I thought this book was a good presentation of things that, as a lifelong single man, I already knew but to which I never paid attention. I certainly was aware of the outright discrimination against singles practiced by the travel industry and by the tax laws of the United States. It was very enlightening to know that, unless you're married, you can't leave your social security benefits to anyone else. I would recommend this book to anyone, especially to fellow singles who wonder why they have to pay as much as double as anyone else for the same vacation. ( )

3.5 stars

The looks at the data that show that, actually, married poeple aren't happier/healthier/better than single people was helpful, but most of the book was anecdotes about all the ways in which single people are marginalized or made to feel less than, and I already knew that. If you've never considered the single perspective, this book could be really eye-opening for you. But if you've lived it, you already know. ( )

I'm tempted, this time around, to just share all the passages I highlighted, but that would just be lazy, and would probably somehow confirm some of you in your stereotyping of older single women as selfish and flippant and useless and whatnot. Heh.

For yea, I am one of those, unashamedly in my 40s and not only unmarried but uninterested in changing that, and I've been the target of every single (heh) one of the crappy remarks, employment practices, interrogations and dismissals Bella DePaulo calls out as a sneaky form of prejudice she names "singleism." But I did not turn to Singled Out: How Singles are Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored, and Still Live Happily Ever After for a categorical list of injustices to get steamed up over, nor did DePaulo intend the book as any kind of call to arms (though she does devote a chapter towards the end to imagining, maybe a little wistfully, what an America that did not discriminate against the never-married, the divorced or the widowed might look like); that last bit of the subtitle, in white lettering on the cover, is key. For while we do get a laundry list of ways in which daily, if not hourly, encounters with "smug marrieds" can be emotionally and psychologically draining, in which popular media (fictional and "reality") dismisses categorically the idea that choosing not to hunt down a spouse is in any way valid (or possible), in which the government denies singles the right to designate a beneficiary for their Social Security checks in the event of their deaths but lets widowed spouses keep on getting paid for life, in which businesses routinely demand that singles pay extra to subsidize their cheaper-per-person couples rates for travel and dining and entertainment, in which employers assume that just because one is not married one is always free to work the extra hours or take the unwanted business trip (and not only that, but really owes it to married co-workers not to tear them away from their all-important families) -- that is not, by a long shot, all that we get.

What we also get is someone who doesn't take media reports of half-assed scientific studies at face value (DePaulo is herself a scientist). She looks at the data herself, shows it to us, and in the process debunks most of the popular mythology that says marriage is better for one. For instance, she finds in study after study purporting to "prove" that married people are happier and healthier that the data was "cheated" -- those happy healthy people who got counted as married were only the ones who were still married. All those divorced and widowed people got clumped in with the never-marrieds, and, let's be honest, dragged our numbers way down. When the data was broken into four, rather than two, categories (still-married, never-married, divorced, widowed) the still-marrieds come out on top, but by a negligible margin (and, interestingly, in one study that did not, as most of these do, look at just a single snapshot of time but instead over a good long period of subjects' lives, on average those "still marrieds" had started out marginally happier to begin with). Who's next happiest? Oh, look, the never marrieds. But all those "how to find a spouse" and "case for marriage" and "single people suck" crusaders rarely, if ever, mention that.

And, too, the book is loaded with anecdotes about unmarried lives, with or without children, which positively brim with unrecognized quality of life -- Condoleeza Rice's, for instance; David Souter's (the book was written before Elena Kagan joined the Supreme Court, but I bet she is a part of DePaulo's pantheon now!); Ralph Nader's; Barbara Walters'. What would our world have been like without them taking on the demanding and challenging roles they did?* And how do you think it feels in interview after interview to always be asked (usually by a "smug married" journo) if it doesn't all feel kind of hollow without a special someone to share it with? And if the high-achieving single in the hot seat says something along the lines of "anything but hollow" well, he or she is just in denial or doesn't understand what he or she is missing, and probably isn't mature enough anyway.

Unsaid, most of the time, is that hey, the married person doesn't understand what he or she is missing, either.

