The significance of friendship in UK single mothers’ intimate lives

Abstract

This article explores friendship as an aspect of the intimate lives of heterosexual single mothers. It has been argued that friendship holds an increasing significance in intimate lives, against a backdrop of increasing choice and declining emphasis on kinship ties. In this context, friendship has been viewed as displacing the centrality of heteronormative romantic relationships and, in this research, friendships were often accorded a higher status. In this narrative study, participants related shifts in their personal landscapes of intimacy on becoming single mothers. Friendships were narrated as multifaceted, offering practical and emotional support, alongside acceptance. Foregrounding friendship provided possibilities for positive identifications in a context in which single mothers are often subject to judgements. While friendships were not usually described as an alternative to couple-centred family life ‐ which retained its status as the ideal intimate form ‐ for some, single motherhood entailed an opening out of intimate possibilities beyond the couple.

Reclaiming the Second Phase of Life? Intersectionality, Empowerment and Respectability in Midlife Romance

“…By the 1990s, nearly three quarters of divorces were initiated by women (Simpson, 1998). Sociological research on intimate life has examined decentering of these changes, including the sexual/love relationships, the centrality of friendships in satisfying needs for intimacy (Morris, 2019;Roseneil, 2007;Roseneil and Budgeon, 2004) and the rise of seemingly non-normative ways of doing relationships such as 'living apart together' (Duncan, 2011(Duncan, , 2015Duncan et al, 2014;Upton-Davis, 2015). The baby boom generation is seen to be the vanguard of these changes.…”