- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
Just a quick reality check on E. Kay Trimberger's number crunching and the conclusions she appears to draw from it. I don't doubt that Trimberger's general hypothesis is accurate-- more women are living alone and having a great time doing so. But the trends she infers from census data aren't as cut and dried as she presents them, and the "wave" of women choosing to remain single probably isn't quite as large as she asserts.
Trimberger hangs much of her theory on the fact that 45% of women over 15 are single now compared with 38% in 1970, an increase of 7%-- significant, but maybe not as society-altering as she presents it. More importantly, there are other reasons beyond Trimberger's conclusions that account for some of this. There are more widows today than in 1970 as longevity increases and women lead disproportionatley longer lives than men. I'm not sure either of my 80-something grandmothers who are both widowed and have lived alone for several years now were aware that they were participating in a social revolution!
On the spectrum's other end, we all know that both men and women are choosing to marry later, and so the pool of 20-something singles is also much larger now than in 1970; but again, most of these women will eventually marry. If you looked at the percentage of women over 30 who were single (vice 15), you'd still see an increase from the 1970's, but not as much. Trimberger was a little selective in the statistics she used, because these more detailed breakdowns are available.
Finally, she cites a dramatic decrease in cohabitation, from 87% to 57% since 1970, as evidence that singlehood may soon be the new norm for women (and presumably men too, unless polyamory becomes an option). But the same factors-- later marriages and more elderly women without partners-- play a powerful role in this too.
Trimberger is right, of course, that more women are choosing "singlehood" and finding it a fullfilling way of life; their numbers will probably increase in the future. But marriage or cohabitation will also probably remain the goal for most. The real revolution that has redefined our society is delayed marriage (or "delayed adulthood"). That phenomenon means that most of us will live a far greater portion of our lives as singles, with enormous economic, social, and political ramifications-- even though most will "settle down" in the end, much to grandma's delight.
