the high cost of being single

[hitchhiker]

https://www.vox.com/the-goods/22788620/single-living-alone-cost

The celebrated single life is, in truth, incredibly narrow. For women, you have to be 1) actively and successfully in search of partnership; 2) unspeakably wealthy and above scrutiny; and/or 3) a self-sacrificing mother. “Confirmed” bachelors can sometimes get a pass so long as they don’t move back in with their parents; so do the elderly, the widowed (but only for a brief window of time), and the very young. Other single and solo-living people are still stigmatized in various and overlapping ways, depending on their age, class, race, and sexual identity. We don’t call single or unmarried people spinsters, deviants, or social problems anymore, at least not explicitly. But that underlying hostility to single and solo-living people? It’s everywhere.

Comments

[rezendi]

I will however note that it links to an actually good piece, from some years ago, that doesn't interpret every financial difficulty in the world as evidence of active discrimination against single people, and focuses on the things which actually do disproportionately benefit married people: https://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/01/the-high-price-of-being-single-in-america/267043/ whereas the Vox piece muddies the water so thoroughly it's just a mess. (The Atlantic article makes it clear that a lot of these negative factors apply to single women but not so much to single men, who seem to actually financially benefit in some areas from being single; they write that off as "We can't say why the disparities exist between unmarried men and women.")