Living–apart–together+in+Britain+Context+and+Meaning

Living-apart-together in Britain: context and meaning

Living-apart-together = having a regular partner who maintains a separate household.

· This is now an internationally recognized form of partnering. · This article contemplates two survey done in Britain o In 2004: exploratory, meant to see if LAT existed in Britain, and their demographics o The second to improve recognition, measure prevalence and better understand LATs

· Raises many questions: o how common is this, and how common might it become? o Why? What do people hope to get out of this arrangement? o Is this further evidence of growing individualism? · Can divide into voluntary and involuntary (forced by circumstance) LATs

Survey One: Asked “Do you currently have a regular partner?” to people who, if they did, would have to have had a partner living apart from them. (this is not expanded in the article, just stated. No explanation of why/how they knew these people “had to”.) · Very few knew the term LAT, and only a few were happy to be described as such · Other sought a “status that was indeterminate and unlabelled” · While other literature assumes that LAT’s both have a sexual relationship **and** consider themselves “a couple”, the second half of this was not found always to be true.

Survey 2: “Are you currently in an intimate relationship with someone, a partner, who lives in another household?” · Modified question to eliminate possibility of catching relations of a close partner or friend. · Deemed too sensitive to ask people over 60, so no older demographic data. · Assumed that married people living with their spouse could not be an LAT of someone else. · However, identified one couple who was living apart in order to preserve a marriage.

Results: · Based on 5,000 respondents, estimate that the prevalence of LATs for 16-59 y/o is similar to co-resident cohabitation, roughly 25% of people not married and living with their spouse. · Roughly 32% of men and 34% of women who are not married and not living cohabitationally. · This is a distinct and appreciable minority

Who are LATs? · Tend to be younger than cohabiters · Interesting socio-economic factors o LATs aged 25-44 had averaged a full year longer in secondary ed than peers cohabitating. o LATs were more likely to hold managerial and intermediate occupations o LAT’s whose occupations were manual or routine or unclassifiable (had no employ) were much smaller incidence than general population levels. Though unclear whether occupations influence choice of relationship structure or not.

Why? · Much of the article is devoted to a qualitative discussion of the data. · There are many anecdotes and personal interviews illustrating a wide variety of opinions of LAT’ers on the matter o Less confining than marriage o Less scary than marriage o Not really even a couple o More flexible and independent than marriage o Many emphasized the importance of private space (“being able to walk away without walking away.”) o Some interesting discussion about whether this was an economic function of it being more financially challenging to leave one’s parents’ home. o Others talked of this as a way to mitigate the possible loss of a break up of a more serious, integrated relationship.

Conslusion: · This is not really a unified group. To call this a new “stage” in relationship development is therefore prob not helpful. · If those living with parent could be excluded, that would be more narrow and more interesting. · Nevertheless, the people who participated illustrate a stark difference between cohabiting (married or not) relationships and LATs. · Nature of LAT makes it hard to generalize. Is it: o A function of ecnomic conditions of cost of living o A more discreet arragement for older people having relationships. · Dominant theme was caution: no one saw themselves as carrying out a radical new form of relationship. · Many worried that they had already shared much with partners, and didn’t want to share more thinking it would damage their relationships. · Question about how LATs survive children. Would they? · Though tempting to discount its significance given its fluidity, this would be a mistake, given that this was often a purposeful and conscious choice. · May be that young people drift into LATs but the leap from there to cohabiting is larger than cohabiting to marriage.

Going Forward: · Researchers want to know more about socio-economic intersections. · Tentatively conclude that LAT’s are about caution and conservatism more than radicalism. · Bottom line: the prevalence of alternate living arrangements (here LAT’s) mean that there needs to be better methods developed for gathering information about alternate relationship arrangements.

NOTE: This article contains a great deal of quantitative and qualitative data that is left out of this summary.