Singled Out
How Singles Are Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored, and Still Live Happily Ever After
Depaulo, Bella M.
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BOOK SYNOPSIS
"Singled Out debunks myths and stereotypes about single people and lays the groundwork for social, political, and economic change."
-- Thomas F. Coleman, Executive Director, Unmarried America Drawing from decades of scientific research and stacks of stories from the front lines of singlehood, Bella DePaulo debunks the myths of singledom---and shows that just about everything youve heard about the benefits of getting married and the perils of staying single are grossly exaggerated or just plain wrong. Although singles are singled out for unfair treatment by the workplace, the marketplace, and the federal tax structure, they are not simply victims of this singlism--single people really are living happily ever after. BELLA DEPAULO, Ph.D., is a social psychologist who did her graduate work at Harvard. She is currently a visiting professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara. DePaulo is single and living happily ever after in Summerland, California.
Visit her website at www.belladepaulo.com Singled Out Debunks Ten Myths of Singlehood, Including:
-Myth--The Dark Aura of Singlehood: You are miserable and lonely and your life is tragic.
-Myth--Attention, Single Women: Your work wont love you back and your eggs will dry up. Also, you dont get any and youre promiscuous.
-Myth--Attention, Single Men: You are horny, slovenly, and irresponsible, and you are the scary criminals. Or you are sexy, fastidious, frivolous, and gay. Elegant analysis, wonderfully detailed examples, and clear and witty proseA must-read for all single adults, their friends and families, as well as social scientists and policy advocates.
--E. Kay Trimberger, author of The New Single Woman
The singles movement is coming to a bookstore near you.
--Associated Press
Fascinating . .this book could hardly have come at a better time. As much as societal adulation of the couple discriminates against single people, Singled Out suggests that it can also undermine marriage.
--The Christian Science Monitor
AUTHOR BIO
BELLA DEPAULO, Ph.D., is a social psychologist who did her graduate work at Harvard. She is currently a visiting professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara. DePaulo is single and living happily ever after in Summerland, California.
Visit her website at www.belladepaulo.com
BOOK EXCERPTS
Chapter One
Singlism: The Twenty-First-Century
Problem That Has No Name
I think married people should be treated fairly. They should not be stereotyped, stigmatized, discriminated against, or ignored. They deserve every bit as much respect as single people do.
I can imagine a world in which married people were not treated appropriately, and if that world ever materialized, I would protest. Here are a few examples of what I would find offensive:
o When you tell people you are married, they tilt their heads and say things like Aaaawww or Dont worry, honey, your turn to divorce will come.
o When you browse the bookstores, you see shelves bursting with titles such as If Im So Wonderful, Why Am I Still Married and How to Ditch Your Husband After Age 35 Using What I Learned at Harvard Business School.
o Every time you get married, you feel obligated to give expensive presents to single people.
o When you travel with your spouse, you each have to pay more than when you travel alone.
o At work, the single people just assume that you can cover the holidays and all the other inconvenient assignments; they figure that as a married person, you dont have anything better to do.
o Single employees can add another adult to their health-care plan; you cant.
o When your single coworkers die, they can leave their Social Security benefits to the person who is most important to them; you are not allowed to leave yours to anyonethey just go back into the system.
o Candidates for public office boast about how much they value single people. Some even propose spending more than a billion dollars in federal funding to persuade people to stay single, or to get divorced if they already made the mistake of marrying.
o Moreover, no one thinks there is anything wrong with any of this.
Married people do not have any of these experiences, of course, but single people do. People who do not have a serious coupled relationship (my definition, for now, of single people) are stereotyped, discriminated against, and treated dismissively. This stigmatizing of people who are singlewhether divorced, widowed, or ever singleis the twenty-first-century problem that has no name. Ill call it singlism.
To be stereotyped is to be prejudged. Tell new acquaintances that you are single and often they think they already know quite a lot about you. They understand your emotions: You are miserable and lonely and envious of couples. They know what motivates you: More than anything else in the world, you want to become coupled. If you are a single person of a certain age, they also know why you are not coupled: You are commitment-phobic, or too picky, or have baggage. Or maybe they figure you are gay and they think thats a problem, too.
They also believe they know something about your psychological development and your psyche: You are just not as mature as the other people your age who are coupled. And at heart, you are basically selfish.
From knowing nothing more about you than your status as a single person, other people sometimes think they already know all about your family: You dont have one. They also know about the important person or persons in your life: You dont have anyone. In fact, they know all about your life: You dont have a life.
