[Bella’s intro: When rental agents have an option to rent a property to a married couple, a cohabiting couple, or a pair of friends, they favor the married couple very disproportionately, even when the applicants are similar in every other way. That’s what my colleagues and I found in our studies of housing discrimination. When […]

“Working Families”: The Language Is a Problem and So Are the Policies Leaders and candidates from different political parties in the U.S. differ sharply in many ways, but on one matter, they seem united. Just about all of them claim to care about “working families.” I have a problem with that. Actually, several problems.

I’d love to be able to proclaim that in 2018, the Equality for Unmarried Americans Act was passed. Of course, there is no such legislation, and in the 2018 political climate, even lesser goals may have been unrealistic. (There was some progress before 2017.) In other ways, though, 2018 was a good year for us. […]

For decades, advocates for unmarried Americans have been arguing that access to health insurance should not be linked to marital status. Obamacare weakened that link, and new research shows that the results have been positive. More unmarried Americans are insured than before the Affordable Care Act was implemented.

One of the longstanding sources of frustration and disappointment among advocacy-oriented unmarried Americans is that political candidates rarely address us or promise to fight for us, the way they so often vow to stand up for married couples and traditional families. In their campaign materials, candidates who are married with children like to boast about […]

Adults in the 21st century have the opportunity to live radically liberating lives. For that, we have The Great Unraveling to thank.

Ah, marriage equality. Historian, pioneer of LGBTQ studies, and social-justice advocate Martin Duberman knows that a majority of LGBTQ people – or a majority of those who make their opinions known – cared about that issue. They wanted it on the agenda.

[Bella’s intro: In this guest post, Craig Wynne argues that even in these dire times, there are things we can do to create a more fair society for people who are not married. I hope he is right that change will happen, and maybe even sooner than he predicts.]

Want a formula for staying out of poverty? Conservatives such as Brad Wilcox and George Will have a favorite, with a catchy title and simple, 3-step process. It is their “success sequence.” Young adults, they believe, should be urged to pursue these three steps, in this order: