The deficit narrative of single life may be costing us our rights and our lives.
Here at Unmarried Equality, we are painfully aware of singlism. Single people are stereotyped, stigmatized, and marginalized. Even more consequentially, they are systematically disadvantaged by discriminatory laws and practices.
The stereotyping of single people seems like the soft stuff. So what if people think that unmarried adults are just not as good as those awesome married people? Does it really matter that the conventional wisdom, aided and abetted by scientific research and dubious interpretations of that research, has created a deficit narrative of single life?
I think it does.
At my “Living Single” blog at Psychology Today, I described the deficit narrative and the misleading assumptions at its core. I also pointed to ways that narrative is showing up in media stories about the pandemic that begin with the assumption that of course single people are struggling more than anyone else.
I think social scientists share some of the blame for the stereotypes that characterize single people as inferior to married people, as, for example, when they claim that getting married makes people happier and healthier and even lengthens their lives. (My critiques of all of those claims are here.) They are also guilty of too often ignoring the many strengths of single people, especially the “single at heart” singles who embrace their single lives. I made that case at “Living Single,” too.
Here I want to describe a few of the ways the deficit narrative can legitimate discrimination against single people and thereby cause them real harm.
The deficit narrative can cost single people their rights.
Research findings can be used to justify legal discrimination against particular groups. Consider, for example, the early sordid history of research on homosexuality. Under the banner of science, psychologists maintained that homosexuality was a sickness. They said that homosexuals just weren’t as mature as “normals.” They said homosexual acts were unnatural and uncommon. Homosexuality was included as a diagnosable mental illness in the official Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). It wasn’t removed until 1973.
By 1975, the American Psychological Association (APA) took back the sickness narrative that had been perpetuated by many of its members. In a statement, the organization said: “Homosexuality, per se, implies no impairment in judgment, stability, reliability, or general social or vocational capabilities.”
That was important. It was a big step forward. But lots of damage had already been done.
As Phillip Hammack and Eric Windell explained in “Psychology and the politics of same-sex desire in the United States”:
“the majority of psychological research prior to 1975 had supported (and in fact, helped to construct) a master narrative of abnormality with regard to homosexual behavior and identity, thus upholding the rationale of the sodomy statutes.” Those laws “explicitly criminalized same-sex behavior.”
The 1975 APA statement was a hard pivot in the direction of supporting, rather than undermining, the dignity and the rights of gay men and lesbians. The organization went on to provide scientific support for the proponents of marriage equality.
For example, in the 2010 ruling overturning Proposition 8, Judge Vaughn Walker declared that same-sex couples could no longer be banned from marrying in California. In making his case, he repeated those familiar misleading claims about the supposed superiority of married people over single people:
“Married people “are physically healthier. They tend to live longer. They engage in fewer risky behaviors. [They are] less likely to have psychological distress” than people who are not married.”
That was good for opening the doors of marriage to more people. But it kept the door shut to equality for unmarried Americans. And it did so based on claims that are at best misleading, and at worst, just plain wrong.
The deficit narrative is used as fodder for organized right-wing pro-marriage campaigns that hurt single people and their families.
The disparaging of single-parent families also has a long and shameful history, and political leaders from both ends of the spectrum have had a part in it. One of the most notorious examples was the 1965 Moynihan Report, in which terms such as “tangle of pathology” were used to characterize single-parent black families.
Today’s champions of stigmatizing single-parent families, and any individuals or families other than the married-with-children variety, are the marriage fundamentalists. In a ground-breaking report, the Family Story think tank documented the extensive, organized, and generously funded efforts of at least 14 institutions to reward and celebrate just that one kind of family, and stigmatize and maybe even punish every other variety.
Previously, I’ve discussed the costs of the marriage fundamentalist agenda to some of the most disadvantaged single people and their children. Here is one example:
“A chilling “success” racked up by the marriage fundamentalists involved taking economic support from poor children and channeling it into marriage promotion and marriage education programs marketed to adults. As the report notes, marriage fundamentalism “drove the repeal of Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) – a social-security program that provided an income floor for eligible low-income children – and established marriage promotion as an explicit federal program.” Since then, marriage promotion programs have been the proud recipients of more than 2 billion dollars in funding. The results of those programs have been underwhelming.”
The marriage fundamentalists draw extensively from the deficit narrative of single life, especially the research they characterize as showing that the children of single people are basically doomed. (They aren’t.)
The deficit narrative can cost single people their lives.
Recent research on judgments of who is most deserving of live-saving organ transplants produced results that were devastating for people who are not married. In three studies in which married and unmarried patients were equally qualified for a transplant, medically, the married patients were more likely to be recommended.
I fear that the deficit narratives about the lives of people who are single feed into judgments like these, judgments that can cost single people their lives. After all, if single people really are sad and lonely (they’re not), then why not prioritize the lives of those blissfully happy married people, with their better quality of life?
In another disturbing series of deeply researched articles (such as this one in the New England Journal of Medicine), Professor Joan DelFattore has described the bias among oncologists of offering less aggressive treatment to their single patients. They often do so based on deficit narratives – for example, that people without a spouse will not have the support they will need, or that single people just don’t have that fighting spirit that married people do. Again, their presumptions are defied by the actual lives of many people who are single (who may have whole networks of support) and even some who are married (who may have only a spouse who is unable or unwilling to help, and no one else). And again, their embrace of popular deficit narratives, that are bandied about so blithely, can cost single people their lives.
History tells us that these deficit narratives do not end well
Single people are not the only group unfairly portrayed as deficient by research labeled as scientific. Early social science writings on people of color as well as gay men and lesbians, for instance, also peddled deficit narratives. I doubt that anyone looks back on that work with pride.
[Notes: (1) The opinions expressed here do not represent the official positions of Unmarried Equality. (2) I’ll post all these blog posts at the UE Facebook page; please join our discussions there. (3) For links to previous columns, click here.]
About Bella DePaulo
