May 25, 2015 • 50 mins
Who needs marriage these days? Cristen and Caroline discuss the record number of Americans choosing to stay single and why single women tend to spark more controversy and panic than single men.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to stuff Mom Never told You from how stup
works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristen and I'm Caroline and Caroline. I don't want to
alarm our listeners, but the fact of the matter is,
there is an epidemic sweeping the nation of the United
(00:24):
States of America, and there is no vaccine. There is
no cure. Well there might well there could be cures
like matchmakers or Tinder possibly or e harmony. More like Caroline,
I'm talking about the single hood thing. Yeah, women better
watch out because this plague of single tom is coming
(00:45):
for you. It's coming for you and your cats and
your campbell soup cans. I don't know what else is
in the stereotype. Yeah, women do eat lots of soups,
your floral dresses. I don't know who knows. You would think, though,
in the way that the media have reported on marriage
(01:06):
trends downward trends in the US in the past few years,
that it is some terrifying epidemic that we should be
bracing ourselves for, especially if we're women, Because a lot
of the focus and the panic is on women who
have never been married are totally okay with that and
(01:29):
might have no interest in ever getting married. Yeah, I'm
not sure what society considers worse to be worse, Uh,
someone who hasn't ever been married in is single, um,
but who could potentially get married one day, or the
person who completely opts out of the system altogether and says,
n now I'm joining this whole single by choice thing.
(01:52):
I'm I'm I'm good on my own, getting off the
marriage grid. Yeah, exactly what we do have some to
share with you to kick things off in this single
by Choice episode because the fact of the matter is,
regardless of choice, there is a record number of Americans
who have never been married. And Caroline, I mean, we're
(02:15):
actually part of this group, so high five. This is
coming from the Pure Research Center from September. Yeah, so
as of one in five adults who were twenty five
and older, that's about forty two million people had never
been married. And compare that to nineteen sixty and that
(02:36):
number was just one in ten or just nine percent
of adults. Now, men are actually more likely to never
have been married, and that has a gender gap that
has widened over those decades since the sixties, And so
what's up with that? Well, a lot of people are saying, well,
you know, people are marrying later, more people are cohabitating,
So it's not that they're single per se, but they're
(02:59):
single in the legal sense of being unmarried. But they
still might be living together having a few kids. But
there's also an educational component. Pew pointed out that this
marriage rate decline has been steepest for the least educated
among US, especially men, and the smallest for college grads,
especially women. So it sounds like, uh, all the college
(03:22):
grads male and female are getting together. Yeah, And this
educational component is something often highlighted when we break down
these marriage statistics among African Americans because at this point,
Black women are graduating college at twice the rate of
Black men, and this percentage of never married is the
(03:46):
largest among Black men and women. But a lot of times,
when it comes to whether it's single by choice, it's not.
Choice is not as huge of a factor because this
Pew research found that a larger proportion of the African
Americans pulled agreed with the statement that it's important to
(04:07):
get married to someone that you want to be with forever.
So marriage is very much idealized within those communities. But
for educated black women seeking equally educated and upwardly mobile
black men, it's simply harder to find those partners. Well.
Speaking of attitudes and idealizing marriage, people are pretty evenly
(04:30):
split over whether society is better off with people focusing
on marriage and kids or not. And then you've got
thirty two. If you're looking at the people who are
have never been married, they're not divorced, they're not widowed
of never married adults say they're not sure whether they
want to marry. Percent of them say they never want to.
(04:52):
But let's get into an international perspective. This is a
fall two thousand five report in the journal Marriage and
Child well Being. They found that despite record low marriage
rates in the US that everybody's panicking about, there's been
a million think pieces and we read every single one
of them about this topic for this episode, marriage is
(05:13):
actually more prevalent here in the US than in nearly
any other developed Western nation. And not only is it
more prevalent, it's a more prevalent ideal. And they cited
two thousand one survey, so a little bit dated, but
it found that ten percent of Americans and that numbers
probably higher now said marriage was an outdated institution. And
(05:37):
if you zero in on the millennials answering that question,
that percentage goes up much higher. And then compare that
though with thirty six percent of French people who were like, yeah,
no need for marriage, it's outdated. I was about to
attempt a French accent, but then last minute decided not to.
And then twenty six percent of British people also agreed
(05:59):
that Mary is outdated. So it seems like this idea
of marriage is this very sacred institution that we need
to protect, is something that very much flourishes in the
United States. Not so surprising considering all of the legal
rigamarole that has gone on surrounding gay marriage. Yeah, well,
(06:19):
this whole whether you believe that marriage is outdated or not,
it does tend to match the level of religious affiliation
in various countries. But yeah, like you said, I mean
that the idea of marriage and the marriage ideal itself
has been woven into the American fabric from the get go. Basically,
it's always been seen as a building block of society
(06:40):
from colonial times, and when you go back to that era,
colonial times and also around the Revolution, unmarried folks were
penalized by higher taxes in order to quote unquote encourage
people to get married and pop out a bunch of
new citizens. Of course, this hasn't really changed today because
singles still pay higher taxes than married people who are
(07:03):
filing jointly. Yeah, there are over one thousand tax breaks
for married people compared to single people. Um. In eight also,
Supreme Court Justice Stephen Field wrote quote marriage as creating
the most important relation in life, as having more to
(07:23):
do with the morals and civilization of a people than
any other institution. Has always been subject to the control
of the legislature, and again that is something that we're
still dealing with today. Are the American government has always
been very much invested in its straight citizens pairing up
(07:44):
and marrying off. Yeah, I mean, there you have it.
It's wrapped up with morals and it is called the
most important relation in life. And so it's really no
surprise that there's a lot of single hood stigma out there,
which is referred to as singleism. And this is a
term coined in two thousand five by social psychologist Bella
de Paulo, who refers to herself as single at heart,
(08:06):
i e. Single by choice and she says that single
is who I really am, and Apolo is definitely the
name that comes up in any story you read about
the single by choice movement or just about people who
are sort of getting off the marriage track. Yeah, she's
led the research on tracking the so called singleism as
she's called as she calls it, She's written books. She
(08:28):
is also very much a public advocate for single people
enjoying the same kinds of both legal and also professional
benefits as married people do just by virtue of being married.
And DePaulo also says that because of this sort of
figurative marriage squeeze that we're experiencing right now, this sort
(08:51):
of moral panic over more and more people hopping off
the marriage track, that we're actually seeing as a response
to that, this thing that she refers to his matro mania,
it's this unprecedented glorification of couples and of marriage because
those marriage numbers are dropping, and so as a response,
people are like, oh, marriage is amazing. And she says
(09:13):
that those who don't have it are pitied, and those
who don't want it though, which is what we're really
digging into in this episode, are threatening because you are
not only an outlier. But you're an outlier by choice.
What does that say about you? What does that mean
about society at large? If we're choosing not to marry,
then well, how will the family units progress? How will
(09:36):
we have children? Caroline exactly? I have no idea how
people have children? How does I don't know how that works.
I think we'll have to do another podcast really dig
into that. Yeah. Well, people are afraid of single women
in particular, as we've emphasized several times already. H This
is coming from a two thousand and four team paper
by Kennett, Lahad and Haim has On called the Terror
(09:59):
of the sing Old Maid on the Insolubility of a
cultural category, and they write that the old maid is
an undisputable cultural trope that serves to scare women into
catching a husband, and this figure the single woman, is
a perversion of social order. And they write that single women,
particularly when you get into the issue of single women
(10:20):
who are entering their mid to late thirties, are commonly
and popularly represented as lonely, miserable, ugly, stubborn, and overly selective.
What are you doing being choosy over there? You don't
have time to be choosing your thirty five death's just
right around the corner, but as settle down as soon
as possible, And they cited a separate study back in
(10:42):
the nineties seventies which found singles living alone were likelier
to be characterized as less friendly, colder, less attractive, more private,
less extroverted, and lonelier than people living with roommates, not
even married people just like, just please live in a
space with other people. Come on, really making us nervous.
(11:06):
And this is especially true for the aging older single woman.
And by older, we're not talking about your sixties, we're
talking about your thirties here. Yeah, there's this whole idea
of the single woman aging faster than the married woman.
Basically that there's something almost scary and unfortunate about the
woman who chooses to be single, because oh, well, if
(11:29):
you're thirty four and you're married, that's great because you
found your your safe relationship and you still have time
to pop out seven kids, great role with it. Whereas
the single woman who's thirty four, thirty five, however old, uh,
it's almost like her clock is running out faster than
other people's. And this is also pattern studied within gay
male culture which I thought was interesting because if we're
(11:50):
looking at different subsets of the population, game in judge
their gay mail peers to be middle aged and older
earlier than society at large does. In other words, straight
people might judge a gay single man to be oh, well,
he's he's young and healthy, looking, great for a good job,
good job guy, he's a bachelor, a bachelor. But within
(12:12):
gay mail culture they are judged to be getting older.
The clock is ticking, just like it is for single women. Yeah.
In that paper, they really highlighted the difference between a
woman with a child who's thirty five being still termed
a young mother, but a woman not only single, but
it's really not being a mother as well. It's like
(12:34):
not having a husband and also not having a kid.
Then it ages you even faster. So there are lots
of lots of layers to this thing. But what about
those people? And so you know what, I don't care
if you call me a spenster or an old maid.
I enjoy my age, I enjoy being single. Who are
(12:55):
these people, Well, there are a growing number of them,
as we mentioned. According to a two thousand six report
from Pew Research Center, fifty per cent of the never
married survey, participants had zero interest in seeking a romantic partner.
