent reported a
negative response to each of the ten questions used to calculate a
loneliness score'. In retrospect he felt that 'this approach
to determining loneliness may have contributed to the finding of a lower
incidence of loneliness', and it is easy to see why. Only one of
these questions asked about the respondent's loneliness, while most
of the others used measuring different things. Assembling a variety of
measures (for example, numbers of social contacts, degree of social
support) to produce a putative proxy measure of loneliness (historically
justified because it was felt that to use the word loneliness in surveys
would result in under reporting) may not have been measuring loneliness
at all.
By contrast, Franklin and Tranter asked an entire battery of
questions about a respondent's loneliness if they answered yes to
the question: 'Have you ever been lonely?' These included how
often, for how long and whether loneliness had been a serious problem
for them at times. Their 2007 national of survey of 2,672 Australians
found that only 44 per cent said they never felt lonely; 20 per cent
said they were lonely at least once a year, 17 per cent said they were
lonely at least once a month, 13 per cent once a week and six per cent
at least once a day. Between 73 and 77 per cent of those separated or
divorced, and 79 per cent of the single or never married, reported
feeling lonely at some point in the past year. Consistent with
Bauman's claims,, they also found that 34 per cent of 24 to 44 year
olds reported that loneliness was a serious problem for them at times
(Franklin & Tranter 2008:10).
Discrepancies in loneliness estimates are due in no small part to
the different research instruments used, but there may also be an issue
with when the surveys were administered. The HILDA surveys have all been
fielded during the Australian spring and summer months while Franklin
and Tranter's questions were included in the 2007 AuSSA that was
fielded during the autumn and winter months. On the face of it,
loneliness may be affected by the season, as is the case with
depression, with heightened symptoms experienced during winter (Harmatz
et al. 2000). This may explain the lower rates of loneliness found in
Franklin and Tranter's 2009 survey, for which fieldwork was
conducted through the AuSSA during the summer of 2008 and 2009.
Loneliness and sociability
There are others reasons to suspect that loneliness has changed
since it was first studied. In Weiss' (1973) book, loneliness was
presented as focussed around the loss of an intimate person or loss of
social network. Since so few attributed their loneliness to the death of
a loved one or relationship breakdown in Franklin and Tranter's
2007 survey, we might suspect that it is mostly due to declining social
networks but that does not appear to be the case. Regression analysis
showed that frequency and severity of loneliness could not be predicted
by the sociability (a measureable level of social engagement) of
respondents. 'Those who see themselves as sociable are no less
prone to experiencing serious and prolonged forms of loneliness than
those who are loners by choice' (Franklin & Tranter 2008: 16).
Further, when respondents were asked how loneliness made them feel, only
18 per cent reported feeling 'isolated' (Franklin &
Tranter 2008: 13). These findings resonate with other studies that found
loneliness is frequently associated with people who are in social
situations such as day rooms in old people's homes (Jaworski &
Moyle 2008), in lively social networks (Mellor et al. 2008) or partnered
within marriages (Kiley 1989).
The conclusion drawn by Franklin and Tranter (2008, 2011) and
Mellor (2008) is that loneliness in Australia may be less about the
quantum of social relationship per se than the quality of these
relationships. While this is clearly evident from Mellor and
colleagues' analysis and will be critical for the clinical
treatment of loneliness, their conclusion that such discrepancies are
determined by social and psychological variations risks placing undue
emphasis on the origins of belongingness needs, and too little on the
present social factors affecting the way social relations meet them or
not. Using Bauman's analysis, it is possible to imagine that there
is a lag between the normative psychosocial dependence on strong,
enduring social bonds and the development of a widespread unwillingness
to enact them. Hence, Franklin and Tranter's (2008: 6) paradox of
'freedom loneliness': 'it has become more difficult to
commit ourselves to precisely the sort of relationships we still
crave'.
Some light can be thrown on this issue by comparing loneliness
among married and de facto relationships. Although widely regarded as
equivalent and perhaps more egalitarian, do de facto relationships offer
the same protection against loneliness? On the face of it, marriage
would seem to indicate at least an intention or hope that both spouses
want to create and commit to an enduring, life-long bond. This is less
apparent in de facto partnerships, although they may vary enormously in
the terms that partners make explicit or implicit. Using multivariate
analysis, Franklin and Tranter (2008: 16-17) found that marriage does
insulate people from loneliness, and that people in de facto
relationships were twice as likely to suffer loneliness as a serious
problem than a married person, 2.2 times more likely to suffer
loneliness more than once a week, and 1.7 times more likely to endure
feeling lonely for longer periods. Staying single carries an even
greater 'risk' of loneliness: respondents were almost four
times more likely than married people to report loneliness as a serious
problem, 4.5 times more likely to suffer loneliness very frequently and
twice as likely to endure it for long periods.
Loneliness and gender
Flood's study highlighted what might be an unusual feature of
loneliness among 25 to 44 year olds in Australia, namely that
'there is a gender gap in loneliness, evident among adult men and
women of all ages' and that 'men tend to be lonelier than
women from early adulthood right through to their seventies' (Flood
2005: 10). This is an unusual finding compared to most international
studies (Andersson 1998; de Jong-Gierveld & Havens 2004). The study
also shows gender disparities in social support both for men who live
with others, but spectacularly for men who live alone. Women living
alone scored an average of 14.8 on the Index of Social Support compared
with men who averaged 9. Similarly, while 33 per cent of men in general
reported often feeling lonely, only 23 per cent of women in general
reported the same.
