The trend-leaders are in Great Britain, where, as of 2006, fully 1 million couples are committed, exclusive—and living under 2 million roofs.

  Marriage is already out of fashion enough. The British marriage rate (the percent of married people per 1,000 of population) dropped from 12.0 in 1991 to 9.2 in 2005, according to the Office for National Statistics. But now, it seems, even unmarried cohabitation is too much intimacy. In several Western European countries, the fastest-growing lifestyle is LAT—couples who “live apart together.”

  In Great Britain, it’s 1 million couples—3 in every 20 people aged 16–59. That means there are as many committed, long-term couples who don’t live together as committed, long-term couples who do.

  LAT couples are growing quickly elsewhere, too. In the Netherlands, nearly 1 in 4 people aged 55 or older who consider themselves part of a couple are neither married nor living together, nor have any plans to change their status. Sixty-three percent of the Dutch approve of such “semi-attached couples,” of whatever age.

  In France, it is estimated that 2 to 3 percent of married couples and 7 to 8 percent of unmarried couples live in separate residences. And here in North America, nearly 10 percent of the Canadian population aged 20 and over are reportedly in LAT relationships. The U.S. doesn’t formally track this arrangement, but you can bet it will soon.

  LAT Couples are the newest players in the ever-shifting panorama of today’s family.

  According to demographers and sociologists who are following the LAT trend, the reasons for LAT couples span the spectrum of relationships. Most LATers are young and new homeowners, and don’t want to give up their newfound independence. Especially in Great Britain, experts say, where The Home is cherished as one’s nest and one’s castle, people are loath to give up their houses, or flats, even if they’re in love.

  At the other end of the life cycle, LAT couples are frequently older people who don’t want to complicate inheritance matters by introducing even a common law marriage, let alone an actual one, into their plans to leave their property to their children.

  Still other LATers are in between, age-wise—and have children from a prior relationship, or aging parents, who are already living in their homes. Introducing a live-in lover or spouse to that family arrangement can unduly complicate matters, and it may be just as easy for both mates to have 24/7 exclusivity without 24/7 togetherness.

  Finally, other LATers choose separate hearths because, frankly, one hearth is kind of crowded. Sure, she’s your soul mate, but if she moves in she’ll make you wash the dishes more than once a week. Hallelujah, he’s The One, but if this becomes his house, too, he’ll want you to stop burning incense, or he’ll expect you to do all the cooking. Many people on their second long-term relationship want to avoid the mistakes or the pain of the first one gone bad. LAT is a nice, clear way to say: I love you—from over here, in my own castle—where I am king.

  And lots of public “kings” have famously lived apart. Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy kept separate households for their entire, decades-long relationship (although, admittedly, this was in part because Tracy was married to someone else). Woody Allen and Mia Farrow lived in separate apartments in New York. (Although again, arguably not the model marriage, as Allen later declared his love for Farrow’s adopted stepdaughter.)

  The trend seems kind of shocking to happy, cohabiting couples who can’t imagine voluntarily giving up the cozy intimacy of snuggling with their life partner night after night. But the truth is, even among happily married couples who do share a roof, it’s becoming more and more common to keep separate bedrooms. In the U.S., according to a survey conducted by the National Association of Home Builders, builders and architects have predicted that, by 2015, more than 60 percent of custom houses will have dual master bedrooms. Some of the builders surveyed said that more than a quarter of their new projects already do.

  But whatever the reason for living apart, LATers are on the rise, and lots of groups should pay attention. First, those on the prowl. It used to be that a wedding ring would signal “off-limits”; but once unwed cohabitation became so typical, you had to look beyond the ring finger for the ways people talked about their living situations. If they had “roommates,” they probably weren’t exclusively, romantically tied up. But now all bets are off. Your crush may be ringless and live in a studio apartment, but for all you know she’s basically been married for ten years.

  Second, parents should take note. You may think your child is carelessly noncommittal, when in fact he’s more monogamous than most of your friends. Or you may think you’re lucky he’s not too serious about that girlfriend you don’t like, when, in fact, they haven’t dated anybody else for years and never plan to.

  From a religious or cultural point of view, the rise in LATs could signify a new, and arguably troubling, chapter in expectations about relationships. If “love” and even “monogamy” don’t mean the daily engagement in another person’s needs, joys, and interests, can commitment really be that deep? Is there no sacrifice or adjustment required for love? This is, of course, what the opponents of mere “Living Together” feared back in the 1970s and 1980s. If people just lived together without commitment, how long would it be before they just had sex without even living together? (Oh right, it would be almost immediately.)

  Clearly, LATers take relationships more casually than married couples. In a Canadian study done in 2003, only 53 percent of LAT men and 62 percent of LAT women said that “lasting relationships” were important for a happy life, compared to 76 percent of married men and 81 percent of married women who said so.

  And one wonders about the effect on children. If there are offspring, will they, too, shuttle back and forth like the children of divorce? Or is LATing part of the larger European trend of having few to no children, anyway?