They're like, listen, I'm doing me. It's cool. Yeah. Well,
(13:17):
back to Lahad and Hasan, they write that these women
in in the statistic well and men. But you know, seriously,
people are so afraid of single women are unsettling the
basis of hegemonic heteronormativity, which assumes that the joy and
meaning of life can only be found and getting married.
So they're upsetting the balance. Not only do we think
(13:39):
they're just a little weird and could potentially be cat ladies,
you know, casting spells from their apartment, but they are
upsetting the balance of society that has been ingrained in
our culture since the beginning. Well, you're nobody until you're
somebody's Caroline, right, That's like, that's like scientific fact. Can
we write a musical about this? It sounds like the
(14:00):
perfect the perfect song and included in our single Single
by Choice musical. Yes, yes, answer, yes. But people don't
even believe, especially single women's choices and motivations for being single.
We have a really hard time believing the woman who's
(14:21):
like I'm single and loving it, Like no, no, no, no, no, no,
no, No No, you are tricking yourself. You're in denial. There's
no way you could be happy. Yeah. Boston Magazine in
January interviewed hard Harvard Medical School professors Jacqueline Olds and
Richard Schwartz, who are married by the way um, and
(14:42):
the magazine was looking at the whole single by Choice
movement and pros and cons and all that stuff. And
there's this big assumption that the people who opt for
single hood had a bad childhood. Old, for instance, says
that most of her patients who say they choose to
be single have grown up in a family situation where
quote love looked awful. So we assume that you must
(15:04):
have had something terrible happened to you. We also assume
that you're selfish or so socially stunted. She Olds talks
about how we're raising a generation of individualists who haven't
been taught to compromise. And there is Caroline, a feature
film encompassing all of these stereotypes called Adult Children of
Divorce starring Adam Scott. Also features Amy Poehler and other
(15:28):
hilarious people. But it's all of these stereotypes wrapped in one.
Spoiler alert, It's about Adam Scott who's like, I don't
want to get married. My parents got divorced and now
I have a hard time committing. But the happy ending
is that he gets married. See this is a musical. Yeah,
I know, I'm already working on it. They also point
(15:50):
out the idea that are high standards about marriage lead
to a sort of social paralysis. Basically, the cultural view
that your spouse should be your soul mate and your
best friend and the only person in the universe for you.
It is kind of intimidating to people, and so old
and not that that's not true, not that that's not
(16:10):
kind of intimidating, and like, man, I have to find
someone who's literally a perfect for me. But it's the
whole point that Olds and Schwartz are saying that this
is why people are choosing to be single, not for
any other reason, like just wanting to live your life
that way. Yeah, it's like we can't let this be
a simple decision, Like we're on the outside trying to
(16:34):
overly complicate what for a lot of people is just
what naturally feels right after them. But when we look
at more objective research on people who are single by choice,
and this has been going on now for a while.
It turns out that they aren't all sitting at home
lonely with their cats, just saying to themselves single and
(16:57):
loving it. I swear I'm single. They're clutching a mug
that staring in the mirror and stroking their their the
reflection of their face. Yeah, that's right. We've got a
couple of people who have done some research into the
basically the life choices of of people who are committed
to being single. There was a two thousand to study
(17:18):
in the Journal of Advertising Research kind of looking at
who the single, particularly the single by choice consumer is.
Is this a person who's huddled in his or her
apartment not wanting to associate with people, or is this
someone who's actually going to go out and buy your products?
And they found kind of unsurprisingly that single adults, especially
(17:39):
those that are young and single by choice, seek busy
and active lives. They're constantly on the go, and they
say that singles have a unique lifestyle. They're often well
educated and earning good salaries, and they only have themselves
as financial burdens. They also enjoy more free time, which
they fill with a variety of self based activities and
(17:59):
often have only themselves to satisfy. And they did highlight
some differences though, between people who are single by choice
and those who are single by circumstance, And they note
and keep in mind that this is in the Journal
of Advertising Research, this is very marketing focused. So they
found that a single by choice people would engage in
(18:21):
more active and hedonic behaviors like convenience and variety seeking,
low price consciousness, and more innovative kinds of purchases, so
they're a little bit more adventurous, whereas people who are
single by circumstance used more compensating and coping behaviors like
watching TV and being brand conscious. So they boil all
(18:47):
all single people in general down to people who want
to fill the gaping holes in their lives, whether they're
single by choice or single by circumstance. They want to
fill those holes with your branded items so they can
develop a relationship with your brand that they apparently can't
develop with another human. Yeah, they're basically like, Okay, to
(19:07):
what degree are these people impulsive buyers? And how can
we capitalize on that? But it's interesting, you know, I
I tend to poopoo marketing and advertising and things like that.
But it is interesting to see that research into these
people is coming out of advertising research. It's like we're
getting more information about Hey, they're not pathetic. Oh my god,
(19:30):
shocking news, you know, breaking news. Single people aren't pitiful
from advertisers. They're like, no, they actually live pretty cool
lives and they want our branded kayak to go with it.
And that's something too that n y U professor and
author of the book Going Solo, Eric Kleinberg, has confirmed
in more recent research that he's conducted on people who
(19:52):
are single by choice, and he told the New York
Times quote, what we've learned in the past fifty years
is that people will of alone whenever and wherever they
can afford to do it. So we enjoy a lot
of us humans that kind of just sort of basic
solitude to begin with, even in the sense of having
(20:13):
a living space just to ourselves. Yeah, but Kleinenberg says,
you know, we're not so alone and self absorbed that
we can't actually care about other people and developed interests
outside of ourselves. He interviewed more than three hundred single
people and found that living alone tends to encourage more
social interaction. Basically, uh, the single people he talked to
were more likely to spend time with friends and neighbors,
(20:36):
go to restaurants, and attend art classes and lectures. And
of the people who were living alone after a breakup
or divorce, for instance, many of them opted to live
alone rather than with family or roommates because they had
found there was nothing worse than living with the wrong person.
And that is more general, that's beyond just the single
by choice stuff, But I mean, it's I think it's
(20:56):
important to emphasize that people just because you live alone
or you are single or unmarried, it doesn't mean that
you're living an unfulfilling life. And a lot of people
still though, will criticize and say, oh, well, they're trying
to fill all those holes that they couldn't fill with children,
with you know, going to art museums, and it's like, well,
I don't know, it doesn't sound too bad. Well, in
(21:17):
that research jives anecdotally with my research thinking about my
level of sociability in times being single and in times
you know, being in relationships and you're nesting and you're
making dinner at home and like you just have your
little place with you a little person, and you're gonna
watch Way You Too Much Netflix because it's really nice.
(21:39):
But when you're single, it does kind of force you
in a way to go out and do things and
see other people and other studies. I'm sure we've excited
this on the podcast in a previous episode, but um,
it's it's the study looking at social involvement of single
people versus married people, and researchers have found that single
people are way more likely to volunteer, They're way more
(21:59):
likely to be like a solid and involved member of
the community versus married people. And that's not to say
that married people are bad or they're uninvolved or uninterested.
It's just that when you have kids and a wife
or a husband or whoever, you know you're going to
dedicate rightfully, so a lot of time to that nuclear family.
When you're single, you have more energy and time to
(22:20):
dedicate to the world around you well. And in that
oversight of the rich lives of single people is something
that can be really frustrating if you're single in the workplace,
and people might assume that if you're single and or
don't have kids, then when the holidays come, like you
can bear the brunt of it, right Because we have
(22:40):
these responsibilities, or if you have a sick kid, then
you have you can leave to go do things. But
if you're single and you need a little time off,
then you might get a little bit more of a
scrutinizing eyebrow raise. And I think it's also worth noting
to um in regard to Kleinberg talking about the people
living alone post breakup or divorce, that single by choice
(23:01):
can also happen to not never married or ever married people.
It's something that some people will get married and then
get divorced and then be like, you know what, single
by choice from now on? Yeah, exactly. Well, there's so
much more to talk about in terms of choice, but
also in terms of how that intersects with feminism and
(23:22):
just the fabulous stereotypes that women have to face as
single people. But we will get into that right after
a break. So in the first half of the podcast,
we laid some statistical groundwork that more and more people
are choosing not to get married or just delaying marriage
(23:43):
to a degree that makes a lot of older people
really nervous, and there is a lot of discomfort, particularly
when it comes not to single by circumstance, but to
single by choice, especially when that choice is made by women.
