Abstract
Since the percentage of single adults is steadily increasing, the reasons for this development have become a matter of growing interest. Hereby, an individual’s attachment style may have a connection to the partnership status. In the following analysis, attachment style, gender, age, education, and income were compared in regard to the partnership status. Furthermore, an analysis of variance was computed to compare the attachment style within different groups. In 2012, a sample of 1,676 representative participants was used. The participants were aged 18 to 60 (M = 41.0, SD = 12.3); 54% of the sample were female, and 40% were single. Attachment-related attitudes were assessed with the German version of the adult attachment scale (AAS). Single adult males did not show a more anxious attachment style than single adult females or females in relationships. Younger, i.e., 18 to 30 years old, paired individuals showed greater attachment anxiety than single individuals, whereby single individuals between the ages of 31 to 45 showed greater attachment anxiety than individuals in relationships. In addition, single individuals more frequently had obtained their high school diploma in contrast to individuals in relationships. Concerning attachment style, the individuals who had not completed their high school diploma showed less faith in others independent of singlehood or being in a relationship. Concerning age, older single individuals, i.e., 46 to 60 years, felt less comfortable in respect to closeness and showed less faith in others compared to paired individuals. Logistic regression showed that individuals were not single if they did not mind depending on others, showed high attachment anxiety, were older, and had lower education. An income below € 2000/month was linked to a nearly 13-fold increase of likelihood of being single. In sum, the attachment style had a differential age-dependent association to singlehood versus being in a relationship. Education played also a role, exclusively concerning faith in others.
Highlights
Due to the wide variety of living styles and increasing individualization, there is an ever growing number of single adults in highly industrialized countries such as Germany
In 1999, the percentage of single adults in Germany was 17.8%, which increased to 20.2% in 2011 (Federal Statistical Office Germany, 2013a)
The participants scored the 18 items, using a fiveitem Likert-type scale with values ranging from “not at all” to “very.” Factor analysis led to three main factors: capacity to feel close to the partner; capacity to depend on others; and anxiety of losing an intimate partner
Summary
Due to the wide variety of living styles and increasing individualization, there is an ever growing number of single adults in highly industrialized countries such as Germany. In 1999, the percentage of single adults in Germany (who do not live in a partnership) was 17.8%, which increased to 20.2% in 2011 (Federal Statistical Office Germany, 2013a). The proportion of single individuals increased by 10 percentage points from 17 to 27% between 1970 and 2012 (Vespa et al, 2013). These numbers may not replicate the actual life situation precisely as only the legal family status was assessed. Singlehood is an important way of life to investigate as it is connected to lower physical health (Müller et al, 1999; Lammintausta et al, 2013) and less psychological well-being (Mookherjee, 1997; Brown, 2000; Scharfe and Cole, 2006)
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