Lessons I’ve learned from decades of studying singlehood

Studying single people, a devalued group, comes with a special mission. It is not enough to learn more about them. More fundamentally, an entrenched deficit narrative about their lives needs to be recognized, critiqued, challenged, and transcended. That deficit narrative is often a product of a couples-centred perspective on single life, in which single people are judged by the values and interests of couples and thereby found deficient. The narrative of single people’s supposedly lesser lives is evident in the language we use, the relationships that are esteemed and those that are marginalized, the achievements and life events that are celebrated and those that are ignored, as well as the questions researchers ask and don’t ask and the interpretations they offer and fail to recognize. It is essential to understand the place of single people in systems of inequality that often disadvantage them and advantage coupled people. The contributions of scholars of singlehood are not just academic; they are personal. A singles-centred perspective can have profound implications for single people’s understanding of themselves in more sophisticated and validating ways, for other people’s understanding of them, and for laws, policies, practices, and norms that affect their lives.