And and Kate Bollock launched a thousand responses, got a
(24:05):
fantastic book deal, and got so much attention in two
thousand eleven with a piece that she wrote for The
Atlantic magazine All the Single Ladies, about her the point
that she's reached in her life at that point in
her what late thirties, basically saying, you know what, I'm
single and I might mingle, but I don't know. Yeah,
(24:27):
at she'd broken up with her great boyfriend because something
was missing and she wasn't ready to settle down. And
she basically said that she was inspired indirectly or directly
by the post boomer ideology of seeking that missing something
and the second wave feminism idea of not settling down
or just finding a husband, just because she said it
(24:49):
was part of this idea that she was immersed in
of hey, let's spend our twenties finding ourselves and surely
the husband will come later. Well he didn't, and she eventually,
as she's writing this article, opts out of dating and
relationships and getting married. And she said that she kind
of reached this point where listen, I don't want to
see my single life as this provisional you know, in
(25:13):
between step before I finally have a fulfilling life at
whatever age. That fulfilling life, of course being equated to
a husband. But she says that it's so hard to
get other people to see that point of view. Yeah,
she writes, quote the single woman is very rarely seen
for who she is, whatever that might be, by others
(25:33):
or even by the single woman herself. So thoroughly do
most of us internalize the stigmas that surround our status
because we are constantly surrounded by messages and images of
the complete woman. The idea of quote unquote having it
all is what it's a married woman with children and
a job. She's she's that awful stock image photo of
(25:56):
the woman with the octopus arms who's juggling like a
baby and a has been and like bathroom cleaning supplies
and briefcase got always the briefcase, always the briefcase. I
think they carry the baby in the briefcase. I like
to think that, or that the briefcase is just full
of diapers. Um Well. Bolic is one of many writers who,
over the past several years have noted that this whole
(26:20):
shebang is part of an entire generational swing. Basically, as
women have climbed higher, men have fallen behind, and it
no longer behooves us to quote unquote marry up. And
Bolic does point out that this echoes glorious steynham statement
decades earlier that we are becoming the men we wanted
to marry. And we really saw the emergence of the
(26:41):
so called elite single professional woman emerging in academic literature
around two thousand four, and we found this highlighted in
a paper published in the Journal of International Women's Studies,
which notes how this elite single professional woman faces similar
sins of societal prejudices no matter what country she's in,
(27:04):
whether she's in the US or in Germany, Poland, or India,
which were the countries highlighted. Yeah. The authors claimed that
this single professional woman is the first new global sociological
phenomenon of the twenty one century, which is pretty impressive.
It's two thousand four and they're already saying this, Yeah,
screw hindsight, where we know this is happening right now.
(27:27):
I also appreciated the Ally mcbell references in the introduction Yeah,
I know, and the judging Amy references. That's another show
I watched with Deep cut ow Um. So yeah, they
say that this woman, the SPW. They write that this SPW,
the single professional woman, has successfully entered positions of economic, political,
(27:49):
and social power with paid work in the formal sector.
So you know, why does she need She doesn't need anybody,
She doesn't need to be a trophy wife, she doesn't
need to be a kept woman. She has developed her
own power. And then they point out that as the
American brand of individualism and economic empowerment for women has
(28:10):
gone global, the bar is rising for qualities that are
acceptable in a mate. And the authors note the same
kind of two part life pattern that Bollock experience is
becoming common. So in your twenties, you quote unquote find yourself,
and then by the time you reach your late thirties,
you're kind of either the point of total panic and
(28:32):
regret for spending all that time in your twenties finding
yourself instead of finding a husband, or you experience what
they call the blossoming of the single female lifestyle potential,
which also kind of sounds like a tagline for a
Chico Ladies, Are you blossoming this spring? Try on? New statement? Jewelry.
(28:55):
It's just a big flower and in the middle it's
a single and let y'r neck bloom SBC. Well, not
everybody's drinking the whole single by choice kool aid Susan Wall,
she's the author of the Hooking Up Smart blog and
whose praises Kate Bollox sang in her article is basically like, yeah, right, okay, sure.
So not only she very skeptical of this whole single
(29:17):
by choice movement, but she is asking why do you
have to be shaming married people? Not that I think
Black was trying. I don't think that's what she was
trying to do at all. I just think she's saying,
you know, I have a valid life choice as well.
This is how my life is shaken out, and I'm
cool with it. But while she's a little I've ventured
to say she's a little judge. Yeah, she predicts shaming
(29:41):
of married people escalating in the next twenty years, as quote,
women engage in whatever cognitive dissonance or hamster wheeling is
necessary to find an escape from singleism and more importantly,
a nagging sense of personal disappointment. So she's not buying it.
But I do think that Walsh is setting up a
(30:04):
kind of a false either or of like we're gonna
pitt singles versus the marriage and they can do get
out and whoever wins gets nothing because we all die.
That's right, Yeah, I mean I I think she's basically
saying that, hey, women don't start out wanting to be single,
they end up there and it's a forced choice. She
(30:24):
is saying that it's a forced choice. And she says
that it remains to be seen whether twenty something women
will get on board before they know whether they will
even have the opportunity to marry. She says, I suspect
that the up and coming generation of women views these
celebrations of singleness as a cautionary tale. And I don't know,
(30:46):
I don't know. I do know that recent studies have
shown that the millennial generation is on the whole rather
conservative when it comes to stuff like this. Um. And
so it is interesting to see generation by generation who's
reacting to social movements and and things like that. Um.
But oh, that is not that is not a very
(31:07):
complimentary stance that you only essentially end up as single
by choice if you've run out of options. Well, and
and to support this Walsh. Um points to an incident
that Kate Bollock also wrote about in her article. Um. So,
Kate Bollock goes over to dinner at Walsh's house, who
(31:30):
has like a bunch of young I think they're like
in their early college years girls hanging out for Kate
to talk about this whole single by choice thing. And
at one point Kate Pollock asked the young women at
dinner whether her single status at the age of thirty
nine freaked them out, and all of the girls nodded, saying, yeah,
(31:52):
that that doesn't sound like what I want. That doesn't
sound like my fairy tale that pop culture tells me
I should have. Yeah, And all these young women basically
saying that one day they would plan on prioritizing family
and marriage over a career. But I mean, Balack wasn't
that different, she said, And you know, she was writing
about her twenties and college years and saying that, yeah,
(32:14):
marriage was just something I took for granted, like it's
going to happen, and I will eventually like meet and
fall in love with a great man and marry him
and he'll be my life and blah blah blah. But
right now, I'm my life, and I'm going to go
find out more about my life by traveling and working
and all that stuff. So it's not it's not that
she necessarily set out with the goal of being single
by choice, and not everybody does. Sure, some people do
(32:35):
fall into it and say, you know what, this is
better for me, now, this is the choice I'm making now. Um,
But those young women definitely are in line with what
Kate Ballack's experience was, you know, on her own. But
even this idea that, oh, well, you're prioritizing your career
over marriage and family, that's that even misses the point
(32:57):
of what Kate Ballack and Bella de Apollo and all
these other people are saying, like, I don't. From my
reading of the Atlantic piece, Kate Bollock wasn't working herself
out of relationship. She was dating a lot of people
and getting into long term, serious relationships. She simply got
to a point where she was like, I just don't.
I'm not going to worry about it anymore. And it
(33:18):
didn't seem to have anything to do with I don't
have time to worry about it because I have all
these board meetings, which is something different, and I just
think it's really interesting that it's usually for single women.
It usually is posed and reframed as like, oh, well,
they must just be choosing their you know, feminist e
(33:38):
career things instead of becoming a wife and mother, which
it's like, no, can I just can I have my
job and also have my relationship with myself and my friends?
I mean I noticed that to go off on attention,
I noticed that same thing in when you see I
U d ads and magazines, especially for Skyla, which is
(33:59):
the type of I D I have, And it's specifically
targeted to younger women who've never been married, never had kids,
and they're just not ready yet. And so there's one
ad where it shows a cello coming down the slye
and the woman catching it like it's her kid, and
it's like, right now, my kid is my music career
or whatever, And it's the same kind of thing. It's
(34:19):
like or or yes, she has a fulfilling, balanced life
and just doesn't want to be a mom, yeah, or
it doesn't have to be an either, or right, couldn't
it be a both? I know a young mother who
plays the cello, so yes, we can have it all. Like, wait,
is the cello, her baby, caroly I don't understand. Yeah,
(34:41):
she's the cello, Yes she does. Yes, and yes she
is a mother of a baby and a cello cello.
They're twins. Well, this whole conversation about choice either or feminism, careers, etcetera,
leads us to the really fascinating wrinkle in all of this,
(35:04):
pointed out again by Kindert Lahad, the Israeli researcher that
we cited earlier in another paper she published in called
the single woman's choice as a zero sum game, And
she really focuses in on how quote choice has become
a cultural obligation, deeply ingrained in the neoliberal, post feminist,
(35:26):
therapeutic and consumerist norms, and she finds that rather problematic
at times. Yeah, and basically this is the notion that
the minute an act is articulated as a choice, it's
considered a feminist act. Um. And she asks, does this
really set us free or is it just ammunition for
people to dismiss those choices, especially if you're a woman.
(35:49):
We still have not culturally gotten over the whole hysterical, floating,
floating uterus thing. We're still there, I think a little
bit mentally. Um, and she's wondering, based on past research,
does this quote unque choice feminism promote a false sense
of autonomy by placing autonomous choice and self actualization as
(36:09):
its highest values. In other words, is personal choice now
trumping bigger political actions? Are we pitting choice and single
hood against non choice and marriage? And also, hello, are
we forgetting women who, based on a variety of life factors,
don't even really get to choose? Yeah? And in investigating this,
(36:32):
she reviewed responses to an online column on what Sounds
Like sort of, the Israeli version of Huffington Posts like
the country's most popular blogging platform. And this column was
written by a woman describing her choice to be single
and being fine and happy with it and also highlighting
(36:54):
the advantages of being single by choice and what she
found in the variety of responses, and there were hundreds
of responses to this column because it is a hot
button topic. Um she found in plain English that essentially
single by choice and making choices focused can be a
(37:16):
double edged sword that both enables women to resist traditional
familiar forms but then also potentially lead people to cast
doubt and delegitimize this option of autonomy and individuality. Yeah.
So some of the social interpretations of choice that she
(37:37):
found one denote that single women are endowed with a
partial and incomplete subjectivity. So basically, what happens if you fall?
What will your cat eat you? Who will take care
of you when you get old? Your cat? Kristen, your
cat were we've said that it's your cat. Basically, there's
no way anyone would choose to be an aging spinster.