Because you dont have anyone and you dont have a life, you can be asked to stay late at work or do all the traveling over the holidays. When you are a guest in other peoples homes, they will know where you can sleep: on the couch in the living room rather than in a bedroom with a door that shuts.
They know how your life will unfold: You will grow old alone. Then you will die alone.
Are you a single person who does not recognize yourself in many of these descriptions? So am I. I am happy, I have a life, and there is no way I will grow old alone (a matter that has little to do with having a serious coupled relationship or even living by yourself). Thats just for starters. But it is also exactly the point: The conventional wisdom about people who are single is a mythology, a gloss. It is not an accurate description of the textured and varied lives of real people who are single.
I would like to clarify what I mean by single, but I cannot do so without first explaining what it means to have a serious partner. That, too, is part of the problem: Single people are defined negatively, in terms of what they do not havea serious partner. They are labeled as unmarried. But it is singlehood that comes first and then is undoneif it is undoneby marriage. So why arent married people called unsingle?
Back to the serious coupled relationship. Marriage is the gold standard. If you are married, you have your serious partner. It does not matter if you are happy or miserable, faithful or philandering, whether you live in the same home as your partner or on different continents. If you have the certificate, and you are not in the process of tearing it up, you are official.
Official marriage matters. Only the legal version of marriage comes with the guaranteed treasure trove of perks, privileges, rewards, and responsibilities. Access to another adults Social Security benefits, health-care plan, hospital room, and decisions about a life-sustaining feeding tube can all turn on whether you are legally married. When the Census Bureau counts married people, it is counting the official kind. Legally single people, then, are adults who are not officially married. They include people who are divorced and widowed as well as people who have always been single.
More important to the texture of your everyday life is whether or not you are socially single or socially coupled. Once again, if you are married, you automatically count as coupled. Beyond that, the criteria are more slippery. People try to discern your coupled status from a hodgepodge of clues. Do you seem to be in a romantic relationship with another person? How long have you been with that person? Do you seem to expect to stay together? Are you living together? One question that does not matter much to the social-coupling criterion is whether your pair consists of one man and one woman. Straights, gays, bisexuals, and transsexuals all count as socially coupled if they are in a certain kind of relationship with another person.
Sex is the component that conventionally distinguishes the coupled relationship from every other close relationship, even if that component has not yet been realized or if its practice is a vague and distant memory. (Of course, sex alone is not sufficient. A one-night stand is not a coupled relationshipit is just a fling.)
In trying to discern who really is socially coupled, we are less likely to wonder about the couples practice of sex than about their approximation to an image, a romantic ideal. The image is two people looking lovingly into each others eyes, no one else in the picture, the background gauzy and ethereal. In song, the notion is captured by the titles that all sound so similar, such as Nat King Coles Youre My Everything, Elvis Presleys There Goes My Everything, or Andy Gibbs I Just Want to Be Your Everything. In lyrics, the romantic ideal is LeAnn Rimes asking How do I live without you? . . . Youre my world, my heart, my soul.
Serious partners, in our current cultural fantasy, are the twosomes who look to each other for companionship, intimacy, caring, friendship, advice, the sharing of the tasks and finances of household and family, and just about everything else. They are the repositories for each others hopes and dreams. They are each others soulmates and sole mates. They are Sex and Everything Else Partners.
Now I can explain what single means: You dont have a serious partner. The simple distinctionyou either have a serious partner or you dontmaps onto the golden rule of singlism, the way of thinking that has become the conventional wisdom of our time: You have a serious partner, or you lose. If you are single, then you lose by definition. No matter what you can point to on your own behalfspectacular accomplishments, a lifelong and caring convoy of relatives and friends, extraordinary altruismnone of it redeems you if you have no soulmate. Others will forever be scratching their heads and wondering whats wrong with you and comparing notes (hes always been a bit strange; shes so neurotic; I think hes gay). It is like having a gymnastics routine lacking a key element to qualify for a perfect score; no matter how skillfully and gracefully you perform your routine, it will always be judged as deficient.
Serious partner or no serious partner must sound awfully simplistic. Surely the many significant distinctions must matter somehow. Among those without a serious partner, for example, there are single men and single women (always a distinction worth pondering); people who have always been single and those who are divorced or separated or widowed; young singles and old singles; rich singles and poor singles; singles who have children and singles who do not; singles who live in the city and singles who live in the suburbs or the countryside; coastal singles and Midwestern singles; singles living alone and singles living with others; smug singles and singles pining for partners; and singles of different races, ethnicities, and religions, to name just a few. These kinds of distinctions do matter. Some singles are stigmatized more relentlessly and unforgivingly than others.
