Mark The ‘New Singles’
Lina Ko October 1st, 2007
The numbers recently released based on the 2006 Census surprise a lot of people. The picture of traditional Canadian families, with the married mom and dad who had children who grew up and married, and had their own kids making mom and dad still-married grandparents, is no longer here.
Married couples are now the minority. Divorce rate is up and most couples prefer living together to getting married. Nearly 60 per cent of Canadians aged 20 to 24 live with their parents, compared with 41 per cent two decades earlier. Three million Canadian households are now living alone. These are the men and women who are not necessarily old maids or odd single men who never got married; they are not even widows or widowers – these are the ‘New Singles’ who opt to live on their own.
Apart from an ageing population, this astonishing stat can partly be attributed to how technology and the frustration with relationships have turned us inward; where the once-coveted happily-ever-after-married-with-kids life is often seen as unattainable, inconvenient or an economic challenge.
Within my own circle, there are quite a number of boomer women living alone. We are marrying later in life, if at all. We are having children later in life, if at all. If we divorce, we often don’t remarry. A lot of my friends are either a mid-40s or mid-50s man or woman who never seemed to make the love connection that would take them from one-person household to married with children, but instead took the career path that led to the high-rise condo, the new car every few years and the annual vacation in an exotic resort outside Canada.
That’s why I don’t understand why we continue to see TV commercials and ads showing happy, greying couples living happily ever after. It’s about time that marketers should better understand and segment boomers – by all means include the couples; but please give some thought to the new generation of ‘singles’ who have earned a new-found freedom, especially in the first few years of solo life, when waking up alone on a Sunday morning to a quiet house or condo with no responsibility.