(37:59):
You must be crazy or you're just covering up the
fact that you couldn't find a man. Oh and hey,
that choice you made, it's dumb. You'll eventually figure it
out and your ovaries will lead you in the direction
of the right decision. And Lahad rights that these restrictions
are part of quote post feminist portraits of ambitious, working,
and yet unhappy single women. This form of skepticism can
(38:22):
be seen as a post feminist backlash or a new traditionalism,
and a lot of the comments that we're saying, hey,
you only have partial subjectivity. These women are depicted as
being too choosy, but their choices are neither healthy, nor authentic,
nor knowledgeable. And then on the flip side of that
(38:43):
of that partial and incomplete subjectivity, these responses the social
interpretations of choice to indicate that this choice of single
hood signifies a radical option for claiming single hood as
a long term way of life. So these are the
people saying, you know what good for you that you
(39:05):
can do it. Nuclear family doesn't have to be the
own the only option. You're so brave, you're so strong
to do this on your own. Well done woman. Yeah,
basically saying that single hood is a legitimate identity, It
is not a stepping stone. Singlehood is not always are
necessarily a stepping stone to being married, having a family.
(39:26):
And Lahat points out that this is a very interesting
and almost unexpected response in a country like Israel, which
is you know, very conservative, very traditional, family oriented, very
like pro let's have babies. I mean, along this that
not not so different from the US in terms of
those attitudes. After all, the US is the one with
(39:48):
the lowest rate of people saying that marriage doesn't need
to happen. Well, and it's also notable too that her
starts really focuses on the implications of this being posed
as a personal choice because in the US, and we're
actually going to talk to Lahad and more in depth
(40:09):
about this in our next podcast. So stay tuned for
that because in the US, especially when it comes to
the work of Bella Depolo, and also what Susan Walsh
was fearing in terms of this marriage backlash is more
of a political agenda of saying, hey, single people want
equality to married people as well. So there is personal
(40:33):
and political all tied up with this. Yeah exactly, But
I mean, speaking of the personal, how does labeling yourself
single by choice, putting on that name tag, how does
that tend to fit in with personal narratives for yourself
and about yourself? Uh? Well, according to Lahad study, feminism, choice,
and single hood are all wrapped up together and become
(40:57):
almost the core of the woman's identity, whether they're viewing
you as that strong independent woman or a pathetic single person.
And according to a paper in the Sociological Review from
two thousand and seven, singleness remains a quote deficit identity
because it becomes the single woman's problem to account positively
(41:19):
for her single state, because it's usually like I'm single
and or but like, you can't just be single in
the same way that you like if you're married. You
don't have to say I'm married, and you know what,
I'm really happy. I'm really happy, promise you. Yeah. You
basically get to say I'm married a full stop and
(41:40):
people are like, oh, good for you, you have such
a fulfilling life, when really, who knows, who knows? Who knows?
You could be in one of those quote greedy marriages
that some researchers have highlighted in terms of with the
with the sociability factor of marriage consuming all of you. Yeah, yeah,
well so I've easlee. It goes without saying that this
(42:02):
conversation has focused mainly on the single woman. We mentioned
gay male subculture earlier, so what about gay men. This
is coming from a paper in two thousand nine in
the Journal of Homosexuality that investigated what it means for
gay men who are thirty five and up to be
voluntarily single, and they ended up finding a discrepancy between
(42:24):
your own perception of yourself as single by choice in
the actual acceptance of and satisfaction with single status. They
found that, uh, a single by choice did not appear
to be the most important part of these guys identities. Instead,
it's almost a personal narrative strategy that they created in
(42:47):
order to preserve ego integrity. But isn't it so fascinating
that there's been all this research, so much research focus
on single women. There's been a decent amount research focused
on single by choice gay men, where the straight man.
And also there is no mention of lesbians anywhere because
(43:09):
of the stereotype of like, oh, well, they pair bond
very quickly and are totally happy and fine, so we
don't even need to talk about them. But straight men,
even though statistically there are more never married straight dudes
than ever before, all of the panic, all of the
think pieces, all of the blog posts are focused on
(43:31):
straight women. And I think that it has a lot
to do with that motherhood piece because it's sort of
the double transgression of not only being single but also
choosing not to have kids as well, which is still
a radical choice to a lot of people. And whereas
men are just allowed to be bachelors if they want
to be. Yeah, that there is no there's no straight
(43:54):
man panic whatever getting getting married. Well, And one thing too,
that Lahad notes in that zero sum game paper that
we were just talking about, that there is a bit
of privilege to that comes with this social single by
choice conversation, and even just the privilege of having the
(44:15):
choice because she mentions that women of color are often
left all these conversations as well. I mean, in Kate
Bollock's Peace, She's white. A lot of the people that
she's talking to are all white. It's like, you, you
have to get to a certain educational level, to a
certain socio economic level where you are even presented the choice. Yeah,
(44:36):
I mean yeah, especially when Ballack refers to a lot
of the older women, like retirement age women who have
opted to be single, uh and stay unmarried. They there
is like this air of like, oh wow, these are
these are kind of upper crust women who have a
really kind of blissful life that they have chosen to
(44:58):
lead as as single people. Yeah. So there, it's a
it's a fascinating snapshot to see where we are right
now with it. And I'll be curious to see in say,
ten years, whether this stigma still remains, because it's pretty entrenched.
And now I'm curious to hear from listeners what they
(45:22):
think about it. Do you look at people who are
single by choice skeptically? Are you single by choice? Do
you think that this rise of the never married and
people who don't care to get married, whether they're cohabitating
with someone or not is a threat to our societal fabric.
And I am also interested in knowing if you are
(45:42):
single by choice, how you came upon that choice, because
that's a huge part of the discussion too, is that
naysayers are all saying that, no, you just fell into this,
You just it's your second best, it's the second place
choice because you couldn't get married. But then there are
other people who say no, no, this is I went
purposefully in this direction, and so I'm interested to hear
in in motives. So we await your feedback eagerly. Mom
(46:06):
Stuff at how stuffworks dot com is our email address,
and you can always tweet us at mom Stuff podcast
or messages on Facebook. And we've got a couple of
messages to share with you right now. Well, I have
a letter here from Joel, He says Joel from Portland, uh,
(46:27):
in response to our female nudes episode. And Joel, I've
got to tell you, I don't know if you meant
to be funny, but I laughed out loud so hard
at this that I really had no choice but to
read it in our listener mail segment. Okay, so Joel says,
I always thought that sculptors covered up lady bits on
sculptures because pubic hair was just too darn detailed to sculpt.
(46:49):
I figured they were able to do hair on top
of heads because they just needed long flowing lines. But
fine hair in such a small area would maybe come
out looking like a vagina covered by him a range cookie.
Thanks for the show, oh man. That imagery, Uh, it's
I just can't like, I can't, I can't get the
(47:10):
imagery out of my head. It is amazing. I do
now want a sculpture of a nude, a nude sculpture
showing just a marangue cookie over the lady bits. But
I do wonder, Jalt, what about the dude sculptures that
have pubic hair. Yeah, I will say it doesn't really
look so much like marangue, but just spaghetti sou So
(47:30):
there's that more imagery. Well, I have another letter here
from Becca about our female nudes episode, and she has
some juicy information for us about art critic John Ruskin,
whom we mentioned. And it's the letters a little bit long,
but listeners, it's totally worth it. So she writes, you
(47:51):
mentioned as an anecdote the alleged incident where art critic
John Ruskin was horrified by his wife's pubic hair and
refused to consummate their marriage. Indeed, we have no concrete
proof of exactly what occurred on their wedding night. I
thought i'd share some extra information on the matter. In
the summer of twelve, Stage managed to play called Blood
(48:11):
Red Roses by Don Nigro that explores many of the
stories about the pre Raphaelite erab painters, their critics, and
most importantly, the women in their lives. I'm by no
means an art history expert, but during the rehearsal process
we heavily researched these stories, including the unraveling of John
Ruskin's marriage to Effie Gray and his failed attempt at
(48:32):
romance with another young woman named Rose Latouche. Ruskin took
a great interest in both of these women when they
were young girls, and eventually pursue them romantically when they
were old enough. Effie and John Ruskin had a very
unhappy marriage that they never consummated. The evidence is vague
and in many cases biased, but we have come to
understand that Ruskin was repulsed by Effie's body, possibly because
(48:55):
of her pubic hare or by her period. What a
surprise men of rate administration. Anyway, many historians speculate that Ruskin,
as an art critic, grew to appreciate and adore the
youthful female figure, but was disgusted by a real adult
woman's body after seeing one for the first time on
his wedding night. The story ends well for Effie, Thankfully,
(49:16):
he was eventually able to annul her marriage to Ruskin
and married successful painter John Everett Malays, with whom she
had nine children. Ruskin later pursued one of his students,
a young girl named Rose Latouche, when she was of
consenting age. However, her parents didn't approve of the match
and didn't allow the two to marry, despite Ruskin pursuing
her for years after the initial rejection. Reportedly, after Ruskin
(49:39):
first proposed to Rose, it was Effie who wrote to
the girl's parents to warn them that Ruskin wasn't a
suitable man to be anyone's husband. Another interesting note about
Ruskin's distaste of nude bodies, although found to be at
least partially untrue, is that Ruskin claimed to have destroyed
several works of new drawings and paintings by the artist J. M. W.
(50:00):
Turner to protect his reputation after his death. Some of
these works were recovered in two thousand five, so he
didn't destroy everything, but at the very least he certainly
certainly had a problem with nudity. So thanks for the insight, Becca,
and as always we look forward to your insights as well.
