The Changing American Family

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Alexis and Jim enjoyed grocery shopping together. Though they

lived nearly fourteen hours apart in travel time, the couple would

connect virtually via Facetime—she on her iPhone, he on his tablet—

and stride down their respective supermarket aisles, selecting food.

Later, at their respective homes, they would cook meals “together.”

Lively and jokingly self-deprecating in her interview, Alexis

(a government employee in her mid-twenties) frequently spoke

about her love for Jim (an engineer) and her excitement about

their future. Describing herself as “a homebody,” she told me

that, while she was away from Jim, she did not go out on the

weekends. “I’d rather just sit and watch a movie and have him

on Facetime. And even though he’s not here, just having his little

face on the screen—just to know that he’s there [is important].”

When I interviewed Alexis and Jim, they had been married for

about two and a half years and were now living apart for the

second time. They had no children, though both indicated that

they planned to, when they reunited.

Ted, a corporate executive in his mid-fifties, similarly

explained that he and his wife Ramona communicated often,

sending “a lot of” emails back and forth and talking on the

phone three or four times a day. The trip between their two

homes could take anywhere from less than an hour to more

than two hours, depending on the time of day. Ted typically

made that drive, and the couple saw each other three or four

days a week. Ted and Ramona had grown children, who were

now out of the house.

“We probably communicate, via different media, as much

when we’re apart as we would if we saw each other an hour

or two or three every night,” Ted told me, clarifying that these

“different media” ranged from email and the phone to an

online word game they played together remotely. Later in our

phone interview, when we had moved on to a different topic,

he paused mid-speech: “I just got an email from my wife,” he

said, “if you want to know for your record.”

From 2012 to 2013, I interviewed 97 people who lived

apart from their spouses due to the geographic incompat-

ibility of their professional careers. These so-called commuter

spouses, like Alexis, Jim, Ted, and Ramona, often emphasized

their “constant” communication, describing how it facilitated

commuter spouses and the changing american family by danielle j. lindemann

27FA L L 2 0 1 7 c o n t e x t s

their ability to remain integrated in each other’s lives even when

they were apart.

To be sure, commuter spouses are not representative of all

couples who live apart in the U.S. today—or even all married

couples who live apart for work-related reasons. The people I

interviewed, in general, were relatively well-educated (71% had

graduate degrees), self-identifi ed as White or Caucasian (93%),

and were not in dire fi nancial straits. Yet, in other ways, they

are a uniquely illuminating population. Commuter spouses sit

at the crux of broad structural and cultural changes related to

marriage and the family that have been occurring in the United

States since the 1970s. Examining an extreme result of these

changes—spouses who must geographically separate in order

to reconcile work and family—enables us to better understand

these historical dynamics.

In particular, these couples refl ect the shift toward greater

autonomy within marriage, but also how new technologies

enable family members to remain integrated in each other’s lives.

When it comes to the historical dynamics of marriage and the

family, commuter spouses embody both the current sweeping

us forward and the ties that lash us to the past.

new families, changing dynamics Historically, couples have lived apart for all sorts of reasons—

for instance, immigration, military deployment, incarceration,

institutionalization, marital discord, and non-marital long-dis-

tance relationships. However, the appearance of dual-income

married couples who live apart in service to both spouses’ pro-

fessional jobs is a relatively recent phenomenon, born out of a

specifi c concatenation of social forces.

For one thing, wives have entered the workforce in greater

numbers. In 1970, 41% of married women in the U.S. were

Living apart from a spouse can support Americans’ desire for individuality, even in a family structure.

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Contexts, Vol. 16, No. 4. pp. 26-31. ISSN 1536-5042, electronic ISSN 1537-60521. © 2017American Sociological Association. contexts.sagepub.com. DOI 10.1177/1536504217742388

commuter spouses and the changing american family by danielle j. lindemann

28 contexts.org

working for pay. That figure had grown to 50% by 1980, and

by 2010, to 61%. Women, too, are outpacing men in terms of

educational attainment. According to the Pew Research Center,

between 1994 and 2012 the share of young women who were

enrolled in college immediately out of high school increased from

63% to 71%; for men, the portion remained constant at 61%.