The many varieties of singlehood, rather than creating hopeless complexity, can actually be sorted out with two simple rules. First, all the existing prejudices remain in place. For example, since men still typically trump women, feminism notwithstanding, single men will have an easier time of it than will single women. Similarly, rich singles will sail more smoothly through singlehood than will poor singles. Second, everyone else curries favor to the degree that they honor soulmate values. Did you ever have a serious partner? If so, then you are better than all those people who never had one. (So, divorced and widowed singles are better than people who have always been single.) Is your soulmate no longer with you through no fault of your own? If so, then you get some credit, too. (So, widows are in some ways better than divorced people.) If you dont have a serious partner, are you at least trying to find one? Thats good, too.
When I say that some singles are better than others, I mean better in the public eye. Better mythologically. The lives of the better singles seem to make more sense and seem worthy of greater respect than the lives of the lesser singles. With regard to how different kinds of singles are actually doing, thoughnow, thats a whole different story.
Singlism is not something that only coupled people practice. If you are single, you have a role in sustaining the lofty place of couples. You support couples emotionallycheering them on as they announce the first engagement and wedding, and then the next, and then the one after thatand, of course, financially, with all the gifts. You support them with your time and your flexibility as you take the off-hour assignments and the travel that no one else wants. You support their sense of entitlement as they choose the conditions, the time, and the nature of any get-togethers. You support their presumptuousness as they ask when you are going to settle down, while you politely refrain from asking when they last had sex. You subsidize couples when they pay less per person for vacation packages and memberships in clubs, while you pay full price.
Some components of singlism are built right into American laws and institutions, which means that neither coupled nor single people have any say about sustaining them. Take Social Security, for example. If you are a married person covered by Social Security and you die, your spouse can receive your benefits. But if you are a single person who worked side by side with that married person at the same job for the same number of years and you die, no other adult can receive your benefits. Your money goes back into the system.
Our cherished American notions about all people being created equal and deserving of the same basic civil rights and dignitiesthey apply mostly to married people. If you are single, even your dead body is deemed less valuable. The eligible spouse of a married person receives a small amount of money from Social Security to cover funeral expenses. No such allowance is available for single people. I suppose the reasoning is that since single people dont have anyone, their dead bodies can simply be tossed into a ditch by the first stranger who discovers them (probably in an empty apartment where they are rotting away or being nibbled at by their starving cats).
The lesser value of single people is institutionalized in other ways, too. For example, the mission of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is to ensure equal protection under the law regardless of race, color, religion, sex, age, disability, or national origin. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is tasked with the same kinds of protections in the workplace. Wheres marital status?
Copyright © 2006 by Bella DePaulo. All rights reserved.
BOOK REVIEWS
Singled Out may be the single most important book you buy this year.
--Bookworm Sez
Gleefully debunks a number of sad-sack facts. According to DePaulos myth-busting research, [singles] are every bit as happy, healthy, and long-lived as couples.
--Seattle Metropolitan
If youre sick of your family asking, So when are you gonna settle down? or your boss saddling you with a fatter workload than your married coworkers, you will love Dr. Bella DePaulos insightful, irreverent book.
--Michelle Goodman, author of The Anti 9-to-5 Guide
An engaging new book that brims with invigorating wit and unparalleled perspective.
--Tucson Citizen
Intriguing cultural study . . .DePaulo has given this complicated subject the attention and respect it deserves.
--Publishers Weekly
DePaulo dismantles [a few other] claims of the pro-marriage lobby.
--Time Magazine
Don't miss Bella DePaulo's Singled Out.
--Sasha Cagen, author of QuirkyAlone
She has a message for singles and couples alike: If you forget about your nonromantic relationships, youre missing out on a whole lot of love.
--Santa Barbara News-Press
An expose of the widespread cultural bias facing unmarried adults in America.
--Harvard Magazine
[A] terrific book
--Amy Alkon, Syndicated Advice Columnist
A masterpiecefilled with inspirational quotesEvery single should read this book
--Yuspie (Young Urban Single Professionals of Indiana) Book Club
[Shows that singles] can be as productive, charming, fun, moral, and wise as their coupled counterparts
--Virginia Quarterly Review
DePaulo combines her training as a social psychologist with wit and sharp analysis, bringing the entire marriage is better argument down like a house of cards.
--Windy City Times
Submit a book reviewFOR RELATED BOOKS
Family & Relationships Books :: General Books
MORE BOOK INFO
ISBN: 0312340826
ISBN(13-digit): 9780312340827
Dewey Decimal: 306
Book Publisher: St Martins Pr
Language: ENG
No. of Pages: 325
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