Mom Stuff and how Stuff Works dot com is our
(50:22):
email address and for links to all of our social
media as well as all of our blogs, videos and
podcasts with our sources so you can learn more about
singles by choice. Head on over to stuff Mom Never
Told You dot com for more on this and thousands
of other topics. Does it how stuff works dot com
Welcome to stuff Mom Never told You from how stup
works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristen and I'm Caroline and Caroline. I don't want to
alarm our listeners, but the fact of the matter is,
there is an epidemic sweeping the nation of the United
(00:24):
States of America, and there is no vaccine. There is
no cure. Well there might well there could be cures
like matchmakers or Tinder possibly or e harmony. More like Caroline,
I'm talking about the single hood thing. Yeah, women better
watch out because this plague of single tom is coming
(00:45):
for you. It's coming for you and your cats and
your campbell soup cans. I don't know what else is
in the stereotype. Yeah, women do eat lots of soups,
your floral dresses. I don't know who knows. You would think, though,
in the way that the media have reported on marriage
(01:06):
trends downward trends in the US in the past few years,
that it is some terrifying epidemic that we should be
bracing ourselves for, especially if we're women, Because a lot
of the focus and the panic is on women who
have never been married are totally okay with that and
(01:29):
might have no interest in ever getting married. Yeah, I'm
not sure what society considers worse to be worse, Uh,
someone who hasn't ever been married in is single, um,
but who could potentially get married one day, or the
person who completely opts out of the system altogether and says,
n now I'm joining this whole single by choice thing.
(01:52):
I'm I'm I'm good on my own, getting off the
marriage grid. Yeah, exactly what we do have some to
share with you to kick things off in this single
by Choice episode because the fact of the matter is,
regardless of choice, there is a record number of Americans
who have never been married. And Caroline, I mean, we're
(02:15):
actually part of this group, so high five. This is
coming from the Pure Research Center from September. Yeah, so
as of one in five adults who were twenty five
and older, that's about forty two million people had never
been married. And compare that to nineteen sixty and that
(02:36):
number was just one in ten or just nine percent
of adults. Now, men are actually more likely to never
have been married, and that has a gender gap that
has widened over those decades since the sixties, And so
what's up with that? Well, a lot of people are saying, well,
you know, people are marrying later, more people are cohabitating,
So it's not that they're single per se, but they're
(02:59):
single in the legal sense of being unmarried. But they
still might be living together having a few kids. But
there's also an educational component. Pew pointed out that this
marriage rate decline has been steepest for the least educated
among US, especially men, and the smallest for college grads,
especially women. So it sounds like, uh, all the college
(03:22):
grads male and female are getting together. Yeah, And this
educational component is something often highlighted when we break down
these marriage statistics among African Americans because at this point,
Black women are graduating college at twice the rate of
Black men, and this percentage of never married is the
(03:46):
largest among Black men and women. But a lot of times,
when it comes to whether it's single by choice, it's not.
Choice is not as huge of a factor because this
Pew research found that a larger proportion of the African
Americans pulled agreed with the statement that it's important to
(04:07):
get married to someone that you want to be with forever.
So marriage is very much idealized within those communities. But
for educated black women seeking equally educated and upwardly mobile
black men, it's simply harder to find those partners. Well.
Speaking of attitudes and idealizing marriage, people are pretty evenly
(04:30):
split over whether society is better off with people focusing
on marriage and kids or not. And then you've got
thirty two. If you're looking at the people who are
have never been married, they're not divorced, they're not widowed
of never married adults say they're not sure whether they
want to marry. Percent of them say they never want to.
(04:52):
But let's get into an international perspective. This is a
fall two thousand five report in the journal Marriage and
Child well Being. They found that despite record low marriage
rates in the US that everybody's panicking about, there's been
a million think pieces and we read every single one
of them about this topic for this episode, marriage is
(05:13):
actually more prevalent here in the US than in nearly
any other developed Western nation. And not only is it
more prevalent, it's a more prevalent ideal. And they cited
two thousand one survey, so a little bit dated, but
it found that ten percent of Americans and that numbers
probably higher now said marriage was an outdated institution. And
(05:37):
if you zero in on the millennials answering that question,
that percentage goes up much higher. And then compare that
though with thirty six percent of French people who were like, yeah,
no need for marriage, it's outdated. I was about to
attempt a French accent, but then last minute decided not to.
And then twenty six percent of British people also agreed
(05:59):
that Mary is outdated. So it seems like this idea
of marriage is this very sacred institution that we need
to protect, is something that very much flourishes in the
United States. Not so surprising considering all of the legal
rigamarole that has gone on surrounding gay marriage. Yeah, well,
(06:19):
this whole whether you believe that marriage is outdated or not,
it does tend to match the level of religious affiliation
in various countries. But yeah, like you said, I mean
that the idea of marriage and the marriage ideal itself
has been woven into the American fabric from the get go. Basically,
it's always been seen as a building block of society
(06:40):
from colonial times, and when you go back to that era,
colonial times and also around the Revolution, unmarried folks were
penalized by higher taxes in order to quote unquote encourage
people to get married and pop out a bunch of
new citizens. Of course, this hasn't really changed today because
singles still pay higher taxes than married people who are
(07:03):
filing jointly. Yeah, there are over one thousand tax breaks
for married people compared to single people. Um. In eight also,
Supreme Court Justice Stephen Field wrote quote marriage as creating
the most important relation in life, as having more to
(07:23):
do with the morals and civilization of a people than
any other institution. Has always been subject to the control
of the legislature, and again that is something that we're
still dealing with today. Are the American government has always
been very much invested in its straight citizens pairing up
(07:44):
and marrying off. Yeah, I mean, there you have it.
It's wrapped up with morals and it is called the
most important relation in life. And so it's really no
surprise that there's a lot of single hood stigma out there,
which is referred to as singleism. And this is a
term coined in two thousand five by social psychologist Bella
de Paulo, who refers to herself as single at heart,
(08:06):
i e. Single by choice and she says that single
is who I really am, and Apolo is definitely the
name that comes up in any story you read about
the single by choice movement or just about people who
are sort of getting off the marriage track. Yeah, she's
led the research on tracking the so called singleism as
she's called as she calls it, She's written books. She
(08:28):
is also very much a public advocate for single people
enjoying the same kinds of both legal and also professional
benefits as married people do just by virtue of being married.
And DePaulo also says that because of this sort of
figurative marriage squeeze that we're experiencing right now, this sort
(08:51):
of moral panic over more and more people hopping off
the marriage track, that we're actually seeing as a response
to that, this thing that she refers to his matro mania,
it's this unprecedented glorification of couples and of marriage because
those marriage numbers are dropping, and so as a response,
people are like, oh, marriage is amazing. And she says
(09:13):
that those who don't have it are pitied, and those
who don't want it though, which is what we're really
digging into in this episode, are threatening because you are
not only an outlier. But you're an outlier by choice.
What does that say about you? What does that mean
about society at large? If we're choosing not to marry,
then well, how will the family units progress? How will
(09:36):
we have children? Caroline exactly? I have no idea how
people have children? How does I don't know how that works.
I think we'll have to do another podcast really dig
into that. Yeah. Well, people are afraid of single women
in particular, as we've emphasized several times already. H This
is coming from a two thousand and four team paper
by Kennett, Lahad and Haim has On called the Terror
(09:59):
of the sing Old Maid on the Insolubility of a
cultural category, and they write that the old maid is
an undisputable cultural trope that serves to scare women into
catching a husband, and this figure the single woman, is
a perversion of social order. And they write that single women,
particularly when you get into the issue of single women
(10:20):
who are entering their mid to late thirties, are commonly
and popularly represented as lonely, miserable, ugly, stubborn, and overly selective.
What are you doing being choosy over there? You don't
have time to be choosing your thirty five death's just
right around the corner, but as settle down as soon
as possible, And they cited a separate study back in
(10:42):
the nineties seventies which found singles living alone were likelier
to be characterized as less friendly, colder, less attractive, more private,
less extroverted, and lonelier than people living with roommates, not
even married people just like, just please live in a
space with other people. Come on, really making us nervous.
(11:06):
And this is especially true for the aging older single woman.
And by older, we're not talking about your sixties, we're
talking about your thirties here. Yeah, there's this whole idea
of the single woman aging faster than the married woman.
Basically that there's something almost scary and unfortunate about the
woman who chooses to be single, because oh, well, if
(11:29):
you're thirty four and you're married, that's great because you
found your your safe relationship and you still have time
to pop out seven kids, great role with it. Whereas
the single woman who's thirty four, thirty five, however old, uh,
it's almost like her clock is running out faster than
other people's. And this is also pattern studied within gay
male culture which I thought was interesting because if we're
(11:50):
looking at different subsets of the population, game in judge
their gay mail peers to be middle aged and older
earlier than society at large does. In other words, straight
people might judge a gay single man to be oh, well,
he's he's young and healthy, looking, great for a good job,
good job guy, he's a bachelor, a bachelor. But within
(12:12):
gay mail culture they are judged to be getting older.
The clock is ticking, just like it is for single women. Yeah.
In that paper, they really highlighted the difference between a
woman with a child who's thirty five being still termed
a young mother, but a woman not only single, but
it's really not being a mother as well. It's like
(12:34):
not having a husband and also not having a kid.
Then it ages you even faster. So there are lots
of lots of layers to this thing. But what about
those people? And so you know what, I don't care
if you call me a spenster or an old maid.
I enjoy my age, I enjoy being single. Who are
(12:55):
these people, Well, there are a growing number of them,
as we mentioned. According to a two thousand six report
from Pew Research Center, fifty per cent of the never
married survey, participants had zero interest in seeking a romantic partner.
