Last week during the Mid-Autumn Festival, I went to my grandmother's house for a barbecue. While there, I explained to my relatives what sociology is and why it fascinates me. I also shared my research project, which explores the meaning of intimate relationships and family in contemporary Taiwan. This morning, when I groggily woke up, I overheard a news report on the television about financial institutions trying to tackle fraud and money laundering by managing households with single occupants. Maybe it was because I wasn't fully awake yet, but my immediate reaction was, “Why can't a person form a household on their own?” So today, let’s discuss the idea of a single-person household!

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One of Taiwan’s hottest new artists, Pei-Yu Hung, has a song called Unconventional Morning, with lyrics written by the famous singer-songwriter Tanya Chua. The lyrics go: “Used to living alone / It doesn’t seem like a big deal / Taking care of everything myself / I’m neither envious nor lonely / People always find / Their way of adapting / So stop asking when I’ll get married / Stop saying everyone needs a partner to be complete / Having kids isn’t everyone’s story / Leaving a unique mark on this world / Is even more real / Liking being alone has nothing to do with your mornings.”

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I absolutely love this song because, just like the later lyrics say, "The yearning for love fades with time / And I don’t want to replicate it," the song directly challenges the constant societal pressure to find love, get married, and have children. Breaking free from the myth that "you must have a partner in life" is the first step to truly not being lonely.

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I shared with my family that if you look closely at the causes of low birth rates, it’s not that women who marry don’t want children, but that overall, the age of marriage has been trending later. Demographers suggest that one possible reason is that women are receiving higher education and pursuing greater career achievements. Therefore, compared to a marriage system that’s often unfriendly to women, delaying or even forgoing marriage is actually a more rational choice.

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Every time I get to this point, there’s always (usually a middle-aged heterosexual male elder) someone who chimes in with advice saying the solution is to prevent women from pursuing long-term education and to get them back to marriage and childbirth. I always think to myself, this is absolutely not a good solution. What we really should be doing is considering the gender inequalities within the current family system and addressing the barriers that make people unwilling to enter into marriage. And this patriarchal idea that women shouldn't pursue higher education or personal achievements is one of the reasons many women are unwilling to marry in the first place.

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At the same time, I also encourage everyone to consider that, in addition to making marriage a better option, there is another choice: You can live a happy and fulfilling life without getting married. Being alone doesn't necessarily mean being lonely. Many people who stay in marriages just to meet societal expectations are actually the ones who feel the most lonely. A single-person household can have many sources of support—whether through close family and friends or connections with nature and society. We don't become less lonely simply by entering a marriage, nor are we doomed to loneliness if we're not in a marital relationship.

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