Posted on 04/27/2017 6:58:00 PM PDT by BJ1
The 21st century is the age of living single.
Today, the number of single adults in the U.S. — and many other nations around the world — is unprecedented. And the numbers don’t just say people are staying single longer before settling down. More are staying single for life. A 2014 Pew Report estimates that by the time today’s young adults reach the age of 50, about one in four of them will have never married.
The ascendancy of single living has left some in a panic. U.S. News & World Report, for example, cautioned that Americans think the country’s moral values are bad and getting worse, and one of the top reasons for their concern is the large number of people remaining single.
But instead of fretting, maybe we should celebrate.
I’m a social scientist, and I’ve spent the past two decades researching and writing about single people. I’ve found that the rise of single living is a boon to our cities and towns and communities, our relatives and friends and neighbors. This trend has the chance to redefine the traditional meaning — and confines — of home, family, and community. Ties That Bind
For years, communities across the country have been organized by clusters of nuclear families living in suburban homes. But there are some signs that this arrangement isn’t working out so well.
These houses are often too isolating, too far from work and from one another. According to a national survey ongoing since 1974, Americans have never been less likely to be friends with their neighbors than they are now, with neighborliness lowest in the suburbs.
But studies have also shown that single people are bucking those trends. For example, they are more likely than married people to encourage, help and socialize with their friends and neighbors. They are also more likely to visit, support, advise and stay in touch with their siblings and parents.
In fact, people who live alone are often the life of their cities and towns. They tend to participate in more civic groups and public events, enroll in more art and music classes, and go out to dinner more often than people who live with others. Single people, regardless of whether they live alone or with others, also volunteer more for social service organizations, educational groups, hospitals and organizations devoted to the arts than people who are married.
In contrast, when couples move in together or get married, they tend to become more insular, even if they don’t have children. Building Strength and Resilience
Unfortunately, single life continues to be stigmatized, with single people routinely stereotyped as less secure and more self-centered than married people. They’re said to die sooner, alone and sad.
Yet studies of people who live alone typically find that most are doing just fine; they don’t feel isolated, nor are they sad and lonely.
Reports of the early death of single people have also been greatly exaggerated, as have claims that marriage transforms miserable, sickly single people into happy and healthy spouses.
In some significant ways, it’s the single people who are doing particularly well.
For example, people with more diversified relationship portfolios tend to be more satisfied with their lives. In contrast, the insularity of couples who move in together or get married can leave them vulnerable to poorer mental health.
Studies have shown that people who stay single develop more confidence in their own opinions and undergo more personal growth and development than people who marry. For example, they value meaningful work more than married people do. They may also have more opportunities to enjoy the solitude that many of them savor. Redefining the Family and Home
Married people often put their spouse (and, for some, kids) at the center of their lives. That’s what they’re expected to do, and often it’s also what they want to do.
But single people are expanding the traditional boundaries of family. The people they care about the most might include family in the traditional sense. But they’ll also loop in friends, ex-partners, and mentors. It’s a bigger, more inclusive family of people who matter.
For many single people, single-family suburban homes aren’t going to offer them the balance between sociability and solitude that they crave. They are instead finding or creating a variety of different lifespaces.
Sometimes you’ll see 21st-century variations of traditional arrangements, like multi-generational households that allow for privacy and independence as well as social interaction. Others — and not just the very young — are living with their friends or other families of choice.
Those who cherish their alone time will often choose to live alone. Some have committed romantic relationships but choose to live in places of their own, a lifestyle of “living apart together.”
Some of the most fascinating innovations are pursued by people who seek both solitude and easy sociability. These individuals might move into their own apartment, but it’s in a building or neighborhood where friends and family are already living. They might buy a duplex with a close friend, or explore cohousing communities or pocket neighborhoods, which are communities of small homes clustered around shared spaces such as courtyards or gardens.
Single parents are also innovating. Single mothers, for example, can go to CoAbode to try to find other single mothers with whom they can share a home and a life. Other single people might want to raise children with the full support of another parent. Now they can look for a partner in parenting — with no expectations for romance or marriage — at websites such as Family by Design and Modamily.
As the potential for living a full and meaningful single life becomes more widely known, living single will become more of a genuine choice. And when living single is a real choice, then getting married will be, too. Fewer people will marry as a way of fleeing single life or simply doing what they are expected to do, and more will choose it because it’s what they really want.
If current trends continue, successive generations will have unprecedented opportunities to pursue the life that suits them best, rather than the one that is prescribed.
I’ve never married and recently turned 50.
I know a number of good men who also are within my age range who never married.
Trying to find a woman you can start a family with is difficult in this age. If a marriage fails in many cases the ex-wife has hit the lottery and the man hits the skids.
It’s not for lack of trying I am single but at this point I have given up. It pains me greatly that I will never have children. It really does.
It doesn’t pain me in the least that I do not have an ex-wife who owns all of my former property.
All the homeless people I see in Los Angeles are really thriving singles.
“In fact, people who live alone are often the life of their cities and towns. They tend to participate in more civic groups and public events, enroll in more art and music classes, and go out to dinner more often than people who live with others. Single people, regardless of whether they live alone or with others, also volunteer more for social service organizations, educational groups, hospitals and organizations devoted to the arts than people who are married.”
Precisely the reason to defund “arts” and other nonsense.
I say this with complete curiosity: have you ever been a church-goer?