They're like, listen, I'm doing me. It's cool. Yeah. Well,
(13:17):
back to Lahad and Hasan, they write that these women
in in the statistic well and men. But you know, seriously,
people are so afraid of single women are unsettling the
basis of hegemonic heteronormativity, which assumes that the joy and
meaning of life can only be found and getting married.
So they're upsetting the balance. Not only do we think
(13:39):
they're just a little weird and could potentially be cat ladies,
you know, casting spells from their apartment, but they are
upsetting the balance of society that has been ingrained in
our culture since the beginning. Well, you're nobody until you're
somebody's Caroline, right, That's like, that's like scientific fact. Can
we write a musical about this? It sounds like the
(14:00):
perfect the perfect song and included in our single Single
by Choice musical. Yes, yes, answer, yes. But people don't
even believe, especially single women's choices and motivations for being single.
We have a really hard time believing the woman who's
(14:21):
like I'm single and loving it, Like no, no, no, no, no, no,
no, No No, you are tricking yourself. You're in denial. There's
no way you could be happy. Yeah. Boston Magazine in
January interviewed hard Harvard Medical School professors Jacqueline Olds and
Richard Schwartz, who are married by the way um, and
(14:42):
the magazine was looking at the whole single by Choice
movement and pros and cons and all that stuff. And
there's this big assumption that the people who opt for
single hood had a bad childhood. Old, for instance, says
that most of her patients who say they choose to
be single have grown up in a family situation where
quote love looked awful. So we assume that you must
(15:04):
have had something terrible happened to you. We also assume
that you're selfish or so socially stunted. She Olds talks
about how we're raising a generation of individualists who haven't
been taught to compromise. And there is Caroline, a feature
film encompassing all of these stereotypes called Adult Children of
Divorce starring Adam Scott. Also features Amy Poehler and other
(15:28):
hilarious people. But it's all of these stereotypes wrapped in one.
Spoiler alert, It's about Adam Scott who's like, I don't
want to get married. My parents got divorced and now
I have a hard time committing. But the happy ending
is that he gets married. See this is a musical. Yeah,
I know, I'm already working on it. They also point
(15:50):
out the idea that are high standards about marriage lead
to a sort of social paralysis. Basically, the cultural view
that your spouse should be your soul mate and your
best friend and the only person in the universe for you.
It is kind of intimidating to people, and so old
and not that that's not true, not that that's not
(16:10):
kind of intimidating, and like, man, I have to find
someone who's literally a perfect for me. But it's the
whole point that Olds and Schwartz are saying that this
is why people are choosing to be single, not for
any other reason, like just wanting to live your life
that way. Yeah, it's like we can't let this be
a simple decision, Like we're on the outside trying to
(16:34):
overly complicate what for a lot of people is just
what naturally feels right after them. But when we look
at more objective research on people who are single by choice,
and this has been going on now for a while.
It turns out that they aren't all sitting at home
lonely with their cats, just saying to themselves single and
(16:57):
loving it. I swear I'm single. They're clutching a mug
that staring in the mirror and stroking their their the
reflection of their face. Yeah, that's right. We've got a
couple of people who have done some research into the
basically the life choices of of people who are committed
to being single. There was a two thousand to study
(17:18):
in the Journal of Advertising Research kind of looking at
who the single, particularly the single by choice consumer is.
Is this a person who's huddled in his or her
apartment not wanting to associate with people, or is this
someone who's actually going to go out and buy your products?
And they found kind of unsurprisingly that single adults, especially
(17:39):
those that are young and single by choice, seek busy
and active lives. They're constantly on the go, and they
say that singles have a unique lifestyle. They're often well
educated and earning good salaries, and they only have themselves
as financial burdens. They also enjoy more free time, which
they fill with a variety of self based activities and
(17:59):
often have only themselves to satisfy. And they did highlight
some differences though, between people who are single by choice
and those who are single by circumstance, And they note
and keep in mind that this is in the Journal
of Advertising Research, this is very marketing focused. So they
found that a single by choice people would engage in
(18:21):
more active and hedonic behaviors like convenience and variety seeking,
low price consciousness, and more innovative kinds of purchases, so
they're a little bit more adventurous, whereas people who are
single by circumstance used more compensating and coping behaviors like
watching TV and being brand conscious. So they boil all
(18:47):
all single people in general down to people who want
to fill the gaping holes in their lives, whether they're
single by choice or single by circumstance. They want to
fill those holes with your branded items so they can
develop a relationship with your brand that they apparently can't
develop with another human. Yeah, they're basically like, Okay, to
(19:07):
what degree are these people impulsive buyers? And how can
we capitalize on that? But it's interesting, you know, I
I tend to poopoo marketing and advertising and things like that.
But it is interesting to see that research into these
people is coming out of advertising research. It's like we're
getting more information about Hey, they're not pathetic. Oh my god,
(19:30):
shocking news, you know, breaking news. Single people aren't pitiful
from advertisers. They're like, no, they actually live pretty cool
lives and they want our branded kayak to go with it.
And that's something too that n y U professor and
author of the book Going Solo, Eric Kleinberg, has confirmed
in more recent research that he's conducted on people who
(19:52):
are single by choice, and he told the New York
Times quote, what we've learned in the past fifty years
is that people will of alone whenever and wherever they
can afford to do it. So we enjoy a lot
of us humans that kind of just sort of basic
solitude to begin with, even in the sense of having
(20:13):
a living space just to ourselves. Yeah, but Kleinenberg says,
you know, we're not so alone and self absorbed that
we can't actually care about other people and developed interests
outside of ourselves. He interviewed more than three hundred single
people and found that living alone tends to encourage more
social interaction. Basically, uh, the single people he talked to
were more likely to spend time with friends and neighbors,
(20:36):
go to restaurants, and attend art classes and lectures. And
of the people who were living alone after a breakup
or divorce, for instance, many of them opted to live
alone rather than with family or roommates because they had
found there was nothing worse than living with the wrong person.
And that is more general, that's beyond just the single
by choice stuff, But I mean, it's I think it's
(20:56):
important to emphasize that people just because you live alone
or you are single or unmarried, it doesn't mean that
you're living an unfulfilling life. And a lot of people
still though, will criticize and say, oh, well, they're trying
to fill all those holes that they couldn't fill with children,
with you know, going to art museums, and it's like, well,
I don't know, it doesn't sound too bad. Well, in
(21:17):
that research jives anecdotally with my research thinking about my
level of sociability in times being single and in times
you know, being in relationships and you're nesting and you're
making dinner at home and like you just have your
little place with you a little person, and you're gonna
watch Way You Too Much Netflix because it's really nice.
(21:39):
But when you're single, it does kind of force you
in a way to go out and do things and
see other people and other studies. I'm sure we've excited
this on the podcast in a previous episode, but um,
it's it's the study looking at social involvement of single
people versus married people, and researchers have found that single
people are way more likely to volunteer, They're way more
(21:59):
likely to be like a solid and involved member of
the community versus married people. And that's not to say
that married people are bad or they're uninvolved or uninterested.
It's just that when you have kids and a wife
or a husband or whoever, you know you're going to
dedicate rightfully, so a lot of time to that nuclear family.
When you're single, you have more energy and time to
(22:20):
dedicate to the world around you well. And in that
oversight of the rich lives of single people is something
that can be really frustrating if you're single in the workplace,
and people might assume that if you're single and or
don't have kids, then when the holidays come, like you
can bear the brunt of it, right Because we have
(22:40):
these responsibilities, or if you have a sick kid, then
you have you can leave to go do things. But
if you're single and you need a little time off,
then you might get a little bit more of a
scrutinizing eyebrow raise. And I think it's also worth noting
to um in regard to Kleinberg talking about the people
living alone post breakup or divorce, that single by choice
(23:01):
can also happen to not never married or ever married people.
It's something that some people will get married and then
get divorced and then be like, you know what, single
by choice from now on? Yeah, exactly. Well, there's so
much more to talk about in terms of choice, but
also in terms of how that intersects with feminism and
(23:22):
just the fabulous stereotypes that women have to face as
single people. But we will get into that right after
a break. So in the first half of the podcast,
we laid some statistical groundwork that more and more people
are choosing not to get married or just delaying marriage
(23:43):
to a degree that makes a lot of older people
really nervous, and there is a lot of discomfort, particularly
when it comes not to single by circumstance, but to
single by choice, especially when that choice is made by women.
