Urban Tribes -- Exploring Friendship Among Post-College Unmarrieds

They're all around us, those unmarried 20- or 30-somethings who seem to run in packs, living and working and enjoying life with friends rather than devoting all of their energies to the pursuit of marriage. Who are these people, these -- as the U.S. Census Bureau calls them -- never-marrieds? And what exactly are they doing in the years between student-hood and spouse-dom?

Ethan Watters, author of Urban Tribes: A Generation Redefines Friendship, Family, and Commitment (out this month from Bloomsbury), began to ask himself these questions as he moved ever closer to age 40 and remained single. He noticed he was far from alone in having established a strong network of friends that took the place of family -- and he wondered if there was a particular reason for this seeming trend among America's young people. In keeping with his journalistic background, Watters dubbed his group of friends an "urban tribe," and started to do some research.

He posted a survey on his Web site, urbantribes.net, and received thousands of responses from people who told him of their own tribes -- from a group of former sorority sisters to a team of ultimate-frisbee players. Watters also visited with some of these groups in order to get a closer look at urban tribes in areas other than his hometown, San Francisco. Watters' own workspace, the Writer's Grotto (www.sfgrotto.org), where he shares a water cooler with authors Mary Roach and Po Bronson, among others, is also an excellent place for observing group dynamics.

It was through his communication with other tribes that Watters realized that the conclusions he'd reached about these social groups were, in fact, a bit … inconclusive. In the introduction to Urban Tribes, Watters concedes that tribes are much more distinct from one another than he'd first supposed, with variations in group size, rituals, and origin. What is common among them, though, is the support and encouragement these friendships provide the group members, as well as the not-infrequent challenges that arise when a tribe-person decides to start dating someone -- and perhaps withdraws somewhat from the group.

"We live so much more by the narratives of others than we think we do," Watters said, adding, "There's a leap of faith you have to take with a serious romance, and friends can't be involved with that so much. Inherent in taking that leap is the acknowledgement that if the romance goes well, you are moving something in between you and [your group of friends]."

Potential relationship-sabotage aside, though, Watters maintains that urban tribes are emblematic of the fact that there is much more to today's young adults than many people might realize -- especially if said people hew to the way books like Slackers, Generation X, and others portray Americans aged 21 to 39.

It was partly a reaction to these books that inspired Watters to learn more about his own social cohort. "It came from annoyance on two levels," he said. "It bothered me not only that others would define [the time between college and marriage] as a sort of limbo, but also that there were moments in my life when I believed it…. I looked at myself in the mirror and thought I was wasting time." He added, "When you begin to believe something like that, you have to take a hard look at your life and either make another case, or change your life."

Watters ended up doing both. Urban Tribes contains not only his musings and the fruits of his investigations into this social trend, but a look at the way his life changed over the course of the project. As he chronicled the elastic entity that is a tribe, Watters met and married a woman named Rebecca, and their first child is due quite soon. The experience made him realize that, as a 38-year-old, a wedding meant something different: "It's no longer about your parents releasing you to another institution. I'd already been released from my parents in a day-to-day way, so marriage for me was the tribe coming together and celebrating a new union -- and letting me go into another institution."

But what of those people who have made it a general practice to avoid making group decisions daily, who perhaps prefer to live alone or with one other person rather than with six other 30-somethings? There is something for them in Urban Tribes, too, though the book will serve less as a validation of their lives than as an interesting peek at the ways in which others have created a certain type of existence.

And, Watters added, although the book does not explicitly address those over age 40, people who are gay, or those who live in the suburbs or rural areas, he does not mean to indicate the tribe phenomenon doesn't exist in other segments of American society. He said that, while "there is a sense that the marriage delay comes mostly to people who have higher education and pursue a demanding career" -- and that there is a larger number of tribes in what he calls "college destination cities" (the urban areas to which people move after graduating college) -- a major element of Urban Tribes is the realization that the concept of an urban tribe is "not a precise thing."

It is precisely this imprecision that fascinates Watters, as well as the various tribes he has communicated with while exploring the phenomenon. For example, he noted, "My mother is a widow, and she has a lot of friends similar to mine, in terms of the ways they care for each other. If humans are alone, they will find similar groups of people…. It's normal human behavior."

Watters said he hopes to encourage more discussion on the Web site, and is in the process of finishing a new version of the site that will include a blog and a gallery of tribes, so users can load photos and descriptions of their circles of friends. "It's been a wonderful display of people wanting to participate in a conversation, probably because people are a little anxious about what it all means," he explained.

There will be no personal anxiety in Watter's next book (still in the idea stage), which he said will not turn an eye on his own life. His previous books, Making Monsters (Univ. of California Press) and Therapy's Delusions (S&S), both dealt with psychology and society: "Through those books I got a baseline sense of how I think the mind works, and I will apply [this sense] to every piece of writing I do … the importance of social situations, how they provide narrative for people."

Before tackling that project, though, Watters will go on tour to promote Urban Tribes, with stops at independent bookstores from Seattle to Saint Paul to Philadelphia. Watters said he hopes there will be people on the bookstores' staff who are in his demographic, and his "deepest hope is that conversation [about urban tribes] will spread from group to group. If I'm right about what I said in chapter four, that the tribes are uniquely connected and ideas spread through them, this book should sell well. If I'm wrong … it won't!"

Time -- and tribes -- shall tell. -- Linda M. Castellitto