Solo Living - the meaning of home for persons living alone

Like in other countries, the number of people living in one-person households is growing in Denmark. Within the last three decades, the share of the Danish population living alone has increased from 16.1% in 1981 to 22.9% in 2006. The increase has been particularly marked for the young adults aged 18-29 years and the "mature adults" aged 30-60 years. As Danish housing is generally designed for families rather than one-person households, this raises the analytical  questions of how particularly the 30-60 years-old solo livers experience and shape their dwelling and how they integrate it into their everyday practices. The paper discusses these questions on the basis of qualitative interviews with solo livers aged 30-60 years. The study shows that solo livers to a great extent experience and use their dwelling in ways similar to persons living in family households. However, differences are also observed. Firstly, solo livers emphasize independence from others as important. Several of the informants have had negative experiences with living together with a partner, and they like the feeling of being independent. At the same time, most informants also keep a door open for the possibility of moving together with "the right one", which indicates that ambiguity is related to the situation of solo living. Secondly, some of the solo livers spend more time outside home (occupied by leisure activities or together with friends) compared to people living in family households in general, which suggests a different balance between time at home and outside home for some solo livers.