How Single Women Are Changing Society

http://nautil.us/blog/how-single-women-are-changing-society

by dnetesn • 10 years ago

29 57 10 years ago

nautil.us

marodox3• 10 years ago

Why does the article only focus on single women? For every single women, there exists a single man.

Is it because it is seen as socially acceptable for men to lead single lives while not so much for women?

Edit: My questions sounds kinda rhetorical. I'm genuinely curious.

zck• 10 years ago

Why does the article only focus on single women?

Because it's worth investigating subgroups, so we can understand whether society treats those groups differently from other groups -- and if so, how.

marodox3• 10 years ago

I guess I'm just used to all those Japanese articles about their growing single working culture. Those usually focus on how both sexes are giving up relationships in favor of their careers.

nibs• 10 years ago

Not entirely. Depending on the country, there is often a gap between the number of men and women. Mortality for young men in some countries is still much higher than women (ie. Russia). [1] By 65, there is less than 0.5 men per woman. And even at 15-64 age range, it is 0.9 men per woman. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Russia#Sex_rat...

return05• 10 years ago

I think because it's more likely women will become single mothers than men becoming single fathers.

gsibble• 10 years ago

For every single mother there is a single father.

facepalm6• 10 years ago

The article wasn't about single mothers, though. In fact it cited not having to have kids as one of the benefits of being single.

duaneb2• 10 years ago

Is it because it is seen as socially acceptable for men to lead single lives while not so much for women?

This assumes that society is the only variable in being single. I'm guessing this is not the case.

If I were to hazard a guess, the tact was chosen because there's been an uptick in single women (notably, for the first time in US history, more adult women are single than married). There are other facets to look at, but this might be the most visible in terms of expected social change from the feminist perspective I was brought up with.

retbull• 10 years ago

Or its simply isn't about single men. Who cares if it is only about them not every other group has to be mentioned in every post even if they also have a stake in the discussion. I can write an article about the issues of db optimization without saying a single word about MySQL. Same situation.

bradleyjg• 10 years ago

Mostly because there's a big marketing push behind the book "All the Single Ladies" which recently came out. Either this article was pitched by Simon & Schuster's PR team or it is lucky free publicity generated in response to the buzz created by the other articles successfully pitched by them.

A mid to high six figure book advance is really high for a non-fiction book these days. They are hoping they have a blockbuster on their hands.

phkahler• 10 years ago

> Why does the article only focus on single women?

Because she thinks that women should live independently of men. She thinks we should restructure society and the way we raise children around that notion.

emodendroket3• 10 years ago

We can ask questions about why it happened and whether it was positive, but the ship has already sailed.

facepalm6• 10 years ago

Because the author is a single woman who wants to sell her book. Actually there are already lots of people living as singles, and there isn't really that much of a pressure to get married. She is building up a straw man to make her book seem more important.

te_chris• 10 years ago

Why does every article like this inevitably lead to men wondering why it's not about them? (I'm a man).

marodox3• 10 years ago

I just curious with this article specifically because its about the idea of the classic heterosexual relationship, which is inherently about men and women. It just seemed it was missing 1/2 of the story.

Frozenlock• 10 years ago

It does sound rhetorical. A more 'honest' approach would be "Is it because it is more socially acceptable for one sex to lead single lives, not so much for the other?"

I don't really see why you'd assume that women are more frowned upon in this situation. I mean, there's even a picture of SUPERWOMAN in this article! And yet, your initial position was to think that women were the 'victims' here. (For lack of a better word.) Interesting, isn't it?

If anything, single women are shown as courageous and going against the tides. If a man decides to lead a single live, he is not seen as a hero. At best it's inconsequential, at worse he's a loser.

And this tendency of inconsequential/loser for the men applies to many situations.

zxcvvcxz5• 10 years ago

To give another perspective, let's examine some of the negatives associated with single motherhood:

http://www.photius.com/feminocracy/facts_on_fatherless_kids....

As someone who grew up in a single mother home, with many friends in the same boat, anecdotally I can say that it is not preferable in any way.

Hypothesizing an evolutionary basis for this, I would say that high investment dual parenting has been the most effective method of raising successful and productive children. Societies which embraced this as the norm have flourished - others, not so much. For more on this topic, see J.D. Unwin: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._D._Unwin

Retric• 10 years ago

Prior to modern transportation it was common for men to be out of touch with there wives for long periods of time (months / years). So, defacto most society's dealt with lots of single mothers.

The classic solution was large extended family's which is where America falls down.

PS: It's even a major plot point in the Odyssey which is ~2,800 years old.

zxcvvcxz5• 10 years ago

There's a substantial difference between a few months (or even years) of deployment vs. 18 years of child development with no father.

Also interesting to note is that a lot of negative children statistics do not apply to single mother widows.

AnimalMuppet• 10 years ago

As someone who grew up in a single mother home, with many friends in the same boat, anecdotally I can say that it is not preferable in any way.

I've never been there. But from my outside perspective, I would think that it might be preferable to abuse, though maybe not preferable to almost anything else.

I would say that high investment dual parenting has been the most effective method of raising successful and productive children.

I think that "high investment" is an important note. Even in dual parenting situations, the temptation is to want parenting to be low-investment. (I'm a parent; I definitely struggled with that.)

DanBC• 10 years ago

But from my outside perspective, I would think that it might be preferable to abuse, though maybe not preferable to almost anything else.

