There is so much to love in this book. In many ways it serves as a validation of single life. There are stories of women with careers, friendships, hobbies, and children that fulfill them, all without a spouse. Unmarried women have helped to usher in major social change, including abolition and the labor movement. Traister illustrates that single women are multi-faceted and have full lives beyond trying to find a man. All women who spent some portion of their adult life single will see themselves in this book.
Just to be clear, Traister doesn't disparage marriage. In fact, she is married with two children herself, although she was in her mid-30s before that happened. This book is about women who spend at least some portion of their adults lives unmarried. Most of the time that's due to marrying later, but there are divorced women and women who live with serious partners as well. The point is that this demographic has been growing steadily larger, and is becoming a political, social, and economic force.
The best part of this book is the history, which focuses on the late 1800s to the present. It's always refreshing when someone acknowledges that the "traditional" 1950s model of a house in the suburbs with the husband working and the wife keeping the house was a historical anomaly and only applied to a relatively small section of society. Traister recognizes that poor, minority women usually had to have jobs outside the home. Feminism has frequently celebrated white, middle-class women for doing much the same thing that these women have always had to do. Traister not only acknowledges they exist, but fits them into the broader framework of society and how demographics and history have affected them.
There is a practicality running through the book that I really appreciated. It's easy to condemn women for having children while single/poor/young, but Traister looks at the economic and social choices that lead women to it. She also looks at some of the more pragmatic downsides of being single. Who will take care of us when we're old? Who will help us haul furniture home from Ikea? What if we just get tired of both earning our own wages and keeping our own homes?
The only quibbles I have are that Traister didn't acknowledge the dark side of female friendship. The chapter about the bonds of friendship between women was positively glowing, and there are many wonderful things to be said. However, mean girls and frenemies are a widely acknowledged phenomenon among young women, and it seemed odd to only cover the positive sides of female friendships.
I would also have liked a little more depth on child-free women. It's mentioned briefly, but the emphasis is certainly on single mothers, women who have children later in life, and fertility treatments. The number of women who choose to forgo having children entirely is also growing, and should have gotten a little more coverage.
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"In the most intelligent races . . . there are a large number of women whose brains are closer in size to the of gorillas than to the most developed male brain. This inferiority is so obvious that no one can protest it for a moment; only its degree is worth discussion." - Gustave Le Bon, 1879This is NOT an anti-marriage book; it's a discussion of the stigmas (see quote above) and history surrounding single women in the U.S. Few of us realize the to actually have a job, a woman couldn't be married. A married woman legally did not exist, so few laws existed to protect women as individuals. So before feminism gave women basic rights, single women struggled to exist and support themselves without marrying. The need to marry often drove women to marry unsuitable men, resulting in miserable marriages of necessity. While this was not every case, we have seen examples in literature (i.e. Charlotte Lucas in Pride and Prejudice ) that illustrate this point.Traister argues that women's independence allows them to wait and marry the right man, if they desire to marry at all, rather than jumping into a marriage and settling for a less suitable man to gain economic stability. For women, adulthood no longer begins at marriage. The altar no longer represent the plunge into independence. Women can live on their own and support themselves. This shift in our culture has had some fascinating implications, which I will let you read for yourself. ;)Traister also points out that more and more marriages consist of partners who both have jobs and share childcare and household responsibilities. The change from women as subservient, legally non-existent servants to full-fledged partners has changed the way marriage works in modern society.I have read several books on a similar topic, but this book by far is the best--the research, style, and execution is so well done. For everyone, not just women, this books reminds us how hard women have had to work for every inch of liberty we have. Hurrah for egalitarianism.
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Top reviews from other countries
Valerie Singer
An incredible feminist-ish modern book that speaks to single women like never before.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on January 2, 2018Marian Atkinson
Fantastic book. I recommend that all 'single' and 'women ...
Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on November 10, 2016
