Older Single People: Here’s What We Know

by | Apr 23, 2017 | ALL THINGS SINGLE, happiness, health, How We Live Now, Matrimania, Single at different ages, singlism, Uncategorized

According to the prevailing cultural narratives, single people in later life have two big things going against them: They are single and they are old. Now focus on the older single women and you have the trifecta: They are single, they are old, and they are women! If conventional wisdom got its way, they would be doing terribly. But guess what? They are not. There are real challenges, for women and men, to aging in an ageist and singlist society. Considering what they are up against, it is remarkable how well older single people are doing.

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Lifelong Single People: Here’s What We Know

by | Apr 23, 2017 | ALL THINGS SINGLE, demographics, family, Friendship, happiness, health, Matrimania, Money, no kids, Uncategorized

The number of single people has been growing for more than a half-century. Of all Americans who are unmarried, the biggest proportion of them, by far, are people who have never been married. Yet not much research has focused specifically on this group. Maybe that’s in part because the percentage of people who stayed single all their life has, in the past, been fairly small. But that may be changing.

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What Celebrities, World Figures, and People in Politics and the Media Tell Us about Single Life

by | Mar 18, 2017 | ALL THINGS SINGLE, celebrities, Matrimania, media

A reporter just asked me about celebrities and other people in the news. Do they have anything important to tell us about single life? I realized that over the years, I have often used the words and deeds of public figures as jumping-off points for analyses of the place of marriage and single life in contemporary society.

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How Singles Are Celebrated and Stereotyped and Shamed

by | Feb 7, 2016 | ALL THINGS SINGLE, celebrations, Matrimania, singlism

for celebrated and shamed

Single people are routinely stereotyped, stigmatized, and ignored, as I highlighted in the subtitle of my book, Singled Out: How Singles Are Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored, and Still Live Happily Ever After. They are also shamed. Here are some examples of that. Happily, as the number of single people grows and as more people spend more years of their lives not married, single people are sometimes celebrated, too. This collection also includes examples of ways in which single people are celebrated.

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Singles in Popular Culture: TV, Movies, Books, and Magazines

by | Feb 7, 2016 | ALL THINGS SINGLE, Books about singles, Matrimania, media

for singles in popular culture

Single people are all over popular culture. Usually, they are portrayed in stereotypical ways. Occasionally, though, I am pleasantly surprised.

Literature, opera, the arts — all the forms that are considered more serious than popular culture — can go either way as well. You would think that there would be little caricaturing in this domain, but sadly, that’s not so.

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