Alongside these changes in gender roles, families are now

embedded within tighter, more competitive job markets, with

more workers experiencing greater employment instability. The

U.S. economy increasingly relies upon contingent, shorter-term

positions in the place of long-term, stable employment. Further,

the increased specialization of higher education and the profes-

sions has had a particular impact on the career prospects of

professional workers. Ironically, by going to school, investing time

and capital, and receiving advanced degrees in highly specialized

fields, these workers have in some ways reduced their options (or

at least their perceptions of their options), rather than expanding

them. Commuter spouses reflect these dynamics. Indeed, based

on data from the 2000 U.S. Census, economist Marta Murray-

Close found that marital non-cohabitation was more common

among workers with doctorates than workers whose highest

level of education was an undergraduate degree. While we do

not know how many of these couples were commuter spouses

and how many were living apart for other reasons, these find-

ings perhaps indicate that highly educated professional couples

are more likely to get pulled apart by specialized labor markets.

In addition to these structural shifts, the meaning of mar-

riage has also undergone some core changes. One obvious

example is the fight for marriage equality and the legal affir-

mation of same-sex marriage. Also, Americans have come

to view marriage as more “individualized.” Scholars suggest

that, since the latter part of the 20th century, men and women

began entering into the institution increasingly for the emo-

tional support, intimacy, and romantic love

it provided—and increasingly felt free to

exit their relationships when they weren’t

receiving these benefits anymore. As soci-

ologist Andrew Cherlin has observed,

the two partners have become decreas-

ingly interdependent and less likely than

spouses in the past to focus on conform-

ing to socially-defined roles, such as the

“good parent” or “dutiful spouse”; instead, “personal choice

and self-development loom large” in today’s marriages. Other

researchers, too, have found persistent trends toward emphases

on personal choice, gender equality, and individual decision-

making within marriages. Within individualized marriage—as

the moniker suggests—spouses, more than ever, remain two

distinct individuals pursuing their own goals.

putting the “i” in marriage Commuter marriages are not only born of these major

shifts in the shape and meaning of American marriage—the

Some couples share meals or watch movies remotely by keeping a computer or other device close at hand.

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Both individualistic and interdependent, both freed by technology and bound by its limitations, commuter spouses tell the story of a changing institution.

29FA L L 2 0 1 7 c o n t e x t s

Commuter spouses sit at the crux of broad structural and cultural changes related to marriage and the family that have been occurring in the United States since the 1970s.

movement toward gender equality, an increasingly specialized

professional workforce, and a heightened emphasis on individual

choice and personal decision-making—but they also illuminate

these changes in a unique way. In particular, spouses who live

apart in service to the conflicting demands of their dual careers

become key players in the overall drama of marital individualiza-

tion, and their relationships serve as laboratories in which we can

investigate these social changes in an amplified form.

Indeed, when commuters spoke with me about their mar-

riages, many specifically emphasized how individualistic their

relationships were. They indicated that they were suited for

this lifestyle because they were already highly autonomous. For

instance, Virginia, a small-business owner in her late thirties,

described herself as “independent” and driven in her career. Her

description of her marriage was consistent with her husband

Bob’s. When I asked how he and his wife relied on each other, Bob

characterized that as a “hard question,” proclaiming, “We’re both

pretty independent!” He then launched into the friendly laughter

that often punctuated our interview. When talking about their

marriage, Virginia and Bob both emphasized autonomy, personal

growth, and romantic love—concepts that resonate strongly with

Cherlin’s notion of the individualized marriage in which “personal

choice and self-development loom large.”

virtually together Based on this evidence, it might be tempting to think of

commuters only as embodiments of individualized marriage

and to close the book on them. After all,

these are spouses who are so invested

in their personal career goals that they

don’t even live together all of the time.

And, importantly, most of these couples

are not separated due to extreme financial

constraints; the vast majority told me that

they lived apart to fulfill their individual

career aspirations, not for strictly monetary

reasons. (In fact, some emphasized that

they actually lost money by maintaining two residences.)

Yes, commuter spouses tend to reflect and to value spousal

autonomy. But when we zoom in on these relationships and look

at the nuance, we begin to see that, perhaps paradoxically, com-

muter spouses still do think of themselves as highly connected

to their partners, despite their geographic separation. Indeed,

through communication technologies, they are able to feel

“together” in many ways, even when physically they are not.

For example, in addition to their Facetime grocery trips,

Alexis and Jim both noted other ways that they remained in

touch during the time they were apart. Alexis, for instance,

emphasized that, the day I interviewed her, she and Jim had

talked on the phone three times already. She added that she

appreciated the “constant contact” they had, even if it only

consisted of him texting “I love you” or the lyrics to a song. In

his interview, Jim concurred, further suggesting that the distance

had improved the couple’s communication in some ways. “I

actually think it’s made us closer over the years,” he told me.

