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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
In a new book, sociologist E. Kay Trimberger says the "new single woman" is successful, social, smart -- and loving life on her own.
E. Kay Trimberger
Dec 14, 2005 | Sociologist E. Kay Trimberger is "the new single woman" referred to in the title of her new book. Successful in her career, surrounded by friends and family, Trimberger is not depressed by the fact that her life doesn't include a partner. A never-married Californian with a 24-year-old son she adopted when he was a newborn, she's the poster girl for her cause -- living single contentedly.
Trimberger and single women like her are part of a growing demographic. According to the 2004 Census, just under 54 million women ages 15 and older -- or 45 percent of all women -- are single, up from 38 percent in 1970. These increasing numbers, Trimberger says, are in part the result of a widepread cultural expectation that one must marry their "soul mate." "The standard of a soul mate increases singleness," she says. "Women can have those higher standards because they increasingly don't need a man to support them economically." Those women who do marry do so later, divorce more frequently and remarry less often.
Trimberger, a visiting scholar at the Center for the Study of Social Change at the University of California at Berkeley, decided to study this growing group because she was disturbed by the deeply held cultural assumption that they're a desperate, lonely bunch. "It really is pernicious, this notion that single means alone, desperate and unhappy," she says. "It's frustrating to have this stereotype that single is a defect in their character and that they are alone and to be pitied. It's not true and I want to combat it."
Trimberger began her research in 1994 by doing in-depth interviews with a group of 46 single, middle-class women in California. (Trimberger defines 'single' as not cohabitating.) In 2000, she reinterviewed those who were still single and had been for 10 years; 27 women fit that description. Though more than half of the women expressed the desire to find a partner, all agreed that they were not unhappy and that their lives were rich. In her study and the response she's gotten to the book, Trimberger found that women are conscious of the fact that they may spend a large part of their lives single -- whether they divorce, are widowed, or never marry at all. She found "long-term single women hungry for validation and women [across the board] appreciative of the choices they have and my suggestion that there are more ways to find passion in life than just through a soul mate partner," she says. "I feel like I am tapping into a change that is already happening, trying to articulate it and focus on it and move it along a little."
In a phone interview from her Berkeley home, Trimberger talked about soul mates, settling and celibacy.
You say that society assumes any woman who is older than 35, uncoupled and single has something wrong with her. Is it the media that's promoting this idea? And do men ever get grief for being single?
Not just the media. I think it's reinforced by family and friends. If you don't have an answer to the question of "Who are you seeing?" you are seen as abnormal. And we internalize it. One middle-aged man who came to one of my readings in San Francisco said, "My mother doesn't believe I'm happy," [which] implies the pressure is on men too, though I think it's less intense. There are less negative stereotypes about single men. However, men have less of the relational skills that make single life viable. They tend to have fewer friends and relational skills that I posit are necessary to lead a good single life.
Do single people internalize this idea of "something's wrong with me" to the point where it affects them in realms other than the romantic?
I don't think so. In the workplace single women are considered more serious and more committed than married women with children. On the other hand, if you have a child, you're [considered] more normal. But not if you're single with children.
Let's go there. You chose to have a child without a partner. What are your thoughts on that road and on not having kids at all?
It's more acceptable now to choose not to have children. I had always had a vision of having children when I was older, and when I didn't find a partner, I decided to do it on my own. I didn't have role models, but I had the feminist idea that I could do anything. I would do it again, but it's hard. Giving birth was not important to me; I was scared of it actually. Adoption was my first choice as a single person. And I was ready to do it -- my career was on track, I felt stable, I had a house. I wanted a child and I did a lot to get one, but I wasn't going to go on trying forever. I always had my work and friends and social life -- it wasn't my whole life.
The women in your study have fulfilling lives without partners, but would they prefer to be coupled?
No one [actively] chose to be single. A psychologist at a reading said, "Aren't some of these women unconsciously choosing to be single?" I don't think it's a choice if it's unconscious. For some women, it suits them to be single but [they are] unable to choose it because there is so much pressure to be coupled. I hope we get to a place where women can choose to be single, but I didn't find that yet.
You devote a chapter to sexuality and in it talk a lot about celibacy.
I don't think most women choose celibacy, but then I also don't think it's necessarily settling if they find out it's OK and they like it and they find ways to have sensuality in their lives. Celibacy is so stigmatized. I wouldn't say I chose it or envisioned it. Sexual needs change as we age and research says if we don't have sex we may stop having sexual urges. It's so individual. Some don't see it as an option and for others it's fine. It's hard to separate what our culture tells us and what our real desires are -- what's in your head can be really strong. Is it what you really want or what you're told you want? That's part of the struggle of the single woman.
