Weekly Reader: All The Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation; Put Your Hands Up for the Ultimate Guide to Unmarried Women in 21st Century America

Weekly Reader: All The Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and The Rise of an Independent Nation; Put Your Hands Up For The Ultimate Guide To Unmarried Women in 21st Century America

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

Who is gonna rule the world? Single girls!

Okay, I promise I will stop quoting Beyoncé. But Rebecca Traister’s nonfiction book All The Single Ladies gives an account of a growing phenomenon: Unmarried Women who remain unmarried or have late in life marriages.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau the number of unmarried women, in 2017, is 53.2 percent, outnumbering married women. According to Traister “For young women, for the first time it is as normal to be unmarried as it is to be married, even if it doesn't always feel that way.”

Since she learned in 2009 that American marriages fell below 50 percent, Traister realized that by the time they hit their mid-thirties many of her female friends remained unmarried. So she began a nearly ten year study of women who no longer required men “to put a ring on it.”

(Okay, okay I'll stop.)

Many single women, such as this Reader, often feel alone when they learn that many of their friends are married, in committed relationships, or have children. Traister says that it is more common than most women realize and that it shouldn't carry the social stigma that it used to.

She wrote, “The vast increase in the number of single women is to be celebrated not because singleness is in and of itself a better or more desirable state than coupledom. The revolution is in the expansion of options.....There are now an infinite number of alternate routes open; they wind around combinations of love, sex, partnership, parenthood, work, and friendship, at different speeds.”

In one chapter, Traister recalls single women who made an impact in history despite taunts that they were “sexless” and the percentages of unmarried women a “dismal spectacle.” Such notables as poet Christina Rossetti, novelists Anne and Emily Bronte and Willa Cather, medical professionals like doctors Elizabeth and Emily Blackwell and nurses like Clara Barton and Florence Nightingale, and social reformers like Jane Addams, Alice Paul, and Susan B. Anthony.

Traister also recognizes figures from the late 20th-early 21st centuries like Anita Hill who accused Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment, the fictional television character Murphy Brown (Candice Bergen) who had a baby without a husband, and Sandra Fluke who testified about insurance regulations being proposed for buying birth control. All received criticism partly because of their unmarried statuses.

 According to Hill’s autobiography, her single status allowed her “detractors to place 'her as far outside the norms of proper behavior as they could.’” Then vice-president Dan Quayle accused the Murphy Brown storyline as “supposedly epitomizes today's intelligent, highly paid professional women was mocking the importance of fathers by bearing a child alone and calling it another lifestyle choice.”

Fluke also met with antagonism particularly from Right-wing radio talk show host, Rush Limbaugh. He called Fluke a “prostitute” and “slut.” A writer at American Spectator called Fluke “The Modern Welfare Queen for the 21st Century.”

Even Oprah Winfrey, the currently highest paid entertainer, keeps getting pestered with questions about when she is going to marry longtime partner, Stedman Graham and have children. “If I had children, they would hate me,”Winfrey said. “They would have ended up on the equivalent of the Oprah show talking about me; because something (in her life) would have to suffer and it probably would’ve been them.” The stories of these and other women in the book reflect that even when single women make great strides in the world, the focus is often on their marital status and why they aren't married. (Imagine how many articles would be wasted about an unmarried female President of the United State’s wardrobe choices and why there's no First Gentleman.)

Traister explores many of the benefits single women have and their current options which are much larger than the days when women had no choice but to wait at home with relatives until she found a husband. Many areas, particularly cities are welcome towards single women. Traister realized this herself while living in Manhattan; she observed a fight between a straight male-female couple. She looked around the restaurant and saw that, except for the fighting couple, she was surrounded by women dining either in pairs or by themselves. A woman eating alone was no longer a peculiar sight, especially in the cities.

“Cities are chock-full of single people, male or female: never married, divorced, widowed and separated,” Traister said. “While more than 25 percent of people across the United States live alone, metropolises like Cincinnati, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Seattle, and Denver boast single dwelling households that compromise more than 40 percent of their total populations.”

Among the reasons that single women chose urban landscapes is because of the variety of careers and people. Even as far back as the 19th century. “... New mills and factories especially in New England, actively recruited young women as cheap labor,” Traister said. “Improvements in infrastructure….made it easier for women to leave rural homes and head to growing cities to work as seamstresses and milliners, governesses, and laundresses.”

Urban life is still an appeal for modern single women, Traister writes because of variety and domestic infrastructure. “In metropolises, women are more likely to find a deep and diverse pool of romantic and sexual prospects, and to encounter a combination of community and anonymity that unburdens them of centuries of behavioral expectations,” she said. “Urban landscapes often physically force people of different classes, genders, races, and religions to mix and meet in the public spaces that they share with each other.”

One of the benefits that single women often have, Traister writes are deeper friendships with other women. After marriage and children, friendships often change as women find little in common with each other or less time to be together. During singlehood, women often find a tight group of friends to form a sisterly bond. (Think of the characters in the show, Sex and the City or the movie, Waiting to Exhale.)

Traister refers to two women, Ann Friedman and Aminatou Sow who met at a Gossip Girl viewing party. The two shared a great deal in common including a love of independence. While both are heterosexual, Friedman describes Sow as “(her) emotional support, (her) everything.” The two have made plans for the future, including maintaining their friendship if they relocate.

“It is really important that my co-workers know (Friedman),” Sow said. “...I don't even think I say that she is my best friend because it's so much more to than that to me. She is the person that I talk to every day. She is my person.”

