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Sept. 17 through 23 is Unmarried and Single Americans Week. While that may not sound like something to celebrate for people who are alone, they should at least know that, well, they’re not alone.
The United States Census Bureau reports that in 2005, the number of unmarried and single Americans was 89.8 million, 41 percent of all U.S. residents who are 18 and older.
Of that group, 14 percent are 65 and older and 54 percent are women.
Twenty years ago, single women were stung by the Newsweek “Marriage Crunch” announcement that a woman over 40 is “more likely to be killed by a terrorist” than to get married. Remember, that was years before 9/11.
Those women can now take comfort in a recent Newsweek article called, “Rethinking The Marriage Crunch.”
The authors write, “Today it appears that about 90 percent of baby-boomer men and women either have married or will marry, a ratio that’s well in line with historical averages. And the days when half of all women would marry by 20, as they did in 1960, only look more anachronistic. At least 14 percent of women born between 1955 and 1964 married after the age of 30.”
The article also makes the point that the longing for marriage is no longer just a female longing, but that many men today are also quite hopeful and anxious to marry.
That said, take note of this U.S. Census Bureau statistic: There are 86 unmarried men age 18 or older for every 100 unmarried women (age not specified) in the United States. This means that not only are the pickings pretty slim for females, but presumably the Census Bureau is expecting baby boomer women to settle for husbands young enough to be their sons.
Of the 89.8 million unmarried and singles, 60 percent have never been married, another surprising statistic that flies in the face of today’s nonscientific, empirical “girlfriend statistic” that bemoans the “fact” that there are no men without baggage left on the planet.
According to the Census Bureau’s report, there are 55 million households in the United States maintained by unmarried men or women, 49 percent of all households in the nation. Nearly 30 million people live alone, 26 percent of all households, up from 17 percent in 1970.
In 2004, the latest statistic available, 32 percent of births were to unmarried women. In 2005, there were 12.9 million single parents living with children, of which 10.4 million were single mothers.
A related statistic is that 672,000 unmarried grandparents acted as caregivers to their grandchildren in 2004, nearly three in 10 of all grandparents responsible for the daily care of grandchildren.
Dating services — online and brick-and-mortar — have boomed in recent years. In 2002, there were 904 such services that employed 4,300 people and generated $489 million in revenue. More recently, dating services have become super-specialized, leading to such interesting names as FarmersOnly.com, BikerKiss.com, JewishMatchmaker.com and OverThirtySingles.com.
The Census Bureau says Unmarried and Single Americans Week was founded in the 1980s by the Buckeye Singles Council in Ohio as National Singles Week and the name change signifies that “many unmarried Americans do not identify with the word ‘single’ because they are parents, have partners or are widowed.”
So the prospects for marriage are no longer quite so dreary and the word “single” no longer has a fearsome stigma equated with “loser.” In fact, many singles seem to have mixed emotions about marriage, anyway.
One 50-plus single man, who lives alone outside Knox County and preferred not to share his name, said, “Yes, at times it’s nice being single. If you want to go to Kroger at one in the morning, nobody looks at you like, ‘Where the heck are you going?’ But it’s also nice to have someone to come home to and do things with. There are advantages to both situations, especially when you get older. You are kind of set in your ways, but on the other hand, it’s nice to share activities with someone.”
“Living in a small town doesn’t make it easy to be single,” Pennie Chappell of Mount Vernon said. “This is a small county devoted to marrieds and singles and it’s hard to find activities that are not specific. I don’t personally enjoy being single but it does allow me the opportunity to devote some of my time to other opportunities, such as volunteering.”
Chappell and Barb Curie founded a group called Living Single at Hope Community Church, Mount Vernon, after Chappell heard a single man say he was “going home to my isolation chamber.”
“I thought I was the only one feeling that way,” she said. “It made me realize how many people do feel that way and that we could be there to support one another if we had an outlet to do so.”
The group — made up of widows, never-marrieds, singles-by-choice and divorced people — meets twice a month, once for a social activity and again for a Bible study. Chappell said the “fun group” is diverse in age and background and “we take in lots of spontaneous activities along the way.”
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