By 2030, 45% of prime working age women in the US, defined as women aged between 25 and 44, will be single according to Census Bureau historical data and Morgan Stanley forecasts – the largest share in history.
Hundreds of those women, from across the US, shared with the Guardian why they were single, how they felt about it and what they would be looking for in a future partner if they were still in the market for one.
“I hated being single after my last relationship broke down,” said Sarah, 43, a sales representative from California. “I miss having someone to cook for, to share things with. But now, my motto is: ‘My alone feels so good, I’ll only have you if your presence is sweeter than my solitude.’”
I want to live in the world my father does, where the people around you uphold their end of the bargains they make. I don’t live in that world.
My father’s schools upheld their end of the bargain, they built for him a brand new high school, in fact it was still under construction his freshman year. State of the art school, brand new facilities, it was the first school in the state to have a computer. They taught computer programming classes, which my father took. The man had a job working for the school system programming computers before he even graduated. They actually bent a lot of rules for him. He’s worked that career ever since, getting regular pay raises, retirement and healthcare benefits, paid sick leave and vacation time.
I was sent to a 45 year old high school, the budget was slipping and class sizes were increasing. The computer classes offered to me in the 2000s were basic usage of MS Office. I took carpentry and auto shop classes, and employment prospects out of high school were all poverty level; I had to go find a job, and the job I got was changing oil and tires at a locally owned garage for $7.25 an hour. Minimum wage at the time was $5.15. I was an hourly employee and the only benefit I had was they issued and cleaned uniforms. I’d been very strongly told a high school education is next to useless these days, and that if I wanted to live above the poverty line I’d have to go to college. I went to college, majored in aeronautics, emerged as a licensed pilot…in the spring of 2008. The bottom fell out of the economy and there were no jobs to be had, the news was talking about people with master’s degrees working at Subway. I was back to living at home transcribing auto insurance phone calls for $8 an hour. Two years worth of additional training at my own expense later I managed to land a job teaching flight lessons for $12,000 a year.
My father met a girl, dated for a bit, got married in his mid-20’s. He was the sole breadwinner, she tended the house. A few years in, they have their one and only child. He goes to work, she does the child rearing. By the time I was in middle school, she gets a job as a secretary mostly out of boredom, her paycheck is a small fraction of my father’s who is effectively still the provider. For both of them, this is their one and only marriage, they’re happily married to this day.
I never married. Had several girlfriends through high school and college, working at the flight school occupied nearly all of my time for not a living wage, I didn’t even try to date during that time because I was focused on work. I looked up, and the scene had changed. Since then, I’ve dated three women, all three lasted about six months, all three of them outright lied to me about who they were, what they wanted, telling me what they thought I wanted to hear and agreeing with everything I said, and they were each able to keep up the lie for about 6 months. The most recent one was a nurse, she disappeared into the pandemic and I never saw or heard from her again. I haven’t tried to date in 5 years, because why bother? I’m a bachelor. Never married, no children.
It’s become popular feminist nonsense to refuse to take her husband’s name. Keeping separate finances, spending his money on essentials. A lot of women are very vocal about planning to escape a marriage before you’ve even met the man. And yet I’m supposed to stand at an altar listening to some chick say “til death do us part?” When I went out into the workforce and practically all of the men older than me have some horror story about their “First wife?”
I’m supposed to be her protector? Hear broken glass in the middle of the night and it’s my happy ass getting up in my boxer shorts, getting the shotgun out of the safe in the closet and going downstairs while she stays in bed? While seeing me sad is more than she’s willing to put up with?
I can’t trust anybody on this world because they’d rather collapse the economy than allow me to earn a living. Women expect me to behave like my father, renovating a house and buying new cars as a single breadwinner straight out of high school, when that is not the economic reality us millennials live in.
They most certainly are not. It is not uncommon to find a woman who, when asked “What do you bring to the table” will respond “I am the table.” Hell, the girls in the original article say they’re living at home with parents because life is too expensive, but their bare minimum standards for a man is financial independence and ability to be a provider. What’s a provider other than someone who pays most or all of the bills? They’re not rare and they’re not shy about it.
Maybe I run in a different crowd. My mom & dad both worked, my mom’s mom didn’t, my mom’s dad beat his wife (never my mom) when Grandma was 60 she divorced him. I don’t want to live in that world. She really had no options for a long time. My dad’s parents were rich, plenty of the women in his family worked but it wasn’t out of need, they just had opportunities most women didn’t back then, because money. My mom’s grandmother did work, she had a farm and was a midwife. I think her husband died young. I guess if you go back far enough everybody worked unless they were rich enough not to, right? Just like now.
I will say I would not personally date anyone who said “feminist nonsense”, you do seem unpleasant (relevant username) - I understand you are probably just venting but you seem to have some idealized version of the past that you are comparing the present to, it was not really good for most people. Your mom & dad were lucky. You aren’t going to get that by regressing the laws to make women less free.
Both sets of my grandparents and all of the great grandparents I’d met were the same way. Married once, raised a family on one or pretty much one income, remained married until one passed away. My great grandmother, her son my grandfather, the last thing I heard either of them say was they missed their departed spouses.
Every male ancestor of mine I’ve met went out into the world, found employment that paid enough to support a family, found a faithful woman, married her, took care of her, kept her safe, made sure she had what she needed, and in return, she took care of him. I go out in the world, I don’t find employment like that, or women like that. I don’t get to own a farm like my great grandfather, I don’t get to work a union job in a factory like my grandfather, I don’t get given a government job in a brand new high tech field while I’m in school like my father. I get to pay back student loans on poverty level wages and women who are just as demanding but not at all supportive and somehow I’m the one in the wrong?
Is it possible you attract women who “want to be taken care of” because you don’t want them to work? I dunno, but do agree the subset of women who are willing to gamble away their own earnings potential on a guy is getting smaller. I do plenty of unpaid work at home, of course. But two incomes give us so much more, and now the kids are grown too, we have to catch up. I just have never been in a position to not work - stayed home with my first set of kids a few years, homeschooled for the first couple years, but went to college at night and worked part time, so when they did go to school I got a professional job and improved our lives. When I offered the same deal to my ex with the second set of kids, he stayed home and did cook, but just got radicalized on the Internet, wouldn’t go to school or anything to try to improve his chances at a job, then he got abusive verbally, then physically abusive and I left.
I do hope for you first a good job, with good pay.
I don’t feel particularly demanding, and my kids all seem to be in good relationships, some got good jobs in their field others didn’t, (I understand about graduating at the wrong time) but are making it work, two people working does make a difference.
And to be fair - before I went to school we lived with 2 other couples to make ends meet, house stuffed full of people working minimum wage jobs, so even though not in parents’ basement we did have no chance of making it on our own.
As with all things in life, relying on others in any way only invites incompetence, so if it is to be done, I must do it myself from scratch.