But so, once again, I'm part of the choir being preached to, here. I am sometimes lonely, I'll admit, but it's not the lack of a spouse I feel so much as the lack of intimate friends in close proximity; the city in which I live is a profoundly heartlandish one, in which life is centered around the spouse and kids and offers little to those without them but doing time in a bar, and I've had difficulty establishing relationships in which I'm anything more than a casual once-in-a-while pal, someone to see a movie with once or twice a year but otherwise on whom it's perfectly okay to cancel last-minute because hey, I didn't have to hire a babysitter or whaever. I have wonderful friendships all over the world, even in other parts of Wyoming, but the city where my job is considers non-marrieds like me to be all but lepers, and that's even before it's discovered that I'm "not even trying." Which, contrary to smug married belief, does not mean I've given up; just that I've never really considered OMGGOTTAFINDAHUSBAAAAAAAND just for the sake of HAVINGAHUSBAAAAAAND to be much of a priority. Should I actually find someone who makes me want to give up my single life, that's fine, but I find the idea that I should devote my time and energy to finding someone who wants to shackle me to be patently absurd. To say nothing of finding someone who wants to knock me up; that's easy (and anyway, there's such a thing as Zero Population Growth, in which I fervently believe and furthermore believe I should practice what I preach).

Someone, and I'm pretty sure it was Theodore Sturgeon in his wonderful novel Godbody, once observed that people who hate being alone do not consider themselves good company. I first read that book when I was a teenager, and I think I probably took this message (one of the many many wonderful and wise things Sturgeon shared in that and his other writing) very much to heart; I have cultivated myself to be good company for myself -- and I have also developed a talent for enjoying strangers -- some of my favorite memories are of random conversations in airport bars or on trains or in line at a coffee bar or walking my dog. I seem very good at reading people and finding common ground with them, enough to make them smile for a moment or a few hours. Would I have this talent, I wonder, if I'd spent most of my life hunting down and then focusing to the exclusion of everyone else on a husband who must be, by contemporary dogma, "my everything" (and will expect that of me in return)?

Would I have the time and attention to spend on my friends' children when they need a break from being someone's spawn or student and just want to be a person for a little while? Or just need a little help with some science homework?

And this is not even mentioning the online relationships I've established, many of which go back decades, that I value deeply.

Is there a tinge of whining to DePaulo's book, as some have complained? Yes. But she is very careful not to even appear to equate singleism with all of the serious civil rights/discrimination issues that have beset us as a society (racism, homophobia, misogyny, etc), and seems more interested in teasing out why treating singles as they so often get treated is still okay (perhaps the last remaining prejudice it's still okay to have, though fat shaming is still awfully common even among people who consider themselves enlightened and tolerant), and what the cumulative effects of these subtle annoyances and expectations might be over a life time -- and how remarkable and awesome it is that single people manage to be happy anyway. It takes more guts and fortitude, she says, to be single in a "matrimaniacal" society than to do the expected, conformist thing and get married. Which, now I just want to race home to my worrying (still married) (to each other) parents (both their daughters are now gleefully in their 40s and unattached) and crow to them about how their lack of grandchildren and sons-in-law is actually proof of how awesome they were in raising us; we both grew up self-sufficient, brave, strong, capable and emotionally mature enough to enjoy life without the need for A PARTNER. And anyway, from a ZPG standpoint, our family is already in the red (our cousins have not only replaced themselves, but the two of us, too, and one more to spare).


But so anyway, the next time you see a couple of early middle aged broads yucking it up at a riverside diner or in the local hot springs or having coffee and none of us happens to be wearing a ring on that finger, maybe withhold your certainty and judgment -- and your humblebragging pity -- for a moment. There are lots of ways to live a life. And lots more ways to be happy than just sharing a bed with somebody for a few decades. But if you must make a faux-friendly remark about it, be prepared to be patronized back in return. Poor little marrieds, like Linuses and their blankies, will they ever grow up? We don't really want to bust out rhetoric like that, but push us and we just might.

Go, Bella, go!

*DePaulo has some somewhat tart remarks about some what-might-have-beens that the choice to put spouse above country/public sphere duty prevented, namely: President Colin Powell. ( )

The author has a serious chip on her shoulder, and is quite angry. The book raises some points, but sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. ( )

I thought that the first chapter of this book was very off-putting, but it improves and becomes well worth reading for anyone interested in the issues of being single. I think of myself as a sort of penultimate single. I've never married, lived with a sexual partner, or even been in love. I could only get more single by never having dated, or taking a public vow of celibacy. I am not militant about being single, and I don't push it as the best possible choice. When I was young, I assumed I would get married one day, but I didn't, and I no longer have any interest in it. As the same time, I hope that everyone finds happy living arrangements whatever they choose. My friends are mostly single, and coupled friends who make me uncomfortable wouldn't be friends for long. I simply don't feel as besieged as DePaulo, but then I live in an area where, they tell me, there are a high percentage of singles. I don't mean to dismiss other people's problems, and certainly not things like Neil Steinberg's vicious essay attaching Richard Roeper in particular and singles in general. (pp. 235-237)