We think that step-parents are more likely to sexually abuse, or to physically abuse or to murder their step children than biological parents.

https://www.nspcc.org.uk/globalassets/documents/information-...

zxcvvcxz5• 10 years ago

I think that "high investment" is an important note. Even in dual parenting situations, the temptation is to want parenting to be low-investment. (I'm a parent; I definitely struggled with that.)

Missing the point. I'll quote my other comment:

"Even if we pretend both parents provide the exact same types of resources (which they don't: both are important for different reasons), then mathematically you're getting half the resources to raise a better kid."

We can make this argument apply for money and time, both of which sound like pretty important things to put into a kid. Both of which are practically gauranteed to be less when there is a single parent.

But from my outside perspective, I would think that it might be preferable to abuse, though maybe not preferable to almost anything else.

Nobody's arguing that two parents which are abusive would be preferable to one who is not. I believe this is called the Red Herring fallacy. My point is that it is irresponsible to promote alternative family arrangements which are strongly correlated with worse outcomes for children, without at least considering these correlations first.

icebraining3• 10 years ago

I wouldn't trust a site like that even to correctly cite studies. The "Infamous Fatherless People" list is beyond the pale.

Anecdotally, I have the exact opposite experience.

That said, the question is, it's preferable to what?

I think there's some cognitive dissonance in listing all the ways mothers mess with the relationships between children and fathers (false abuse reports, preventing visitation, etc) and then suggesting that a two parent household would be preferable. Considering the messed-up relationship the two parents obviously have in those cases, would it really?

zxcvvcxz5• 10 years ago

Please cite your own sources to discredit the ones I've provided. Yes, the font and web design is straight out of 1999. But the sources include the "U.S. Department of Health and Human Services". I've easily googled other sources which link to proper papers on PubMed, for instance.

That said, the question is, it's preferable to what?

High investment dual parenting. Father and mother (and usually contributions from extended family on both sides). Even if we pretend both parents provide the exact same types of resources (which they don't: both are important for different reasons), then mathematically you're getting half the resources to raise a better kid.

Considering the messed-up relationship the two parents obviously have in those cases, would it really?

Nobody's arguing that two parents in a failing and abusive relationship would be preferable to a single parent with adequate resources to raise the child.

What I'm suggesting is that promoting a system of parenthood that is almost completely associated with being worse for the children is not a responsible thing to do. And that's what articles like this are doing, without weighing what we know to be massive negative associations.

GFK_of_xmaspast• 10 years ago

Are you seriously dropping a link in here with 'feminocracy' in it?

striking2• 10 years ago

Are you seriously commenting on the URL of a link rather than its content?

return05• 10 years ago

It's not voiced by the author, but the article makes a case for communal raising of children, which doesn't sound like a bad solution.

frozenport2• 10 years ago

Except when you consider the poor state of our inner city public schools.

fiatmoney2• 10 years ago

"Communal" being in this case "government".

"the democrats should be beating down their door, promising to wash their cars, watch their kids"

return05• 10 years ago

Not necessarily. it may be an arrangement that springs up locally.

berman• 10 years ago

The title is "How Single Women Are Changing Society"... Where is the question answered? Oh, I see, here:

Their impact on politics could in theory be tremendous.

emodendroket3• 10 years ago

This analysis seems awfully shallow. What about their economic situations? I remember reading a lot of pieces cheering the rise of the female breadwinner, but many of those cases involved the man simply losing his job and the woman keeping the same, lower-paying one she had before. Are we just painting a happy and progressive veneer on the same sort of economic decline? It's curious that this is not even mentioned as a factor when they talk about living situations.

f34fq34f• 10 years ago

Children from single-parent families are more likely to have problems in future with education, income, criminality... In other words if you correct for single parents, differences between races disappear.

FussyZeus• 10 years ago

I would postulate that any arrangement where the parents, regardless of number, can be happy and productive is an arrangement that results in a happy and productive child.

Instead of studying the various methods and deciding which one is best as though it would make a single difference to the people at large (as if there are people planning their lives by the statistical "best life", whom we should probably ship to Area 51 since they are clearly not human) how about we just agree to all mind our own damn business and let people live how they want to live, with a spouse of the sex and color they prefer, or none at all, with 6 children or with none, and just get on with our lives?

awl130• 10 years ago

the author is mistaken: single womanhood is not necessarily where female empowerment, or america, is headed. quite the opposite actually. women in scandinavia have been actively decoupling child-bearing from marriage for decades now, and the results are somewhat counterintuitive: marriage rates have been increasing, and at an earlier age[1], because scandinavian women have less concern about balancing career with bearing offspring given all the social and governmental support they now receive.

scandinavia has been a leading indicator of almost every social trend (and concomitant government policy) in north america: relaxation of gender roles, women in the workforce, women in politics, decline of marriage, increase in co-habitation, social services for women, etc. every other indicator is as expected: scandinavia's female workforce participation is higher, women in government is higher, etc.

however there is one cautionary indicator that is lagging in scandinavia, and that has to do with women in leadership roles in business. one possible explanation is that scandinavian businesses, especially global ones, are privy to the international market. thus while scandinavia may comprise the most liberal countries in the world, their business leaders are competing against foreign businesses, some from developing countries, that are hungry and could give a f* about gender politics.

[1]http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/...

How Single Women Are Changing Society

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