Is this some kind of a joke?

I read that a new study was released about the stigma faced by single women.  I thought it was tongue-in-cheek when the writer said the article was called, “I’m a Loser, I’m Not Married, Let’s Just All Look at Me” but I was surprised to discover, that appears to be the title of a University of Missouri study.  The official title is, “I’m a loser, I’m not married, let’s just all look at me:” Never married women’s perceptions of their social environment.  By E. Sharp and L. Ganong.   

[In the interest of full disclosure, I feel I must tell you - I am already pissed off at Mizzou for beating Clemson in the men's basketball tournament and losing me points in BOTH of my NCAA brackets.  (Likewise, if the University of Northern Iowa or Ohio University release similar studies, I will be repeating this disclosure.)]

I don’t know anything about The Department of Human Development and Family Studies at Mizzou, but a quick perusal of their website shows a clear leaning toward the “family studies” part of their title.  Their Centers and Outreach section gives links to their Center for Family Policy and Research, Child Development Lab, Focus on Kids program, and Pigskin Preschool – where families can drop their kids off before home football games.  Do you see a common theme here?  I’m seeing an awful lot of focus on the family unit here.  There also seems to be quite a lot of research about divorce, separation, and parenting.  I do not understand why this department has released this provocatively titled study about single women.  Their body of work seems to give the study less credibility than the title does.

While Mizzou’s HDFS Department and men’s basketball team can both pretty much kiss my ass right now, it does appear that one author credited on this study has some credibility.  Elizabeth Sharp is an Associate Professor at Texas Tech [Texas Tech men's basketball team played in the NIT tournament this year and has therefore fostered no ill-will with me as far as NCAA brackets are involved.]  Professor Sharp’s body of work reflects more research with gender and singles than does her UM coauthor’s 43-page curriculum vitae. 

The only information I have about the study is what is in press releases, and so I will reserve judgment until I have read it in its entirety.  However, I will leave you with my initial reaction:  The press release begins by saying that approximately 40 percent of adults in the U.S. were single in 2009, and only 32 women were interviewed for the study.  That seems like an extremely small selection for a study in which the name implies that all single women all feel like losers.  I would also argue that if the women interviewed were in Missouri or Texas, they would naturally have very different perceptions than women who live on either coast or in larger cities.  But again, I don’t know the details of the study, I just know what the press release says and it does not reflect the feelings of this particular never-married female; with the exception of the following statement [emphasis mine]:

The visibility and invisibility factors were impacted by age, according to Ganong. The mid-20’s through mid-30’s is a time of intense contemplation and concern for single women regarding their future family trajectories. Women older than 35 tend to be content with being single and don’t express as much dissatisfaction as do younger women. Women ages 25-35 felt the most stigma, which may be attributed to the fact that being single is more acceptable before age 25.

I think there is some truth to this, and also some hope.  There is undeniably pressure on single women to get married, and I can only hope that they do not allow themselves to feel like losers if they don’t follow the path society imposes upon them. In my experience, women become more comfortable in their own skin and realize their happiness, usually when they are in thier thirties.  It is life experience, not marriage, that inspires this acceptance.  But if women are married before they reach that age, I suppose they would never know that.

Here’s a horrible reason to have kids…

Now that the holiday season is over the desperate thoughts have long passed, but family members can drive you crazy in unexplainable ways.  I am in my thirties, my parents are in their late sixties.  We don’t have the same idea of fun.  Don’t get me wrong, they’re great people, but if you are in your thirties and single, and your parents have no grandchildren to dote on, the parent/child dynamic seems to stay at high school level.  I still don’t feel comfortable having boys over.

My folks are divorced, so for the Christmas holiday I did what I do every year, spend Christmas Eve with my mother, and then drive three hours to have Christmas again with my dad in the next day or two.  I realize married people do this traveling thing all the time to satisfy in-laws, but this is just me, by myself, going through the routine, spending time with everyone and making sure no one feels like I love the other one more.  It’s a lot of driving, usually when the weather is the worst, but I’ve been doing it for over ten years and it seems to be the best way to spend time together. 

It wasn’t until this year that I was walking with my dad, bored and playing the, “I don’t know, what do you want to do” game when I thought to myself,  “I wonder if I had a kid, if I could get away with staying home and having them come to visit me.”  It was not an idea I was considering, as much as a realization that this awkward relationship with my parents may have a lot to do with me being happily single at a time that they really want to be grandparents. 

Then I started to romanticize that if I had a kid, this need to entertain and the difficulty in trying to engage with them would be relieved.  I could just plop the thing down in front of my folks and let the kid take over.  They could gush over the little one, and we would never run out of things to talk about because we’d have all sorts of “kids say the darndest things” stories to laugh about. 

While that does sound easier than constantly trying to make conversation with my communication-challenged father, I have run the numbers and it’s not very cost-effective.  There’s also no guarantee that my plan will work and I’d hate to go to all that expense and nine months of pregnancy only to cave in and end up driving the same route between their houses at Christmas time, but with a carseat.