Living Alone in America

Although there has been recent furor over recently-released Census Bureau statistics revealing that fewer than 25 percent of American households are nuclear families, what has been overshadowed is the more important fact that for the first time that the number of nuclear families has been exceeded by the number of Americans living alone. Harvard graduates are leaving Harvard to enter into an increasingly atomized and individualized world.

Several causes have contributed to the proportion living alone. Medical and technological advances have increased the average lifespan, meaning that more people are living alone into their old age. Divorces have left couples alone for many years in middle age. And Americans are waiting for longer periods before marriage and longer still before having children.

As our graduates leave campus this year and move into studio apartments across the nation and the world, they will feed into the existing trend. Our campus culture emphasizes quantifiable achievement as exemplified by test scores, grades, colleges and status occupations. Students reached Harvard by succeeding on quantifiable terms; many of us have been trained from early on to think of careers first and families second. These measures of success tend to discount the rewards and achievements that come from being a member of a community or a family. Harvard’s measures of success have gained meaning in our culture as the perceived value of a rich family life and personal fulfillment through social activity has declined.

To the extent that Harvard students forget about the rewards that come from basic human interaction, not money or fame, they will have lost something of greater value than their Harvard diploma can earn them. The census conclusions should remind us to step back and reconsider our life goals. The seniors who will soon be graduating will enter a world where not every achievement can (or should) be listed on a resume.

As we all leave Harvard, some of us forever, let us remember that we enter the world to make connections with others. These connections may be harder to make outside of the Harvard community, but that only makes them more valuable. With them, we will never truly be alone.