This sentiment “she is my person” is echoed in the series Grey’s Anatomy, created by Shonda Rhimes, an unmarried mother of three. In Grey’s, two female doctors share a close friendship and refer to each other as “my person.” Friedman and Sow are still good friends though Sow is single and lives in Northern California and Friedman lives in Los Angeles with her partner. The two women share a podcast called, “Call Your Girlfriend.”

Besides friendships, single women relish their time alone. Kitty Curtis, a hair stylist from New Jersey (who now lives in Florida) said that she had first felt scared of being alone after a bad relationship. She thought of entering another relationship but the feeling passed. “I really value my time alone, “Curtis said. “ I started to value not having another adult agenda of any sort, and I got cozy and comfy in my new life. It's just a really easy life being alone.”

One of the things Curtis enjoys is the ability to travel. “I felt like I was constantly having to pull somebody along into a dream,” she said. “....Now I feel like there's so much to see in the world, so many more things to do. It's so much more exciting than the combining my dreams with somebody else's.”

Some women make the same decisions that men do by waiting until they are settled in their careers, something they learned from their own pasts. Traister remembers that her grandmother had a career as a biology professor which she gave up to marry her husband and give birth to her daughter, Traister's mother. “She was always sick, had headaches and back problems,” Traister’s mother recalled. “She was obsessive about the floor; she scrubbed it three times a week on her hands and knees. She was not a happy lady; it was clear, even to me, as a kid.”

In 1958, Traister's grandmother received an offer to replace the deceased biology teacher. After asking her husband's permission, Traister's grandmother accepted the job. Her daughter saw an instant change in her mother's behavior. “When she went back to work, it was like night and day,” Traister's mother said. “She was busy; she didn't have to scrub the floor three times a week. She dressed up. She took more care of her appearance. She was happier. Everything about her changed.” Traister's mother learned that lesson well about finding meaningful work that she decided not to be a stay-at-home mother. She spent five decades as an English professor. “I love being everybody's grandmother and mother, and wife, and all of that-that’s wonderful,” she said. “But basically there's got to be something that's me and that's been my working life.”

“Every generation has struggled to overcome the generational obstacles set before the previous one, and often eliminates these obstacles for the next, “Traister wrote. Traister herself learned from her mother and grandmother. She had an accomplished career as a writer at large for New York magazine, contributing editor at Elle magazine, and wrote about women in politics, media, and entertainment from a Feminist perspective for New Republic and Salon. She wrote articles for The Nation, The New York Observer, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Vogue, Glamour, and Marie Claire and a previous book, Big Girls Don't Cry about the 2008 election. She herself did not get married until she was 35 and had been a successful author. Traister describes her single years as beneficial to her eventual marriage. “I’d been heartbroken, afraid, jubilant, and bored,” she said. “I was a grown-up: a reasonably complicated person. I’d become that person not in the company of any one man, but alongside my friends, my family, my city, my work, and simply by myself.”

That's not to say that Traister writes only about the good things about being single. Sometimes she writes about the difficulties single women have especially impoverished single mothers. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics women still earn $0.78 for every $1.00 men make and the gap is wider for women of color.

Also certain factors like pay inequality, wage stagnation, and social policies favor married couples because of the assumption that men are still the primary breadwinners. According to Atlantic writers, Christina Campbell and Lisa Arnold, “Marital privilege pervades every facet of our lives.” Campbell and Arnold found that health, life, home, and car insurance cost more for single people than for marrieds. They also found “it is not a Federal crime for landlords to discriminate against potential renters based on their marital status.”

While there are options for women to choose single motherhood such as IVF, freezing embryos, adoptions, or giving birth without marrying, there are still grim stigmas associated with single mother-headed households. 42 percent of families headed by single mothers lay below the poverty line. Some of those families are headed by women who had their first child out of high school.

One of those was Pamela who was 17 when she gave birth to her first child. Her boyfriend was 34 and they decided to have the baby. She wanted to go to college partly to get away from her alcoholic father.

Pamela wasn't alone. Many of her fellow students dropped out of high school after giving birth. “Those that didn't graduate and the spouse wasn't around didn't go to college,” Pamela said. “They ended up working full-time jobs, at McDonald's or at a clothing store.”

Pamela graduated from New York College in 2004, and lived with her boyfriend without marrying him. She had a second child with her partner and they are still together but not married. She works as a legal assistant at the Office of the Bronx District Attorney and plans on going to law school.

Other problems associated with singlehood are emotional. There is the exhaustion of earning money and caring for the household. “For most working Americans the times off for honeymoons and paid leave after babies are pipe dreams,” Traister said.”....Single people and those without children often find themselves not only without the encouragement to take personal time off on their own; they often compensate for their colleagues’ breaks by making up the work, slogging through even more hours.”

Another emotional factor that is a detriment to single people is the loneliness particularly when they get older. When Frances Kissling watched over her dying mother, the unmarried Kissling was stunned by her mother's question, “who is going to do this for you?” “It knocked me on my ass,”Kissling said. “Oh my God, who is going to do this for me?” Kissling got her own answer when she was diagnosed with kidney disease and during therapy she realized she was alone.

Of course there is no guarantee that because someone is in a relationship or has children that someone will be cared for, Traister writes. “Those who take comfort that in getting married thinking they are evading a future of lonely decline do not often consider the very realistic possibilities of divorce, abandonment, or the early death of a partner,” Traister said.

All the Single Ladies is a very honest book about the good and bad of being single. While singlehood is not for everyone, it is no longer a status in which to be ashamed. This single lady isn't.