DePaulo takes offense very easily: it has never occurred to be to be any more offended by the existence of books on how to get married, then I am about books on how to play rugby, something else that I am unlikely to do. She seems upset by the very mention of couples: she is offended that Sandals resort caters to couples, that an investment firm has a picture of a couple on the cover, and that restaurants offer special prices for two dinners. She sees all of these as evidence of “matrimania” and carries it to the point that I would describe her as “matriphobic.” something that might not bother her at all. Unless it really impinges on me, I don't care if some advertising is pitched to couples, after all, there are places that cater to other groups that I don't belong to, and I often take advantage of the dinner specials when dining with friends.

One of my few complaints about being single is the tendency of people to speak of singles as a monolithic group. DePaulo says that for her purposes, “single” or singleton, means not having a significant [adult] partner, and understands that what one might call “coupledom” consists of both married and unmarried couples, and these are sometimes similar and sometimes different. She just isn't always careful about maintaining these distinctions. I have taken far more grief for rarely being part of a couple than I have for not being married. She doesn't always maintain this distinction, which is a problem in some cases. She includes single parents among the single, but there are different types of single parents, as well.

Starting with chapter 2, “Science and the Single Person,” the book becomes much stronger. One of her best sections, DePaul; examines the statistics “proving” that married people are happier and healthier, and finds that the figures simply don't support the argument. Another highlight of her discussion is the prejudices against single people. They are, for example, turned down as renters for an apartment than similar married people, and considered to be socially isolated, although in fact they are not. And, as a columnist in the Washington Post once put it, when you're single, people thing you have nothing to do, when if fact you have everything to do. Chris Matthews argued that George Bush was more qualified to be President than Ralph Nader just because he was married. (p. 127-128) She might have added in that Stephanie Coontz, called Social Security a handout for people without children, at the same time that she was arguing for more support for families with children, presumably paid for in part by people without children. Even so, there has probably never been a better time to be single, nor has marriage ever been under such a siege.

Financial discrimination is another issue, although it can be a very fraught subject. DePaulo resents the consequences of considering a married couple to be an economic unit, particularly with the possibility that one may not perform paid labor on which they pay Social Security taxes. Social Security does not pay a burial benefit for a singleton like it does for married person, which I agree is very unfair. DePaulo, although she credits Social Security with successfully diminishing poverty among the elderly, resents the spousal benefits; nothing similar is offered to single people. There may be a collision of values here, however. Social Security is like an insurance pool, rather than a pension. It is intended to supply a safety net, not function like a pension. I don't know how benefits for spouses are calculated, but the system was deliberately designed not to require tests of means and need. I would imagine that the people who get the most out of the system is orphaned children, but DePaulo says that she wants to support children. With a higher percentage of adults working long enough to qualify on their own, her objections become less significant. Given how things are now, I think that the surviving spouse is more likely to lose benefits than the single person is to be allowed to bequeath benefits, but there would have to be some grandfathering process, or a lot of elderly people, mainly women, are going to be in serious financial straits.

Memberships and purchase costs that apply per household are another issue. DePaulo complains that Amazon Prime charges per household: perhaps Amazon argues that the more people in a household, the more books they are likely to buy. On the other hand, I can buy a software package that could be loaded onto five computers, if I had that many in my household, but I can't give my unused downloads to friends and relatives living in other places. A family sharing a single computer is in the same boat, however. Married couples often get a break, relatively speaking, for memberships and other services for no obvious economic reason. She does believe in giving breaks to people with children which might get her arguments in some cases. In my health plan, one is either an individual or a family, and all families pay the same regardless of size. Some childless couples are now objecting that they are subsidizing families with children. (Given that a family cost about twice as much as an individual, I may be subsidizing the children as well.) It is unclear whether DePaulo approves of the subsidy in this case, or whether she merely wants to allow children to be added, but at an extra, reasonable cost, which I would assume is the usual case now for parents with health care.

The work of making society more fair and changing it to respond to different circumstances never end. DePaulo has pointed out some things that need work. Meanwhile, I think I'll look up the American Association for Single People. ( )