Jaclyn Geller, a longtime member of Unmarried Equality, is guest-posting here to share her bold (and sometimes hilarious) Call to Action for single people who are tired of the pervasive unfairness that advantages married people and deeply disadvantages anyone who is not officially married. Geller, an English professor and author of Here Comes the Bride: […]

Married men are paid more than single men. That has been demonstrated so many times, researchers have a name for it: “the male marriage premium.” The question now is why. Do married men deserve to be paid more because they are better workers? Or are employers discriminating against single men? Or is it some of […]

The Census Bureau just released their first-ever report on older people in the U.S. who do not have biological children. For those of us interested in single people, the report is relevant because 7 out of 10 older adults who have never married do not have any biological children. It is also important because single […]

Here at Unmarried Equality, we mostly focus on the big ways that single people are targeted with discrimination, such as the institutional biases that are written into laws, policies, and practices. But the everyday prejudices matter, too. In two new studies, researchers showed how getting patronized, excluded, and unsupported undermines single people’s satisfaction with their […]

Something unusual and quite good happened when President Biden signed the Covid relief bill, the American Rescue Plan, into law on March 11, 2021. The needs of a group of Americans who are typically ignored, single adults with no children, were recognized and addressed. Maybe you haven’t heard anything about this. In some of the […]

What if we wanted all Americans to be economically secure—what would that take? In an important article, “Uncoupling,” just published in the Spring 2021 issue of the Arizona State Law Journal, professors Naomi Cahn and June Carbone offer an answer: Benefits need to be uncoupled from marriage and employment. It is perhaps the most fundamental […]

Under the law, only some groups get protected from discrimination. An important question is, who should get protected? What factors should matter? In a 2014 Stanford Law Review article, “Compulsory sexuality,” Elizabeth F. Emens addressed a related question: What factors actually do matter?

[Bella’s intro: I am grateful to everyone who advocates for unmarried equality. Craig Wynne, who discussed his book, How to Be a Happy Bachelor, here, is one of those people. Better still, he teaches his students to recognize policies and practices that are unfair to single people and to do something about them. In this […]

An in-depth study of 4 European nations documents the ways in which people living a conventionally coupled life are systematically advantaged, formally and informally. The authors think that should change, and they suggest ways of protecting and supporting people living outside of conventional coupledom. In an important new book, The Tenacity of the Couple-Norm, five […]

A study of more than 17,000 married people found that those dependent on a spouse for health insurance were less likely to divorce Here at Unmarried America, we believe that no one should have to marry to get access to something so fundamental as health insurance. And yet, there is evidence that some people do […]