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CBC Doc Zone: Flying Solo (2013)

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Duration: 45m11s
Resolution: 960x540
Video Format: AVC
Audio Format: AAC


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Single living was once considered a shameful, social aberration. Not anymore.

Today major trends like communication technology, urbanization, gender equality and increased longevity are radically reshaping that reality. The vast number of adults living alone is something entirely new in the human experience.

Throughout history and in all cultures, the family unit has been the building block of society. Whether huddled in igloos, mud huts, Victorian row houses or public tower blocks, humans, the most social of animals, have always lived life under a shared roof. Food, safety, health and reproduction all depended on it. Exile was the severest form of punishment, surpassed only by execution.

Today, however, we have entered the era of an unprecedented social experiment in which more people are choosing to live alone than ever before. The number of adults living alone has tripled in half a century. In North America, more than fifty per cent of us are single. Nearly a third of all households have just one resident. Single people now outnumber married people.

Why is it happening? What does it matter?

Through profiles of exuberantly single adults; a short history of the nuclear family and its gradual erosion; and a look at the role of women, technology and urbanization in the sea change toward singledom, Flying Solo thoughtfully and provocatively reveals what’s fueling the trend and what it means for our future.