Urban Tribes: A Generation Redefines Friendship, Family, And Commitment

In his early thirties, Ethan Watters began to realize that none of his friends were following the paths of their parents. Instead of settling down in couples and starting families, they lived and vacationed in groups, worked together at businesses they'd started, and met every week for dinner. As he started to document this phenomenon, he encountered countless other "tribes," in cities all over the U.S. Watters explores why tribe members have embraced this structure and what kind of affection and stability they find there, and contends that the conventional wisdom painting Generation X as isolated, selfish slackers may hide an unexpected, much warmer picture.

Ethan Watters is a journalist who has written about social trends for publications from Glamour to the New York Times Magazine; he is the coauthor of two books on psychotherapy, Making Monsters: False Memories, Psychotherapy, and Sexual Hysteria and Therapy's Delusions. He lives in San Francisco.