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.
Relationships, love, family – these are all concepts that should be far-reaching and open-armed. Instead, they have been squeezed into narrow, stifling boxes. ‘Relationship’ is too often a shorthand for romantic relationship – what a shame! Same for love. ‘Family,’ too, has such great potential.
If you are single and looking for a parenting partner, or if you already have a partner but do not yet have a child, here’s an opportunity to participate in a documentary series for a major cable network. First, some explanation of parenting partnerships.
Guest Post by Jaclyn Geller
[Bella’s intro: If you are interested in marriage and its discontents, especially as represented in beautifully written literary novels, then you are probably a fan of John Updike. Volumes have been written about Updike, but I’m betting you have never seen anything quite like the essay about Rabbit, Run written by the brilliant Professor of English, Jaclyn Geller. She believes that Updike offered not just a critique of marriage, but of an entire ideology of marriage dominant in the 1950s. The protagonist of the Rabbit series, Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, wants to run from marriage, but finds nowhere to run to.
I previously wrote a chapter for a scholarly volume on a topic that seemed to interest a lot of readers: “Single, no children: Who is your family?” Like many academic books, that one was outrageously expensive ($240 for the hardcover, $98 for the paperback). Happily, I now have permission from the publisher to reprint my chapter in a brief collection of a few other writings of mine on family (some new, some previously published). I’ve put them together into a book by the same name as that original chapter, Single, No Children: Who Is Your Family? And, this time, the work is very affordable ($8.98 for the paperback, $3.49 for the e-book).
Much of my writing about single life is about people who have always been single, or about all unmarried people, regardless of whether they have always been single or have previously been married. But I do occasionally write specifically about people who are divorced and people who are widowed. Here are some of those articles, along with some writings on remarriage.