  From a commercial point of view, LATers create new opportunities. Like Commuter Couples, they need shadow home kits—clothes, toiletries, and favorite CDs and DVDs in two places, rather than one. They need double favorite pots and pans. Guest parking in their buildings and on their local streets. Ways to turn off the heat, pick up the papers and the mail, and let the cat out when they don’t end up going home for days at a time. These people are worth tending to—after all, if they can afford to keep two flats, they probably have some disposable income lying around.

  Perhaps most important, LATers represent a literal doubling in the amount of housing stock required. European populations are falling, but the fact that half as many people may need just as much housing could be an important development in the European housing market.

  Finally, from a larger sociological point of view, we misjudge singles if we think they’re all pining for mates; and we misjudge single homeowners if we think they’ll all sell as soon as they fall in love. All the life-cycle-based expectations in the real estate market could be turned on their heads. Nor do we fully understand “households” if we think they are all atomic and independent—there may be more single households than ever in most Western countries, but nonetheless people may be very much living “together.”

  Maybe LAT couples have discovered something big. Researchers say that while LATers are wary of giving over trust, they are also prudent and independent people, confident enough to be forging a new lifestyle. They may also be far more likely than married people, or even cohabiters, to feel like giddy teenagers before a Saturday night date—absence having made the heart grow fonder, and all that. Maybe the spark lasts longer when the commitment is there, but the incense and dirty laundry aren’t.

  Mammonis (Italy)

  Men Who Don’t Leave Home

  Free food, free room and board, no curfew, a car when you need one. A lot of young people know a good deal when they see one. And while American kids typically can’t wait to leave home, grown-up kids in some less economically thriving countries have been deciding, “What’s the rush?” Mom’s cooking is pretty good after all.

  And so the traditional model of kids growing up, starting a family, and coming back to Mom and Dad’s for Sunday dinner is being replaced with a new model: Don’t get married, keep the single life of clubs a few nights a week, never give up your room, and stay at home until you are thrown out of—or inherit—the house.

  And nowhere is that more true than when Mom’s nightly dinner is lasagna, gnocchi, and osso buco. In Italy, a whopping 82 percent of men aged 18–30 are still living at home with their parents. No wonder young people are always making out in public in Italy—they have no other place to go.

  In Hollywood, Ray Romano hints at the Italian mother’s influence in the very popular Everybody Loves Raymond, where Italian-American parents Marie and Frank live not with, but next door to, Ray and his family, and Marie’s food and opinions loom large in Ray’s life. But go to Italy itself, and you’ll find not just Ray, but Robert, too, living with Marie and Frank. No Debra, no Amy, no kids. Possibly no sports column or police work. Just Mamma, Papa, and the boys, with the boys approaching middle age.

  Italian stay-at-homes, or Mammonis (Mamma’s boys), are the most extreme example, but the trend has been noted and named in other countries as well. They’re “kippers” in England, which stands for “Kids in Parents’ Pockets Eroding Retirement Savings.” They’re nesthockers in Germany, which translates to “nest squatters.” In Japan, they’re parasaito shinguru (parasite singles), or freeters, which is a combination of “free” and the German word for “worker,” arbeiter. In the U.S., they’re “boomerangs,” “Peter Pans,” or “kidults.” But Italian Mammonis take the cake at the astounding stay-at-home rate of 4 in 5.

  Source: Marco Manacorda and Enrico Moretti, Why Do Most Italian Young Men

  Live with Their Parents? Intergenerational Transfers and Household Structure,

  Centre for Economic Policy Research, 2005

  What happened?

  Most observers say that Mammonis have been spawned by Italy’s high youth unemployment, high housing costs, and low and declining fertility. No jobs, no kids, expensive apartments—why leave home? Other researchers contend that Mamma and Papa actually want the companionship, and control, and are bribing their kids to stay home. They maintain that late-age cohabitation with parents causes high youth unemployment, not the other way around. But perhaps what is most interesting is the idea that economic distress can cause closer family ties, while economic success can tear apart the family structure.

  Perhaps one of Hillary Clinton’s most important insights representing upstate New York was that “no child should have to leave his or her hometown to get a good job.” The big economic pull of the cities and suburbs in America is causing better educated kids to leave town to find work—which has been the traditional pattern since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. The result was the breakup of the family, scattering people around the country or even the world.

  But in Italy, the opposite is happening. Intense competition from China for its principal products is draining the country of jobs, and the socioeconomic forces are promoting a more carefree life—no kids, no spouse, no responsibilities. But the flip side is that family ties are strengthened—and the nuclear family remains the center of life. Who is to say which system creates greater happiness?

  But there are consequences of this change. Today’s young Italian adults, according to researchers, have less independence, less initiative, less work and travel experience, and greater trouble forming their own families, than prior generations. They are having children at seriously lower rates (1.2 per woman in 2006 compared to 2.3 in 1950). True, elder care in Italy may pose less of a public burden in the coming years, but child care will be relatively obsolete. And getting a job as a schoolteacher could become impossible, as there will be too many schools for too few kids.

