Single, tame yet fearless

One of the unfortunate effects of the democratic ideal entering mainstream consciousness is the tendency to cater for the majority and to sideline minority and individual voices. Malta is undoubtedly a society geared towards the family and the family requires, of necessity, The Couple. All else is forgotten in the quest to provide the best for the nest.

This means that our society plays down the wish of some young people to move out of the home before marriage or even not to marry. I remember trying to move out of my parents' house when I was 20 and it was a shocking, shocking thing to contemplate. The general feeling was that I wanted to move away from my parents because (I kid you not) I was influenced by evil forces, wished to indulge in all sorts of outlandishly degenerate behaviour and was fast sinking into the depths of moral turpitude.

The truth was that I wanted some freedom to learn about myself and that was not about to happen in a family that prided itself on giving direction.

My time living alone was spent washing plates, cleaning floors and trying to make sure that rogue red items of clothing did not hide themselves with my whites (the result was a very unfortunate shade of pink).

I realised I could be house-proud, something I found appalling at the time, because it made me realise I was more conventional than I liked to think. I was more rebellious when I was living at home, stumbling in 10 minutes after curfew time just to make a point, going out with my friends as many times as I could get away with, and starting all sorts of rows over the slightest things. Living alone, I became the most domesticated of house cats. Go figure.

But leaving the family home then was seen as subversive. It still is, to some extent. But as modernity struggles to make itself felt in Malta, it has become somewhat more common for people to marry later and later, and to realise that life away from parents does not have to start with marriage.

By trying to punish the subversive, however, Maltese society is ignoring the realities of the new age. There are the newly single - the men and women whose relationship ends up in separation and who end up living on their own again; the ones who find themselves unexpectedly widowed, the ones who put off marriage or even shun it.

This is hardly surprising. After all, cohabitation is still frowned upon and yet it conforms to the market ideal, the couplist society. Any option which does not conform is going to be hard put upon to find a space for expression in Malta.

Singlehood is still considered an unfortunate state of affairs rather than the result of individual choice. (This is actually not just a Maltese problem, it is endemic throughout the rest of Europe, although, possibly, not to such a great extent in other industrialised countries.)

Accordingly, as an issue thrown up by the constraints of our society's beliefs and values, this is not as astonishing a state of affairs as the fact that the market has not exploited the potential of the single consumer. After all my country still harbours people like the man who is single-handedly trying to marshall the forces of good to protest against a fictional film which threatens the tenets of Catholicism. Religion is something which the more secular among us have to work with rather than oppose head on; after all one cannot ignore the wishes of the majority in the quest to give minorities a voice.

The market, however, is another matter. Singletons find themselves sidelined and feel discriminated against. This can happen in very commonplace ways: for example, trying to work out how to cook for one when recipe books insist on providing quantities for four, or even cooking for four and eating the same thing for four consecutive days, cooking for two and eating a double portion as one, cooking for four and freezing three portions for another time... the possible solutions are endless but how about recipes for one in the first place?

Shopping for one at the supermarket is a nightmare... asking for five slices of ham elicits the raised eyebrow and is liable to make any singleton feel cheap, chopping up one portion of five types of vegetables for a salad gives you enough to feed an army etc, etc.

Socially, being single is considered fun (and it is) but your happily-married friends may very well decide to leave you out of fun things they dream up (like a garden barbecue for couples during which everyone discusses the advantages of home-schooling) because they realise you do not really enjoy playing gooseberry... It really goes all downhill from there.

Then there are the less funny situations like being unable to obtain a house loan if you are single or attempting to go abroad alone and unwittingly bringing out that favoured torture weapon of travel agents everywhere: the single supplement.

In Britain, the media agency Carat has conducted research into singlehood and found that the group is set to grow to 45 per cent of the population over the next five years.

Carat found that singletons like to spend their disposable income, will reward brands which target them and are more likely to be whimsical standards. (The full study can be seen at http://www.singledom.co.uk )

And, yet, in Malta, I still cannot find a bagged salad for one, an affordable studio flat or a washing machine small enough for a single load. Where is the keen business mind when you need it?

Ms Spiteri is a journalist and a researcher in media and identity based at the University of Sussex. S.Spiteri@sussex.ac.uk