Many of the themes that Alexis and Jim discussed—for

instance, the “constant” nature of their contact, the use of

technology to facilitate interconnectedness, and the way the

distance “forced” them to communicate—reflected what many

other commuters told me as well. Most said, while living apart,

they spoke with their spouses by phone at least once a day, and

about 38% indicated that they generally talked by phone three

or more times a day. Phone calls, texting, and email were the

most frequently used forms of communication.

But perhaps more revealing than the number of times

they phoned their partners was the fact that many felt that

their overall communication was continual. For example, Josie,

a professor in her early fifties who had been in a commuter

marriage for six years, told me that she was in touch with her

husband “during our waking hours, constantly.” Indicating

that they talked on the phone “every two hours,” she laughed

and added, “Cell phones, you know? He has an iPad, [and] I

have an iPad. We Facetime. I just Facetimed with him before

I saw you. I’ve talked to him three times today and it’s, what,

12:30 [p.m.]?” Many commuter spouses, like Josie, used words

Commuter spouses can log hours in their cars and on Facetime, keeping up family connections.

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like “constant,” “continued,” or “ongoing” to

describe how often they were in touch with their

spouses. Communication technologies, further-

more, were not merely for talking but became

crucial for collectively managing tasks as a couple.

Despite their seemingly autonomous relationships,

commuter spouses still relied on each other while

apart, in many ways.

The utility of communication technologies

extended beyond these couples to their children as

well. About 37% of the people I interviewed had

minor children at the time they lived apart from

their spouses. These parents gave rich accounts

of the various ways in which they used technologies to stay in

touch with their kids while living elsewhere. I heard stories about

chatting on cell phones in airports, Facetiming with astounded

toddlers, and texting teenagers from the office. Further, when

commuter parents discussed their virtual reliance on each other,

collective childrearing was a major element of that discussion.

Commuters used technologies to check in with each other about

their children’s well-being, to coordinate schedules, to pay for

extracurricular activities, to look at grades, and to engage in

numerous other collective parenting tasks.

To a large extent, the continued interdependence between

spouses (and between parents and children) while living apart

was possible because of technology. The advantages of these

new forms of communication were particularly salient for cou-

ples who had lived apart both before and after such resources

were available. One woman had lived apart from her husband

in the 1980s and was doing it again when I interviewed her. She

underscored the difference in the two experiences: unlike last

time, now she and her husband were “constantly” in touch and

“sometimes it felt like he wasn’t even really gone.”

This historical evolution also comes into stark relief when

we look at earlier scholarship on this same topic. For instance,

researchers Naomi Gerstel and Harriet Gross, who studied com-

muter marriage in the 1980s, observed that one downside of

this lifestyle was the loss of shared leisure time. As one of their

interviewees explained, “If I wanted to go to a movie, I wouldn’t

go there by myself… I don’t get out a whole lot these days.”

Today, commuter spouses can share activities remotely, and they

don’t necessarily have to “get out” to do it. In fact, my inter-

viewees often noted their ability to engage in leisure activities

while apart—playing Xbox together online or having “movie

nights” in which they watched the same films in their respective

residences while chatting about them over the phone or online.

With the push of some buttons or with a few keystrokes, they

were able to check in to coordinate children’s schedules, to make

sure one of them was paying this month’s utility bill online, or to

play online card games. They had the capacity to be reachable

at almost any time, so that they could rely on each other—for

emotional support, for help with the mundane business aspects

of life, and for fun.

Of course, not everything about commuter marriage has

changed since the 1980s. For instance, the

gender dynamics within these couples have

remained static in some ways. In their study

from over 30 years ago, Gerstel and Gross

found that women more often than men

welcomed the fact that there were “fewer

demands and fewer constraints” on their

time in the absence of their partners and that women’s domestic

duties were reduced (while men’s were increased) when couples

lived apart. Interestingly, my overall findings regarding these

particular advantages of commuter marriage for women were

strikingly similar. Access to cell phones and the internet has

reshaped commuter marriages in some, but not all, respects.

distance isn’t dead New technologies have altered the commuter marriage, but

they are not able to bridge all gaps or heal all wounds. In the

provocatively titled 1997 book The Death of Distance: How the

Communications Revolution Will Change Our Lives, economist

Frances Cairncross predicted that new communication tech-

nologies would render physical separations between people

decreasingly important. In some ways, commuter spouses,

Highly educated professional couples are, perhaps, more likely to get pulled apart by specialized labor markets.

Commuter spouses clearly demonstrate that caring, committed connection can come in many forms.

