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.
