Want to Share a Rental with Roommates? In Some Places, That’s Illegal

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 […]

The Single Professional Women Who Get Promoted Less Often Than Everyone Else

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 […]

Clout Isn’t Just about the Number of People in a Group, But the Number Who Personally Know Someone in That Group

I was once interviewed by a reporter writing a cover story for the Washington Post Magazine on people who stay single. I told her that I love being single. It is who I really am. I’m Single at Heart. In the story she wrote, she said that after talking to me, she tried to think […]

Single Women with Disabilities, Part 2: Guest Post by Jill Summerville

This is the 2nd of Jill Summerville’s 2-part article, “Single women with disabilities: A worth universally doubted.” Part 1 is here. A Woman With A Disability Must Be In Want Of A Marriage A Google search for “How can I build my dream girlfriend?” provides so many options that VideoInk actually ranked the best virtual […]

Single Women with Disabilities, Part 1: Guest Post by Jill Summerville

Jill Summerville describes the many ways that single women with disabilities are unfairly disadvantaged. This is Part 1 of 2. Bella’s intro: The experiences and perspectives of people with disabilities have been vastly underrepresented in writings about single people. I am so grateful to Jill Summerville for all she is sharing in her 2-part contribution […]

National Survey Documents High Rates of Denial that Singlism Exists or that It Is Unfair

Single people are targets of singlism: they are stereotyped, stigmatized, and discriminated against. Research documenting singlism is piling up, but do Americans realize it even exists? And if they are told about ways in which single people are treated unfairly, do they acknowledge that the unequal treatment is in fact unfair? YouGov just reported the […]

Economists’ Explanations for Women’s Occupational Choices Are Also Relevant to the Choice to Be Romantically Coupled

My heart was broken again recently, when I heard the story of still another single person (I’ll call him Sam) who really wanted to stay single but could not get past the feeling that doing so would mean there was something seriously wrong with him. Sam and many other people whose best life may well […]

The Number of Unmarried Americans Continues to Grow, Latest Census Report Shows

On November 29, the Census Bureau released its estimates of America’s family and living arrangements for the year 2021. Results showed a continuation of trends ongoing for decades. The number and percentage of unmarried Americans has grown, as has the number and percentage of people living alone. The age at which people first marry, among […]

What Might Motivate Coupled People to Be Allies to Single People?

In some ways, it has been a good couple of weeks for calling attention to the ways in which single people are disadvantaged. For example, in his opinion piece in the New York Times, Charles M. Blow said: “As a society, we have to start asking ourselves whether it is fair and right to continue […]

Jaclyn Geller Offers 10 Bold Ways Single People Can Be the Change We Want to See

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: […]