TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Rise of Indonesian singletons
The irritating question of “kapan kawin?” (when are you getting married?) is still asked by many nosy relatives of single people across the archipelago
Change Size
The irritating question of “kapan kawin?” (when are you getting married?) is still asked by many nosy relatives of single people across the archipelago.
The intention might be good — to encourage their single relatives to start a family of their own — but a study has found that more and more Indonesians are enjoying their solo-living and completely ignore the never-ending question.
Puty Sonia is one of them. She has been living by herself for the last 13 years, since university.
At her apartment in Surabaya, East Java, the 32-year-old English teacher watched movies in her laptop Sunday afternoon as she waited for her meatball soup to boil for a late lunch and dinner.
“I hung out with my friends all day yesterday and decided to have more ‘me time’ today,” she said.
Puty, whose parents are divorced, said she would be really careful in deciding who she would marry later on.
“I might get married one day, but not now; not in a rush,” she added. “I mean, finding a roommate to share the apartment bills with me is hard enough. It’s really not easy to live with other people.”
A study published in January by Euromonitor International, a London-based strategic market research company, showed that more people across the world, including Indonesians, are fighting the stigma of living alone and embracing their independent lifestyles and enjoying single living.
The study predicted that by 2030, 5.6 million Indonesians will live alone, up from 4.8 million people in 2018.
This placed Indonesia fifth in Asia for the countries with the most single-person households, behind China, Japan, Thailand and South Korea.
Living alone, Puty said, gave her freedom to do anything she wanted in her life and in her home. And having good friends that she can always count on has made the journey even more enjoyable.
Larmi Kristiani, a 31-year-old lawyer in a law firm in Jakarta, shares the same belief.
Larmi, who is currently finishing her Master of Law degree in a university in Jakarta, said solo living gave her the opportunity to manage her life’s priorities as she wished.
“Many of my friends who have higher education and good careers are also on the same page. And we don’t have time to feel lonely because there are so many work projects and dreams to be achieved. Traveling to new places, studying new courses, catching up with friends, so many things to do,” she said.
Alison Angus, head of lifestyles at Euromonitor International, said high divorce rates worldwide had always been a major reason for single living, but an increasing number of individuals are deciding against marriage altogether.
In 2018, 337.4 million people were living alone globally. By 2030, it is estimated that the number of single-person households will increase by about 120 million, or an increase of about 30 percent from 2018.
“Younger people are delaying or eschewing marriage to focus on their careers instead or to indulge in personal development, education or travel. Many also prefer to live in denser, urban settings and therefore avoid the move to suburban homes, which are more amenable to raising children,” the study said.
It also said that the wider prevalence of single living, especially for those who are in or past their prime to start families, is easing the stigmatization of living alone in later years and supports the hypothesis that choosing to be alone can lead to a healthier and more fulfilled life.
The idea is supported by a Statistics Indonesia (BPS) survey in 2018, which showed that unmarried Indonesians are happier compared to those who are married or divorced.
The index, which measured happiness on a scale of 0 to 100, with 100 being the happiest said that unmarried Indonesians scored 71.53 in the happiness index on the survey, higher than the nation’s happiness average of 70.69 this year.
Meanwhile, married individuals trail slightly in the happiness index with a score of 71.09, while widowed and divorced individuals are the most unhappy, scoring 68.37 and 67.83, respectively.
Eric Santosa, a cultural psychologist at Marktalent, a center for urban lifestyle studies, said that as what happened in Japan and China, single living in Indonesia was also a result of capitalism and better prosperity.
“It is possible that most of them are women who have a higher education and have promising careers. […] Because they already have everything to live comfortably, marriage seems too complicated on that level,” Eric said.
However, Eric said as family and traditional values were still strong in Indonesia, he believed many did not actively decide to be a singleton, “it just happens as they live their life, because they now have more things to consider before they decide to get married”.
Separately, Robertus Robet, a sociologist from Jakarta State University said Indonesian family structures were functionalistic, emphasizing the role of traditional family elements, where fathers are the centers of truth and mothers have the function to care.
“This traditional structure is now faced by this ‘singleton’ phenomenon. This is caused by several factors such as economic independence and economic efficiency as a result of high urban costs, as well as migration,” he said.
