CNBC Asks Why It Is So Expensive to Be Single in the U.S.

The business news channel CNBC took a serious look at the issue, “Why it’s so expensive to be single in the U.S.,” airing a video of more than 12 minutes – impressive, considering that many segments on news shows are just a few minutes, if that. You can click the link to watch the video […]

The Census Bureau Commemorates Singles Week Because of Thomas F. Coleman

The third full week of September is Unmarried and Single Americans Week. The Census Bureau has been commemorating that event for 20 years. That is no small thing in a nation so smitten by marriage, a nation in which people who are legally married – regardless of the quality or length of that marriage – […]

In Many Places, Single People Can Be Legally Prohibited from Living with Friends

Big demographic changes in the US over the past half-century have changed the face of the nation. More people are living single – and staying single. Fewer people are having children, or they are having fewer children than the generations before them. That means that today’s adults are increasingly likely to have no spouse, no […]

Deficit Narratives of Single Life Are Perpetuated When Systems of Inequality Are Ignored

I took my first steps toward studying singlehood, and not just practicing it, in 1992. I wasn’t surprised to find that single people were stereotyped and stigmatized in popular culture. I was dismayed that the same kinds of put-downs appeared even in prestigious nonacademic publications, such as the New Yorker and the New York Times. […]

A Singles Pride Movement – from a Half Century Ago

As a single person who cares very much about the place of single people in society, I look longingly at other groups that have mounted successful social movements. Where is our Singles Pride movement? It turns out that there was such a thing in the US in the 1970s. A person who played a big […]

Longtime UE Member Makes Compelling Argument for Moving Past Marriage

Unmarried Equality has had various names over the years, such as the American Association for Single People and the Alternatives to Marriage Project. One of the people who has been onboard and an active member across these various transitions is Jacklyn Geller. She has written for our newsletter back when we had such a publication […]

New Book Makes the Case for the Legal Recognition of More Kinds of Families

People who are married have access to many important federal benefits and protections that are not available to single people or the important people in their lives, such as a close friend or a special relative. Those advantages include economic ones, health-related ones, advantages relevant to children, and many others. The economic benefits include, among […]

Feeling Abandoned by the People in Power

In a just-published article about the experiences of people living alone during the pandemic, two sociologists documented experiences of being marginalized or isolated that are not often recognized by people who study loneliness. Some people are not suffering from loneliness in the way we typically understand it. They have the social relationships that they want. […]

Money Matters: The Singles Tax Isn’t Just Relevant to Single People

There are many deeply meaningful reasons to love single life. But all single people in the U.S., regardless of how they feel about being single, are at a disadvantage in one important way – financially. The most obvious way single people lose out financially is if they live alone and don’t share any of their […]

The Political Power of Single Women

“In the near future, American politics, both national and local, may turn on the degree to which people remain single, and also whether they decide to have children.”  That declaration appeared in an article by Joel Kotkin and Samuel J. Abrams, The Rise of the Single Woke (and Young, Democratic) Female, published in RealClear and […]