These are frightening times for people who are not married and their children, and even for people who are married but no longer want to be. Lawmakers and political leaders in the US and elsewhere are busy proposing puritanical laws that penalize people for the sin of living single.

When Americans think about the people who mean the most to them, the people they can really count on when they need someone, they don’t come up with the same list of names that they once did. For a long time, immediate family members filled those roles. Grown-ups expected to look to their spouse first, […]

 If you are an adult and you don’t have a kid with you, a Los Angeles city councilman wants to ban you from entering playgrounds. Los Angeles is not the sole offender; in some other major cities, including New York, the ban is already in effect, with the result that people have been ticketed “for […]

In my last column, “What unmarried Americans want,” I shared people’s answers to the question, “If you could change just one law or policy to make things better for unmarried/single Americans, what would it be?” What a difference a month makes. Changes in laws in policies at the federal level – at least the sorts […]

Recently, I posted this question at the Facebook pages for Unmarried Equality and the Community of Single People: “If you could change just one law or policy to make things better for unmarried/single Americans, what would it be?” I would like to say that the question is particularly important because of election season, but unfortunately, […]

To many Americans, home ownership is an essential component of the American dream. But how often do unmarried Americans get to (or choose to) share in that dream? What do they want when they look for a home, and what do they actually get? Thanks to 35 years of survey data collected by the National […]

The stereotyping, stigmatizing, and marginalizing of unmarried Americans is not just about us. It also extends to all of the important people in our lives, especially if they are not romantic partners. The people we care about the most have unequal rights in laws and policies, and they are often devalued or ignored in everyday […]

Colleges and universities are powerhouses of critical thinking. They set agendas. They influence generations of students. And they are not just ivory towers. What happens in universities does not stay in universities. It slips out into the ether, seeping into the minds of political leaders, business leaders, religious leaders, social justice advocates, and decision-makers in […]

Marrying a platonic friend for financial and practical benefits can be a deliciously subversive individual act, but for social justice writ large, we need more.

It is open season on people who are not married. It always has been. Our lives are inferior, we are told, over and over again. What’s more, the reporters and moralizers and others telling us our lives are second rate claim to have the backing of science. Get married, they tell us, and we will […]