A buddy of mine didn’t marry until his late 40s. He was involved in a few long term relationships that ultimately didn’t pan out. It ended up working out fine for him in that his wife is a great lady, but I think part of the reason he stayed single so long was that he was a bit choosy. I know of one girl that would have accepted his marriage proposal (much less a date request) when we were all in our early 20s. He declined, though they are still good friends. 2 others he was interested in weren’t interested in him. I don’t think it was a case of wanting what he couldn’t have but I can’t say for sure it wasn’t - at least back then.
The perfect woman (or man) is a myth. Sometimes attractiveness is as much a choice as it is a feeling. Join a church — not solely for dating purposes of course — but you will find potential wife material. Some may not be very attractive while others have been married. You’re mature enough to know what is on your list of musts, but keep that to a bare minimum.
The answer may be a little simpler than you think. Just some things to think about; use or ignore as you see fit.
“Today, the number of single adults in the U.S. — and many other nations around the world — is unprecedented. And the numbers don’t just say people are staying single longer before settling down. More are staying single for life.”
The muzzies applaud...
Same here in my neighborhood in NJ; the few people who remain from the days of annual block parties are far outnumbered by newcomers. I attribute this to two things: The general divide-and-conquer strategy of the Bolsheviks to prevent any real unity, and the fact that more and more people don’t speak English.
I think some men who have no interest in having children (definitely their right, though I chose a different path) put off marriage until it is no longer possible (biologically) for their mates.
I haven’t dated in decades, but I know there are many women around 40 years old looking for anyone to give them a baby. The prospective sperm donors know the mate is second in the list of priorities, and are wary...
Making a long story short, prior to my becoming more of a conservative and less of a libertarian, I have been asked in the past to be a donor, supposedly waiving any legal or financial accountability for paternity. I considered it seriously but did consult with an attorney who advised me not to do it in no uncertain terms. He said that courts would weight the supposed benefit of the child above any such contract, therefore it was not possible to waive legal consequences of paternity. The only way to do that would be anonymity, and even that is potentially suspect as donors are not entirely unknown and courts have attempted to determine identity in the past.
Outside of traditionally conservative reasons NOT to donate, wouldn’t you be concerned that someone would raise your child(ren) in a way you’d find reprehensible?
Some dykes do the one-night-stand thing to get pregnant so they can “play family”, and I’m sure the donor often has no idea his child is being raised in such an evil atmosphere.
This was some time ago. I didn’t do it, obviously. There are a number of reasons not to do this.
I understand; I just mentioned one particular issue I would dwell on for the rest of my days.
About 30 years ago we had the Stern/Whitehead case here in NJ, where a surrogate mother basically wanted to keep the baby. IIRC, she won; it was a bizarre scenario with no winners that probably had no legal precedent. Now divorcing couples are fighting over the fate of fertilized eggs (frozen babies)...
The woman, if she gets the fertilized egg even after the divorce will have full legal right to get child support. Even if she broke the law to obtain those eggs. Such as forging her ex husbands signature to release the eggs. The best interest of the child doctrine is a potential nightmare in so many ways for men.
Wrong. Single people are more likely to produce fatherless children (Most millennials are having children out of wedlock, and today it is estimated that most babies are born outside of marriage), or to result in result in abortions (most women getting abortions (83%) are unmarried).
The former costs greatly in more ways than just financially, and fosters the State much being the parent, while the latter reduces us to a society in which human life is disposable as convenient (up to 96% if all abortions are performed as a matter of convenience).
Moreover, with a fertility rate (babies born to each woman on average) in America of 1.87 (the lowest is among liberal states, plus PR, with caucasian death rates now surpassing the birth rate). Which means importing people, though the fertility rate has declined for Hispanics to 2.130. Muslims have the highest fertility rate with an average of 3.1 children per woman, which is well above replacement level.
In addition, the typical single lifestyle is one of an absence of non-committal relationship, either by shacking up or one night stands. According to Guttmacher, 90 percent of single women aged 20–44 are currently sexually active, and such are much more likely to be infected with a STD/STI (At least 50 percent of sexually active men and women will have a genital HPV infection at some point in their lives and 50 percent of sexually active youths will contract an STD by 25).
This does not mean being single is necessarily wrong (I have been for years in service to the Lord Jesus) and which has its own advantages, but the decline of marriage and rise of singleness and its typical lifestyle is not a welcome change.
Singleness = More Socializing = More Socialism.
That appears to be his argument.
B.S.
By almost every metric, folks not getting married harms society. This is an utter lie.
Good points all of them. Marriage should be easier and divorce should be equally onerous for both parties. We also have a culture that makes marriage look unattractive. Yes, I mean being married and staying married while raising children up right. You learn important social skills doing that.
Current no-fault divorce laws in many cases actually force the faithful spouse to financially subsidize the adultery of the other.
Things like this must change. There has to be a penalty for breaking those vows.
Thankfully the process is so expensive most men will never find themselves in that position. I believe a woman lost a case like this in the past couple of years; IIRC, the courts ruled she had no right to implant the eggs because they had been fertilized by her now ex-husband.
How so? The population today has more than doubled since Erlich published his book in 1968.
Most of this growth has occurred in the Third World among illiterate, unskilled masses who have benefited from Western medicine that has been gifted upon them.
These people aren't deep thinkers. What they are really good at is procreating, committing violence and the type of menial labor that will soon be accomplished by machines.
Things are about to get interesting.
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