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whose lives are intertwined even while they apart, are embodi-

ments of this prophesy.

Still, distance matters for these couples. The commuter

lifestyle presents challenges that can’t all be met by “constant

contact” over email, text, phone calls, or even video chatting.

Although they emphasized how often they communicated with

their spouses, many commuters still suggested that their varied

mechanisms of communication were no substitute for in-person

contact. Perhaps the most obvious issue was the reduced time

for sex and other forms of physical intimacy. But my interview-

ees described other frustrations, such as feeling disconnected,

not being able to adequately convey emotions, and feeling a

lack of resolution at the end of arguments. Furthermore, the

bureaucratic infrastructure of the U.S. is still organized for

married couples who live together. For that reason, marital non-

cohabitation creates some logistical issues that can’t be resolved

in the virtual world. Some people I interviewed, for instance,

discussed their problems with getting insurance or mortgages

on two “primary” residences for one married couple.

It’s also important to point out that I relied on commuter

spouses to cast light on their own experiences, as seen through

the lens of their own perceptions. Two-thirds of the people I

interviewed said that they felt judged negatively by others for

their commuter lifestyles. It is possible that some commuter

spouses overemphasized their “constant” connectedness while

apart as a way to manage that stigma—to preemptively “justify”

their marriages to people who might cast aspersions on them.

Still, if this were the case, it would still be instructive. Cherlin has

made the point that, though we have seen a rise in alternatives

to marriage, Americans still sentimentalize marriage—in fact,

the symbolic significance of the institution “has remained high

and may even have increased.” Accordingly, my findings sug-

gest that, however often commuter spouses “actually” email

each other in practice, these non-traditional couples still think

about—and represent—their relationships in ways that tie into

some traditional notions about relationships and marriage.

Commuters’ narratives about staying in touch not only shed

light on the dynamics of these unique marriages, but they reflect

how so many Americans now sustain their intimate relationships

through new technologies when the demands of work preclude

physical togetherness. The use of technology to bridge physical

space, but its inability to do so fully, likely resonates with other

types of couples who rely on these mechanisms—for example,

not just commuter spouses and other long-distance couples, but

also geographically-separate friends or couples who work long

hours or incompatible schedules. Indeed, research on other types

of relationships suggests that, just as in the case of commuter

couples, such technologies can help geographically separate

individuals to manage tasks together, but they are not a panacea.

One 2012 study of divorced co-parents by Lawrence Ganong and

his colleagues, for instance, found that such emergent technolo-

gies could facilitate joint planning and decision-making—but not

always, especially if the co-parent relationship was contentious.

Regardless of their limitations, these technologies are not

just coping mechanisms for spouses who live in two different

residences but are integral parts of life now for all types of fami-

lies. Commuter spouses, who live in separate physical spaces

from their primary partners and who carry out large portions

of their relationships via such technologies, sit in a key position

to illuminate these much broader dynamics. Both individualistic

and interdependent, both freed by technology and bound by

its limitations, commuters tell the story of a changing institu-

tion that still remains rooted in the past, and about the social

mechanisms that pull us apart and bind us together.

recommended resources Paul R. Amato, Alan Booth, David R. Johnson, and Stacy J. Rog- ers. 2007. Alone Together: How Marriage in America Is Changing. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Provides an overview of major, late-20th century changes in the shape of American marriage/

Andrew J. Cherlin. 2004. “The Deinstitutionalization of Ameri- can Marriage,” Journal of Marriage and Family. Explores histori- cal changes in the meaning of American marriage, including the increased emphasis on individualism and personal choice.

Frances Cairncross. 1997. The Death of Distance: How the Com- munications Revolution Will Change Our Lives. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press. Published at the advent of major technological changes, this book argues that communications mechanisms such as the internet and wireless phones will render geographic separation between people decreasingly salient.

Lawrence H. Ganong, Marilyn Coleman, Richard Feistman, Tyler Jamison, and Melinda Stafford Markham. 2012. “Communica- tion Technology and Postdivorce Coparenting,” Family Relations. Analyzes the use and impact of communication technologies within divorced co-parenthood (another type of geographically separate relationship).

Naomi Gerstel and Harriet E. Gross. 1984. Commuter Marriage: A Study of Work and Family. New York: Guilford. Provides a use- ful backdrop for understanding how new technologies have changed the dynamics of these relationships, as well as how those dynamics have remained the same since this book was published.

Danielle Lindemann is in the sociology and anthropology department at Lehigh

University. She is the author of Dominatrix: Gender, Eroticism, and Control in the

Dungeon.