And and Kate Bollock launched a thousand responses, got a
(24:05):
fantastic book deal, and got so much attention in two
thousand eleven with a piece that she wrote for The
Atlantic magazine All the Single Ladies, about her the point
that she's reached in her life at that point in
her what late thirties, basically saying, you know what, I'm
single and I might mingle, but I don't know. Yeah,
(24:27):
at she'd broken up with her great boyfriend because something
was missing and she wasn't ready to settle down. And
she basically said that she was inspired indirectly or directly
by the post boomer ideology of seeking that missing something
and the second wave feminism idea of not settling down
or just finding a husband, just because she said it
(24:49):
was part of this idea that she was immersed in
of hey, let's spend our twenties finding ourselves and surely
the husband will come later. Well he didn't, and she eventually,
as she's writing this article, opts out of dating and
relationships and getting married. And she said that she kind
of reached this point where listen, I don't want to
see my single life as this provisional you know, in
(25:13):
between step before I finally have a fulfilling life at
whatever age. That fulfilling life, of course being equated to
a husband. But she says that it's so hard to
get other people to see that point of view. Yeah,
she writes, quote the single woman is very rarely seen
for who she is, whatever that might be, by others
(25:33):
or even by the single woman herself. So thoroughly do
most of us internalize the stigmas that surround our status
because we are constantly surrounded by messages and images of
the complete woman. The idea of quote unquote having it
all is what it's a married woman with children and
a job. She's she's that awful stock image photo of
(25:56):
the woman with the octopus arms who's juggling like a
baby and a has been and like bathroom cleaning supplies
and briefcase got always the briefcase, always the briefcase. I
think they carry the baby in the briefcase. I like
to think that, or that the briefcase is just full
of diapers. Um Well. Bolic is one of many writers who,
over the past several years have noted that this whole
(26:20):
shebang is part of an entire generational swing. Basically, as
women have climbed higher, men have fallen behind, and it
no longer behooves us to quote unquote marry up. And
Bolic does point out that this echoes glorious steynham statement
decades earlier that we are becoming the men we wanted
to marry. And we really saw the emergence of the
(26:41):
so called elite single professional woman emerging in academic literature
around two thousand four, and we found this highlighted in
a paper published in the Journal of International Women's Studies,
which notes how this elite single professional woman faces similar
sins of societal prejudices no matter what country she's in,
(27:04):
whether she's in the US or in Germany, Poland, or India,
which were the countries highlighted. Yeah. The authors claimed that
this single professional woman is the first new global sociological
phenomenon of the twenty one century, which is pretty impressive.
It's two thousand four and they're already saying this, Yeah,
screw hindsight, where we know this is happening right now.
(27:27):
I also appreciated the Ally mcbell references in the introduction Yeah,
I know, and the judging Amy references. That's another show
I watched with Deep cut ow Um. So yeah, they
say that this woman, the SPW. They write that this SPW,
the single professional woman, has successfully entered positions of economic, political,
(27:49):
and social power with paid work in the formal sector.
So you know, why does she need She doesn't need anybody,
She doesn't need to be a trophy wife, she doesn't
need to be a kept woman. She has developed her
own power. And then they point out that as the
American brand of individualism and economic empowerment for women has
(28:10):
gone global, the bar is rising for qualities that are
acceptable in a mate. And the authors note the same
kind of two part life pattern that Bollock experience is
becoming common. So in your twenties, you quote unquote find yourself,
and then by the time you reach your late thirties,
you're kind of either the point of total panic and
(28:32):
regret for spending all that time in your twenties finding
yourself instead of finding a husband, or you experience what
they call the blossoming of the single female lifestyle potential,
which also kind of sounds like a tagline for a
Chico Ladies, Are you blossoming this spring? Try on? New statement? Jewelry.
(28:55):
It's just a big flower and in the middle it's
a single and let y'r neck bloom SBC. Well, not
everybody's drinking the whole single by choice kool aid Susan Wall,
she's the author of the Hooking Up Smart blog and
whose praises Kate Bollox sang in her article is basically like, yeah, right, okay, sure.
So not only she very skeptical of this whole single
(29:17):
by choice movement, but she is asking why do you
have to be shaming married people? Not that I think
Black was trying. I don't think that's what she was
trying to do at all. I just think she's saying,
you know, I have a valid life choice as well.
This is how my life is shaken out, and I'm
cool with it. But while she's a little I've ventured
to say she's a little judge. Yeah, she predicts shaming
(29:41):
of married people escalating in the next twenty years, as quote,
women engage in whatever cognitive dissonance or hamster wheeling is
necessary to find an escape from singleism and more importantly,
a nagging sense of personal disappointment. So she's not buying it.
But I do think that Walsh is setting up a
(30:04):
kind of a false either or of like we're gonna
pitt singles versus the marriage and they can do get
out and whoever wins gets nothing because we all die.
That's right, Yeah, I mean I I think she's basically
saying that, hey, women don't start out wanting to be single,
they end up there and it's a forced choice. She
(30:24):
is saying that it's a forced choice. And she says
that it remains to be seen whether twenty something women
will get on board before they know whether they will
even have the opportunity to marry. She says, I suspect
that the up and coming generation of women views these
celebrations of singleness as a cautionary tale. And I don't know,
(30:46):
I don't know. I do know that recent studies have
shown that the millennial generation is on the whole rather
conservative when it comes to stuff like this. Um. And
so it is interesting to see generation by generation who's
reacting to social movements and and things like that. Um.
But oh, that is not that is not a very
(31:07):
complimentary stance that you only essentially end up as single
by choice if you've run out of options. Well, and
and to support this Walsh. Um points to an incident
that Kate Bollock also wrote about in her article. Um. So,
Kate Bollock goes over to dinner at Walsh's house, who
(31:30):
has like a bunch of young I think they're like
in their early college years girls hanging out for Kate
to talk about this whole single by choice thing. And
at one point Kate Pollock asked the young women at
dinner whether her single status at the age of thirty
nine freaked them out, and all of the girls nodded, saying, yeah,
(31:52):
that that doesn't sound like what I want. That doesn't
sound like my fairy tale that pop culture tells me
I should have. Yeah, And all these young women basically
saying that one day they would plan on prioritizing family
and marriage over a career. But I mean, Balack wasn't
that different, she said, And you know, she was writing
about her twenties and college years and saying that, yeah,
(32:14):
marriage was just something I took for granted, like it's
going to happen, and I will eventually like meet and
fall in love with a great man and marry him
and he'll be my life and blah blah blah. But
right now, I'm my life, and I'm going to go
find out more about my life by traveling and working
and all that stuff. So it's not it's not that
she necessarily set out with the goal of being single
by choice, and not everybody does. Sure, some people do
(32:35):
fall into it and say, you know what, this is
better for me, now, this is the choice I'm making now. Um,
But those young women definitely are in line with what
Kate Ballack's experience was, you know, on her own. But
even this idea that, oh, well, you're prioritizing your career
over marriage and family, that's that even misses the point
(32:57):
of what Kate Ballack and Bella de Apollo and all
these other people are saying, like, I don't. From my
reading of the Atlantic piece, Kate Bollock wasn't working herself
out of relationship. She was dating a lot of people
and getting into long term, serious relationships. She simply got
to a point where she was like, I just don't.
I'm not going to worry about it anymore. And it
(33:18):
didn't seem to have anything to do with I don't
have time to worry about it because I have all
these board meetings, which is something different, and I just
think it's really interesting that it's usually for single women.
It usually is posed and reframed as like, oh, well,
they must just be choosing their you know, feminist e
(33:38):
career things instead of becoming a wife and mother, which
it's like, no, can I just can I have my
job and also have my relationship with myself and my friends?
I mean I noticed that to go off on attention,
I noticed that same thing in when you see I
U d ads and magazines, especially for Skyla, which is
(33:59):
the type of I D I have, And it's specifically
targeted to younger women who've never been married, never had kids,
and they're just not ready yet. And so there's one
ad where it shows a cello coming down the slye
and the woman catching it like it's her kid, and
it's like, right now, my kid is my music career
or whatever, And it's the same kind of thing. It's
(34:19):
like or or yes, she has a fulfilling, balanced life
and just doesn't want to be a mom, yeah, or
it doesn't have to be an either, or right, couldn't
it be a both? I know a young mother who
plays the cello, so yes, we can have it all. Like, wait,
is the cello, her baby, caroly I don't understand. Yeah,
(34:41):
she's the cello, Yes she does. Yes, and yes she
is a mother of a baby and a cello cello.
They're twins. Well, this whole conversation about choice either or feminism, careers, etcetera,
leads us to the really fascinating wrinkle in all of this,
(35:04):
pointed out again by Kindert Lahad, the Israeli researcher that
we cited earlier in another paper she published in called
the single woman's choice as a zero sum game, And
she really focuses in on how quote choice has become
a cultural obligation, deeply ingrained in the neoliberal, post feminist,
(35:26):
therapeutic and consumerist norms, and she finds that rather problematic
at times. Yeah, and basically this is the notion that
the minute an act is articulated as a choice, it's
considered a feminist act. Um. And she asks, does this
really set us free or is it just ammunition for
people to dismiss those choices, especially if you're a woman.
(35:49):
We still have not culturally gotten over the whole hysterical, floating,
floating uterus thing. We're still there, I think a little
bit mentally. Um, and she's wondering, based on past research,
does this quote unque choice feminism promote a false sense
of autonomy by placing autonomous choice and self actualization as
(36:09):
its highest values. In other words, is personal choice now
trumping bigger political actions? Are we pitting choice and single
hood against non choice and marriage? And also, hello, are
we forgetting women who, based on a variety of life factors,
don't even really get to choose? Yeah? And in investigating this,
(36:32):
she reviewed responses to an online column on what Sounds
Like sort of, the Israeli version of Huffington Posts like
the country's most popular blogging platform. And this column was
written by a woman describing her choice to be single
and being fine and happy with it and also highlighting
(36:54):
the advantages of being single by choice and what she
found in the variety of responses, and there were hundreds
of responses to this column because it is a hot
button topic. Um she found in plain English that essentially
single by choice and making choices focused can be a
(37:16):
double edged sword that both enables women to resist traditional
familiar forms but then also potentially lead people to cast
doubt and delegitimize this option of autonomy and individuality. Yeah.
So some of the social interpretations of choice that she
(37:37):
found one denote that single women are endowed with a
partial and incomplete subjectivity. So basically, what happens if you fall?
What will your cat eat you? Who will take care
of you when you get old? Your cat? Kristen, your
cat were we've said that it's your cat. Basically, there's
no way anyone would choose to be an aging spinster.
