“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 […]

Getting single people and single life taken seriously should not be a hard sell. In the U.S., nearly half of all adults 18 and older are not married. On the average, Americans spend more years of their adult lives not married than married. This is not just an American or even a Western thing. The […]

Single people often get short shrift in a world obsessed with marriage and coupling, and at Unmarried Equality and elsewhere, I have often pointed out examples of singlism (the stereotyping, stigmatizing, and marginalizing of single people, and the discrimination against them). But just as important as all the ways in which single people are disadvantaged […]

Sometimes it is obvious when people are treating others unfairly. Some examples of discrimination are blatant. Consider this example that Wendy Morris and Stacey Sinclair and I tested in our study of housing discrimination. We told our participants that a landlord was choosing between two potential tenants, and both had steady jobs and were described […]

Tomorrow (September 18) is the first day of Unmarried and Single Americans Week, a time to keep in mind the ways in which single people contribute to society but are rarely recognized or rewarded the way married people are. Consider, for example, some workplace practices. Earlier this year, the boss of a UK company proudly […]

In everyday life, single people are often stereotyped and stigmatized in the conversations they have with other people. The kinds of things other people say to us, and about us, sometimes reveal that they think single life is something people are stuck with, and not something anyone would actually choose. The kinds of questions they […]

Seven years ago, in July of 2015, I started an online Facebook group, the Community of Single People, for people who want to discuss every aspect of living single except dating or trying to unsingle themselves. We talk about all sorts of things — our joys and accomplishments, our challenges and frustrations, our observations and our […]

What do you think of single women raising children on their own – is it a good thing for society, a bad thing, or do you think it doesn’t make much difference? In 2018 and again in 2021, a representative national sample of close to 10,000 adults in the U.S. answered that question. Results showed […]

When I was researching my book How We Live Now: Redefining Home and Family in the 21st Century, I asked many people how they would like to live if they could choose any way at all. One popular fantasy was the Golden Girls model – a group of people would all live together under the […]

More and more young, talented single women without children are pursuing jobs in business and STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math). They should have it made. Because they are not mothers, they are not at risk for the workplace penalties mothers sometimes face. And because employers may see them (whether accurately or inaccurately) as […]