It is a paradox of contemporary life in the U.S. and in other nations around the world: More people than ever before are not married, and yet, in so many ways, marriage still rules. Marriage retains a special place in the cultural and legal landscape, and married couples are glorified and celebrated and rewarded simply […]
Beyond the Nuclear Family: New Policies and Practices Are Needed for the Way We Live Now
March 22, 2016 by
We are living in a time of unprecedented possibilities for how to live. Nuclear family households may still be sentimental favorites in popular culture, but in real life, they are in the distinct minority. Fewer than 20 percent of all households in the U.S. are comprised solely of nuclear families. Instead, we have a proliferation […]
How the Washington Post (Almost) Published a Week of Respectful Articles about Unmarried Life
February 14, 2016 by
In the week leading up to Valentine’s Day, the “In Theory” blog at the Washington Post published a series on Singlehood in America. The editors initially invited six experts and scholars to contribute. The introductory article listed only those six. If only those people wrote for the series, it would have been one of the […]
Unmarried Status Is a Diversity Issue
January 17, 2016 by
Get married, have kids, stay married. That’s the script for how adult lives are supposed to unfold. Never mind that in the U.S., the script maps onto the real lives of fewer and fewer people all the time. Nearly half of all adults 18 and older are legally single, and growing numbers of them never […]
Unmarried Americans as Home Buyers and Home Creators
December 21, 2015 by
Want to know who buys homes in the U.S. and why? If so, you will need to look way past people who are married, who are now just one of the many categories of people buying a home and making a home. In the most recent of their annual reports of home buyer profiles, the […]
The Right to Be Single
November 21, 2015 by
Now that all couples have a right to marry, can we now have a right to be single?
Nuclear Family Privilege: Naming It and Slaying It
October 12, 2015 by
Our organization is called Unmarried Equality for good reason. Those two words should go together. Only they don’t. If you are unmarried, you are unequal. Unequal under the law, unequal in the workplace, unequal in the marketplace, and unequal in everyday life.
Is Marriage a Greedy Institution?
September 14, 2015 by
[This is the sixth in my new series of monthly columns. The views expressed here are my own and not the official positions of Unmarried Equality.] In our matrimaniacal society, there is a lot of bedrock talk about marriage. The institution, we are told, is the bedrock of society, the very foundation of civilization. It […]
Housing Discrimination against People Who Are Not Married: What We Just Don’t Get
August 16, 2015 by
[This is the fifth in my new series of monthly columns. The views expressed here are my own and not the official positions of Unmarried Equality.] When advocates for same-sex marriage tried to make their case, there was one obstacle they did not often face – they did not have to persuade many people that […]
Now It’s Really Time for Unmarried Equality
July 18, 2015 by
[This is the fourth in my new series of monthly columns. The views expressed here are my own and not the official positions of Unmarried Equality.] Now that the Supreme Court, in Obergefell v. Hodges, has made same-sex marriage legal across the land, one of the most popular questions has been, “What’s next?” I think […]
