Urban Tribes

On a personal quest to find out why he is still single well into his 30s, Ethan Watters goes searching for answers, and along the way makes an extraordinary discovery about his generation. Rather than settle down into traditional families, he and his friends have formed an "Urban Tribe" - an intricate community of young people who live and work together in various combinations, form regular rituals and provide the same kind of support as an extended family. Across America and much of the rest of the world, tight-knit groups of friends are filling the increasingly wide gap between college and married life. While social commentators and parents wring their hands about the plight of "never-marrieds", the real story is that these young adults are spending those years living happily in groups of their own making. In the process, they're changing the landscape of modern cities, as well as their own prospects for the future. As Watters sees it, the "tribe years" represent less a failure to mate than a new kind of community, and a stage of personal development that makes later partnerships that much more mature and successful.

"Playful without being ironic and meaningful without being sappy... Urban Tribes gives hope to a generation mislabeled as apathetic and lost." -- Po Bronson

Ethan Watters is a journalist who has written about social trends for publications from Glamour to the New York Times Magazine. Recently married, he lives with his wife in San Francisco, where he helped found the San Francisco Writers' Grotto.