  To the extent kidults are a worldwide phenomenon, there are commercial opportunities to mine. Italian parents may like their perpetual housemates, but researchers say that American, British, and German parents don’t. The fictitious consultants in the 2006 American comedy hit Failure to Launch—who pose as girlfriends to stimulate late-blooming men to move out—may yet become real. Jobs for youth and higher-education programs may want to advertise with AARP and its European counterparts, since the targets (the youth) will be seeing the readers (their parents) every night for dinner.

  As for the Mammonis themselves—and the kippers, nesthockers, and freeters—they report being happy enough with their arrangement. Parents and children don’t fight cultural battles like they did in the 1960s; now everyone kicks back to watch Raymond reruns together. Dinner and laundry are well tended to. The only need they seem to feel is for a bit of privacy for socializing and, of course, sex. Has the European equivalent of Motel 6 seized on the upscale market for rooms by the hour?

  Most Americans still regard living at home as an adult as a sign of some degree of failure, particularly in the media. Who does it? George Costanza on Seinfeld. Cliff Claven on Cheers. For God’s sake, Norman Bates in Psycho. These are not men who, to use Freudian terms, have healthfully individuated.

  On the other hand, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, one of America’s most revered presidents, rarely lived in a house that wasn’t owned or shared by his mother, Sara.

  Perhaps the Italians are pioneering a new postindustrial lifestyle—a homespun counterreaction to the fast-paced and responsibility-laden modern world. Maybe this generation will enter midlife with a sense of relaxation and enjoyment that will be the envy of East and West. Or perhaps this same trend will put Italian society into a deep depression or recession in a few years, as China takes over Italy’s manufacturing jobs, and the failure-to-launch generation finds they have to fend for themselves, but without some of the skills they should have gotten from Mamma, including how and when to leave the nest.

  Eurostars

  Most people have heard about Europeans’ lack of interest in having children. While Americans are head over heels for kids, Europeans have largely decided that family is expensive and bothersome, and as a result are seeing a fundamental deterioration of the traditional family structure.

  Americans can hardly believe it—Europe’s paid maternity leave and subsidized child care policies seem so generous compared to ours. But the truth is, fewer and fewer Europeans are using them. Whereas Americans are reproducing at precisely the replacement rate—2.1 children per woman of childbearing age—Europeans are on track to put themselves utterly out of business. The continent’s average fertility rate is an un-self-sustaining 1.5 children per woman. In 1990, no country in Europe had a fertility rate lower than 1.3—now fourteen countries do. Another six European countries have a fertility rate below 1.4. Germany alone bore half as many children in 2005 as it had forty years before—suggesting that by the end of this century, the German people might number less than one-third of what they do now.

  The reasons for the European birth dearth are biological, cultural, political, and economic. First, as is the case in the U.S., women across Europe are starting families later—if at all—which both increases the risk of infertility and leaves less time for big families. Between 1972 and 2004 in Britain, the number of marriages fell by 36 percent, and the average age of marriage rose from 25 to 31 for men, and from 23 to 29 for women.

  From a cultural perspective, the increase in emphasis on self-actualization throughout the Western World has caused more Europeans to forgo having kids altogether, since, clearly, children can be a big disruption to one’s work, travel, and leisure. And many left-leaning countries have deep concerns about the environment and overpopulation, causing breeding to be regarded as selfish and destructive. In Germany, it has been reported that a staggering 39 percent of educated women have no kids.

  Source: United Nations Population Division and World Health Organization, 2005

  Politically speaking, it has been said that the more liberal you are—the less often you attend religious services—the fewer children you will have. No one disputes that, in the past thirty years, Europe has both moved left and secularized. The childbearing-lefty connection may be evident in the United States, too. According to an analysis by USA Today, the fertility rates in the states George W. Bush won in 2004 are 11 percent higher than those in the states John Kerry won. In Utah, where more than two-thirds of the residents are Mormon, the fertility rate is 92 births per year per 1,000 women—the highest in the nation. In Vermont, the first state to embrace gay unions, the rate is 51 births per 1,000 women—the nation’s lowest.

  But while biology, culture, and politics no doubt play some role in the continental Baby Bust, the main reason Europe is having fewer children seems to be economic. According to a study by the U.K.’s Institute of Public Policy Research, British people aged 21–23 want and plan for children at a rate well above replacement. But by age 40, they’ve had a baby gap of 90,000 fewer children per year than they intended—and the reason seems to be the “fertility penalty” charged to women. Europe’s maternity and child care policies may be generous overall, but in Britain, at least, 28 percent of women return to work in lesser paid jobs than they had before they gave birth. Among secretaries, that figure is 36 percent, and among skilled manual workers, it is 50 percent. While some countries have lower fertility penalties than the U.K.’s, it is the case across the continent that expensive child care and soaring mortgages have, crudely put, made the opportunity cost of having children just too high.

  The impact of Europe’s declining birth rates has been much studied. Demographers and economists predict that Europe’s social security problem—the challenge of not having enough replacement workers to support the continent’s aging retirees—will be far more drastic than America’s. They have warned that in the next fifty years, the ratio of beneficiaries to workers in Europe will be so lopsided that some countries may crumble under the challenge. They have even said that increased rates of Asian or African immigration—which would itself cause social stress—wouldn’t compensate for falling European birth rates.