(37:59):
You must be crazy or you're just covering up the
fact that you couldn't find a man. Oh and hey,
that choice you made, it's dumb. You'll eventually figure it
out and your ovaries will lead you in the direction
of the right decision. And Lahad rights that these restrictions
are part of quote post feminist portraits of ambitious, working,
and yet unhappy single women. This form of skepticism can
(38:22):
be seen as a post feminist backlash or a new traditionalism,
and a lot of the comments that we're saying, hey,
you only have partial subjectivity. These women are depicted as
being too choosy, but their choices are neither healthy, nor authentic,
nor knowledgeable. And then on the flip side of that
(38:43):
of that partial and incomplete subjectivity, these responses the social
interpretations of choice to indicate that this choice of single
hood signifies a radical option for claiming single hood as
a long term way of life. So these are the
people saying, you know what good for you that you
(39:05):
can do it. Nuclear family doesn't have to be the
own the only option. You're so brave, you're so strong
to do this on your own. Well done woman. Yeah,
basically saying that single hood is a legitimate identity, It
is not a stepping stone. Singlehood is not always are
necessarily a stepping stone to being married, having a family.
(39:26):
And Lahat points out that this is a very interesting
and almost unexpected response in a country like Israel, which
is you know, very conservative, very traditional, family oriented, very
like pro let's have babies. I mean, along this that
not not so different from the US in terms of
those attitudes. After all, the US is the one with
(39:48):
the lowest rate of people saying that marriage doesn't need
to happen. Well, and it's also notable too that her
starts really focuses on the implications of this being posed
as a personal choice because in the US, and we're
actually going to talk to Lahad and more in depth
(40:09):
about this in our next podcast. So stay tuned for
that because in the US, especially when it comes to
the work of Bella Depolo, and also what Susan Walsh
was fearing in terms of this marriage backlash is more
of a political agenda of saying, hey, single people want
equality to married people as well. So there is personal
(40:33):
and political all tied up with this. Yeah exactly, But
I mean, speaking of the personal, how does labeling yourself
single by choice, putting on that name tag, how does
that tend to fit in with personal narratives for yourself
and about yourself? Uh? Well, according to Lahad study, feminism, choice,
and single hood are all wrapped up together and become
(40:57):
almost the core of the woman's identity, whether they're viewing
you as that strong independent woman or a pathetic single person.
And according to a paper in the Sociological Review from
two thousand and seven, singleness remains a quote deficit identity
because it becomes the single woman's problem to account positively
(41:19):
for her single state, because it's usually like I'm single
and or but like, you can't just be single in
the same way that you like if you're married. You
don't have to say I'm married, and you know what,
I'm really happy. I'm really happy, promise you. Yeah. You
basically get to say I'm married a full stop and
(41:40):
people are like, oh, good for you, you have such
a fulfilling life, when really, who knows, who knows? Who knows?
You could be in one of those quote greedy marriages
that some researchers have highlighted in terms of with the
with the sociability factor of marriage consuming all of you. Yeah, yeah,
well so I've easlee. It goes without saying that this
(42:02):
conversation has focused mainly on the single woman. We mentioned
gay male subculture earlier, so what about gay men. This
is coming from a paper in two thousand nine in
the Journal of Homosexuality that investigated what it means for
gay men who are thirty five and up to be
voluntarily single, and they ended up finding a discrepancy between
(42:24):
your own perception of yourself as single by choice in
the actual acceptance of and satisfaction with single status. They
found that, uh, a single by choice did not appear
to be the most important part of these guys identities. Instead,
it's almost a personal narrative strategy that they created in
(42:47):
order to preserve ego integrity. But isn't it so fascinating
that there's been all this research, so much research focus
on single women. There's been a decent amount research focused
on single by choice gay men, where the straight man.
And also there is no mention of lesbians anywhere because
(43:09):
of the stereotype of like, oh, well, they pair bond
very quickly and are totally happy and fine, so we
don't even need to talk about them. But straight men,
even though statistically there are more never married straight dudes
than ever before, all of the panic, all of the
think pieces, all of the blog posts are focused on
(43:31):
straight women. And I think that it has a lot
to do with that motherhood piece because it's sort of
the double transgression of not only being single but also
choosing not to have kids as well, which is still
a radical choice to a lot of people. And whereas
men are just allowed to be bachelors if they want
to be. Yeah, that there is no there's no straight
(43:54):
man panic whatever getting getting married. Well, And one thing too,
that Lahad notes in that zero sum game paper that
we were just talking about, that there is a bit
of privilege to that comes with this social single by
choice conversation, and even just the privilege of having the
(44:15):
choice because she mentions that women of color are often
left all these conversations as well. I mean, in Kate
Bollock's Peace, She's white. A lot of the people that
she's talking to are all white. It's like, you, you
have to get to a certain educational level, to a
certain socio economic level where you are even presented the choice. Yeah,
(44:36):
I mean yeah, especially when Ballack refers to a lot
of the older women, like retirement age women who have
opted to be single, uh and stay unmarried. They there
is like this air of like, oh wow, these are
these are kind of upper crust women who have a
really kind of blissful life that they have chosen to
(44:58):
lead as as single people. Yeah. So there, it's a
it's a fascinating snapshot to see where we are right
now with it. And I'll be curious to see in say,
ten years, whether this stigma still remains, because it's pretty entrenched.
And now I'm curious to hear from listeners what they
(45:22):
think about it. Do you look at people who are
single by choice skeptically? Are you single by choice? Do
you think that this rise of the never married and
people who don't care to get married, whether they're cohabitating
with someone or not is a threat to our societal fabric.
And I am also interested in knowing if you are
(45:42):
single by choice, how you came upon that choice, because
that's a huge part of the discussion too, is that
naysayers are all saying that, no, you just fell into this,
You just it's your second best, it's the second place
choice because you couldn't get married. But then there are
other people who say no, no, this is I went
purposefully in this direction, and so I'm interested to hear
in in motives. So we await your feedback eagerly. Mom
(46:06):
Stuff at how stuffworks dot com is our email address,
and you can always tweet us at mom Stuff podcast
or messages on Facebook. And we've got a couple of
messages to share with you right now. Well, I have
a letter here from Joel, He says Joel from Portland, uh,
(46:27):
in response to our female nudes episode. And Joel, I've
got to tell you, I don't know if you meant
to be funny, but I laughed out loud so hard
at this that I really had no choice but to
read it in our listener mail segment. Okay, so Joel says,
I always thought that sculptors covered up lady bits on
sculptures because pubic hair was just too darn detailed to sculpt.
(46:49):
I figured they were able to do hair on top
of heads because they just needed long flowing lines. But
fine hair in such a small area would maybe come
out looking like a vagina covered by him a range cookie.
Thanks for the show, oh man. That imagery, Uh, it's
I just can't like, I can't, I can't get the
(47:10):
imagery out of my head. It is amazing. I do
now want a sculpture of a nude, a nude sculpture
showing just a marangue cookie over the lady bits. But
I do wonder, Jalt, what about the dude sculptures that
have pubic hair. Yeah, I will say it doesn't really
look so much like marangue, but just spaghetti sou So
(47:30):
there's that more imagery. Well, I have another letter here
from Becca about our female nudes episode, and she has
some juicy information for us about art critic John Ruskin,
whom we mentioned. And it's the letters a little bit long,
but listeners, it's totally worth it. So she writes, you
(47:51):
mentioned as an anecdote the alleged incident where art critic
John Ruskin was horrified by his wife's pubic hair and
refused to consummate their marriage. Indeed, we have no concrete
proof of exactly what occurred on their wedding night. I
thought i'd share some extra information on the matter. In
the summer of twelve, Stage managed to play called Blood
(48:11):
Red Roses by Don Nigro that explores many of the
stories about the pre Raphaelite erab painters, their critics, and
most importantly, the women in their lives. I'm by no
means an art history expert, but during the rehearsal process
we heavily researched these stories, including the unraveling of John
Ruskin's marriage to Effie Gray and his failed attempt at
(48:32):
romance with another young woman named Rose Latouche. Ruskin took
a great interest in both of these women when they
were young girls, and eventually pursue them romantically when they
were old enough. Effie and John Ruskin had a very
unhappy marriage that they never consummated. The evidence is vague
and in many cases biased, but we have come to
understand that Ruskin was repulsed by Effie's body, possibly because
(48:55):
of her pubic hare or by her period. What a
surprise men of rate administration. Anyway, many historians speculate that Ruskin,
as an art critic, grew to appreciate and adore the
youthful female figure, but was disgusted by a real adult
woman's body after seeing one for the first time on
his wedding night. The story ends well for Effie, Thankfully,
(49:16):
he was eventually able to annul her marriage to Ruskin
and married successful painter John Everett Malays, with whom she
had nine children. Ruskin later pursued one of his students,
a young girl named Rose Latouche, when she was of
consenting age. However, her parents didn't approve of the match
and didn't allow the two to marry, despite Ruskin pursuing
her for years after the initial rejection. Reportedly, after Ruskin
(49:39):
first proposed to Rose, it was Effie who wrote to
the girl's parents to warn them that Ruskin wasn't a
suitable man to be anyone's husband. Another interesting note about
Ruskin's distaste of nude bodies, although found to be at
least partially untrue, is that Ruskin claimed to have destroyed
several works of new drawings and paintings by the artist J. M. W.
(50:00):
Turner to protect his reputation after his death. Some of
these works were recovered in two thousand five, so he
didn't destroy everything, but at the very least he certainly
certainly had a problem with nudity. So thanks for the insight, Becca,
and as always we look forward to your insights as well.
Mom Stuff and how Stuff Works dot com is our
(50:22):
email address and for links to all of our social
media as well as all of our blogs, videos and
podcasts with our sources so you can learn more about
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