Franklin and Tranter (2008, 2011) showed that on average Australian
men and women across all age groups are less differentiated, with women
being marginally more likely to report loneliness as a serious problem
and men marginally more likely to report higher frequencies. However,
regression analyses showed that gender impacts vary significantly on the
experience of loneliness in relation to marriage, separation, divorce
and widowhood. They showed how the impact of not being married on
loneliness is stronger for men than it is for women. Separated men were
shown to be 13 times more likely than married men to experience
loneliness as a serious problem, whereas separated women are less than
twice as likely to suffer serious loneliness as married women.
Similarly, separated men are 18 times more likely to suffer loneliness
more often than once a week than married men, whereas separated women
are only 3.3 times more likely than married women.
Quite why men and women are so different in their emotional
experience of loneliness clearly requires more focused, qualitative
research. Flood (2005: 18) noted that international research (in United
Kingdom) has established that men 'have a narrower range of sources
of primary emotional support than women; they have fewer close persons
in their primary social networks and are more likely to nominate their
spouse or partner as the person to whom they feel closest'.
Bott's (1971) view that women were the 'kin keepers' of
Western society is still widely reported in contemporary times (Rossi
& Rossi 1990; Charles et al. 2008) and, as Wellman and Wellman
(1992: 390) report, 'where men once gathered separately from their
wives in clubs and cafes, friendship is now often an extension of
marital relations'. Since women have become the main organisers of
men's kinship as well as community social networks, and mediate the
relationships men have with their mutual friends, when spouses separate
it is not surprising that women are better supported by them than men.
Nor is it surprising that Australian women (as 'kin-keepers')
have better skills in creating and maintaining important and enduring
ties and deploying them in the management of their emotional affairs (de
Vaus 2004: 75).
This was evident when Franklin and Tranter (2008) asked about whom
people turned to for help when they became lonely. It is telling that 35
per cent of men said 'nobody' compared with only 16 per cent
of women. Thirty-six per cent of women turned to friends compared with
25 per cent of men. Twice as many women as men turned to their GPs for
help and 44 per cent of women looked to their family for help as
compared with only 33 per cent of men.
Such a disparity in sources of help and initiative in dealing with
emotional problems in combination with less experience in creating and
maintaining close social ties may explain why so many men seem to report
loneliness as an enduring and serious problem for them. However, this
requires further qualitative research to explore loneliness in greater
biographical detail. Ethnographic and biographical studies of loneliness
as pathways and experience in Australia are practically non-existent and
yet the emotional suffering of men is beginning to emerge in these
studies.
Conclusion
This paper has sought to emphasise and synthesise the empirical
evidence of change in the social distribution and significance of
loneliness. It cannot be viewed as a relatively unusual experience, an
abnormal condition, arising from the malfunctioning of society at the
margins any more than it is a universal part of the human condition.
Loneliness is not a psychosocial pathology, even if it remains true that
many people need help to cope with its psychological consequences. It no
longer impacts on a relatively few individuals who fall through the gaps
in an otherwise tightly woven social fabric. It is easy to miss because
the infrastructure, institutions and nomenclatures of an older social
order (family, marriage, kinship ties, membership of cultural, local and
ethnic groups) are still there and still cleaved to by most people,
whether in practice or as ideals. No matter how alluring they are and no
matter how beneficial they are perceived to be, values of collective
belonging have come to be seen as an encumbrance and an obstacle to the
exercise of freedom and choice. We might speculate that people embrace
them with less conviction and stamina now, and the combined effect of
this withdrawal on the one hand, and the building of highly
individualised journeys through life on the other, leaves many people
feeling fragile, unsupported or at least only held up as a result of
their own efforts, their own choices. This speculation provides a
potentially fruitful line of enquiry for future research.
Bauman (2005: 30) likened contemporary life in liquid modernity to
a running battle between 'the desire for freedom and the need for
security, haunted by fear of loneliness and a dread of
incapacitation'. This paper shows how Bauman's analysis of
liquid modernity assists in making sense of the emerging data on
loneliness, which is becoming a serious social issue for Australia.
While Bauman's theories are useful and account well for patterns of
loneliness found in Australia, the paper also argues that his
description of social processes in liquid modernity cannot account for
every facet of its manifestation. This paper has shown how, in relation
to other international studies (Andersson 1998; de Jong-Gierveld &
Havens 2004), the Australian case is distinctive, pointing the way to
future studies that might explore its character in more detail. Future
studies may need to probe the impact of urban form, our migrant
population, our rural-urban distribution and the aspirations of our
young adult population. It has also shown how gender is an important
intervening variable in the experience and distribution of loneliness in
Australia, and how policy makers must be cognisant of the gender
dimensions of loneliness when seeking solutions to it as a social
problem.
It is most likely that more targeted policy developments will
emerge in response to the social structural causes and biography of
loneliness, and the cost it brings in terms of reduced human well being
and poor medical health. Caciappo and colleagues (2009: 978) cite
scientific investigations demonstrating that loneliness is directly
associated with a host of issues: Alzheimer's disease, obesity,
increased vascular resistance, elevated blood pressure, increased
hypothalamic pituitary adrenocortical activity, sleep disorders,
diminished immunity, reduction in independent living, alcoholism,
depression, suicidal ideation and behaviour, mortality in older adults,
and elevated cholesterol and blood pressure in later life and among
adolescents. Lonely people use emergency services 60 per cent more often
than the non-lonely and as elderly people are twice as likely to be
admitted into nursing homes (Stack 2000: 2).
Better information, policies to de-stigmatise loneliness,
interventions such as Men's Sheds (which build social relationships
that matter and address men's social isolation), loneliness-aware
architectural design for single person dwellings, the encouragement of
practices that reduce the pain of loneliness (such as easier access to
companion animal keeping) and an integrated practitioner approach across
policy fields point the way towards a future where loneliness may be
less of a burden and cost (Newby 1996; Golding et al. 2007; Franklin
& Tranter 2011; Sable 2012).
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