New Documentary(?): Unmarried, the Rise of Singleness

[Bookworm]

Well, I'm a stay at home daughter, at 45. Never married. When my step-father started having health problems I chose to quit my job (I could not deal with my mother's nagging any longer) and I've been here every since. That was in 1997. Raised fundie in a lot of ways that damaged me. to where I have a lot of trouble functioning. I think if I would have been pushed out of the nest instead of coddled I would have done better. But then again, maybe not because of the damage done in my earlier years. When I was on my own I barely was able to hold down a minimum wage job and keep myself together. I could not do college at all and barely got through High School.

In the meantime my mother's health is failing and I have an autistic brother, who is two years younger then me. I have a "choice" now, either leave them and have a life or stay. I do have a relationship, but it seems that as soon as I am done taking care of my mother I will most likely spend the rest of my life taking care of my boyfriend because I don't see his health as holding out.

I'm not trying to shift blame. I am trying to learn how to take responsibility for my life and for my own decisions. If I sound like I'm victimizing myself, I apologize that is not my intention and I am trying to grow up. I'm at a crossroads.

I guess what I am trying to say is that there are a lot of broken children, who cannot function, as a result of this extreme fundamentalism. They will be broken adults. I have a cousin, who was raised in a lot more damaged situation than I was, as in there is no thought that it was wrong or abusive, and I never see him ever functioning as an adult. I wonder about his younger siblings.

I admire ANYONE who is able to get an education, hold a job, and take care of themselves let alone raise children.

You are right about there being a lot of broken children and adults as a result of this lifestyle. I hope things are going well for you and that you continue to find your way.

[bananacat]

This single "crisis" is not limited to the conservative, Christian world, more people are staying single, delaying marriage or living together in the secular world too. I don't think it's a crisis per se, merely a product of the dramatic changes in our society. Woman's liberation is a huge reason for the delay in marriage IMHO. Unlike the fundies, I see it as a positive thing. In the past when a woman's financial future was solely dependent on her future husband, courtship and marriage was *the* defining point in girls' careers. It was reasonable to train a girl to snatch a great guy because it meant financial solvency for her, her children, maybe even her parents. Nowadays, women can make their own money, which negates much of the financial perks of "marrying well". That leaves only the emotional benefits of marriage for women to want to commit. There is far less "settling" for a guy just to get that ring. Plus, children have turned from being a financial investment (for old age, extra labor etc) to a financial liability. Just as in marriage, having kids is no longer seen as financially beneficial. Therefore, people delay or even choose to not have kids, and have fewer children. The fewer children also means men and women can delay marriage as well, and they may choose to live together longer, or establish careers in order to better provide for future children.

Anyway, if fundies want to resolve this so-called single crisis, they can either get with the time and encourage more mingling of young people or they can try to restrict women's education and job opportunities and change child labor laws to make young marriage more economically palpable to women. I think they would have better luck with the former.

This is exactly how I feel. I got a degree in engineering so I would have a good shot at supporting myself financially for the rest of my life. And one of the reasons I wanted this is so that my choice of husband won't have to be about money. I won't have to marry someone who isn't right for me just because he's rich, and I also won't have to pass up a great man just because he doesn't make a lot of money. This means I can afford to have the standards that are important to me, and that right there is the very heart of what fundies hate about women being educated. If I end up with an abusive husband, I won't have financial dependency forcing me to stay with him.

[bananacat]

This isn't limited to fundies or one area, it seems to be pervasive in the lower middle class. On one side of my family my cousins are well educated, and some are rather wealthy. Being unmarried is fine with them- even the less educated on that side. The other side of my family the cousins seem to think that you're not an adult if you are not married with kids. I'm the only unmarried cousin on that side of the family and I've had some rough treatment from some, even though they're married with kids and their marriages don't seem all that stable, neither do their careers. I may not be married, but I have a stable job, own my own house on my own income, ect.

As my dad said recently about one of my cousins and his wife- they're "playing house."

I wonder how much of this is regional too. Both sides of my family are pretty poor and yet my brother is the only one of our cousin groups on either side who is married or has children. But we've all managed to "launch" with varying degrees of success and we're all viewed as adults by our relatives, even my 33 year-old cousin who just recently moved out of his parents' basement.

I have certainly known the type of people who believe you're not really an adult until you're married, but I haven't really noticed much correlation with social class. One of them was a pretty average middle-class woman who was in my college class for engineering. She got married before graduation, divorced shortly after, and then married again within a year. We're the same age and work at the same company now, and I'm glad to be single rather than divorced so early. Her second one seems to be working out better, but it has still been less than 5 years so who knows where that will end.

[OnceModestTwiceShy]

Even though my family is not conservative, until I mutinied at age 27, I (and one of my cousins, who is three years older than me) was designated a "child" for our annual holiday gift exchange (we do a Secret Santa, but the children don't participate because they get gifts from everyone). This is basically because my cousin and I are unmarried and don't have kids (even though I've been in a relationship with the same man since I was 24 and am for all intents and purposes a stepmom to his child). Meanwhile, my other cousin has been an "adult" since she married at 22. :roll:

[OnceModestTwiceShy]

I can't be the only one at that statement from Swanson. The irony! It burns! :twisted:

:lol: It reminds me of Geoff Botkin's bloviating about how younger people today are living "hobby lives". Really, dude? Pretty rich coming from someone whose kids live the definition of hobby lives. They dabble in writing, composing, filmmaking, etc., and as much as they pretend they are having some huge impact on Western civilization, really they are just producing ideological wank material for the choir. They are not professionally qualified in any field. Only two of them have married, and none have forged their own path and done or created anything of real value.

Projection. All of it.

[Rescinded and Mended]

Even though my family is not conservative, until I mutinied at age 27, I (and one of my cousins, who is three years older than me) was designated a "child" for our annual holiday gift exchange (we do a Secret Santa, but the children don't participate because they get gifts from everyone). This is basically because my cousin and I are unmarried and don't have kids (even though I've been in a relationship with the same man since I was 24 and am for all intents and purposes a stepmom to his child). Meanwhile, my other cousin has been an "adult" since she married at 22. :roll:

My family is also not terribly conservative. It's ridiculous how many people of the older generation will include/exclude members of their family from certain family events on the basis of marital status. My grandmother made it a point to exclude me from certain family activities that my cousins were invited to attend, such as trips and lunch dates. When I asked her why, she replied pointedly that I was a married woman and that the things she planned were for the unmarried cousins. Never mind that at least three of them are older than I am.

I never understood her reasoning. If it was about money, I could pay for myself, I didn't need her to pick up the tab for my expenses. It just seemed to be more about the label of "marriage" and not being considered kid anymore. I guess it never occured to her that married people enjoy doing fun stuff, too. :roll:

[Rescinded and Mended]

Whoops, double post. :wink-kitty:

[Marian the Librarian]

True story: my first post-graduate-degree job was at a small Midwestern college that shall remain nameless. Shortly after Fall term began, the academic dean's secretary printed and distributed an annual faculty directory that included the names of spouses. Per that college's tradition, it was to be used for planning social gatherings (think tweedy, sherry-sipping, weekend dinners lovingly prepared by faculty wives).

There were three (count 'em, three) unmarried faculty members that year: me fresh out of grad school, and two 50-ish divorced male professors. The dean's secretary chose to leave our names out of the directory - why, after all, would single or divorced people want to be included in local social gatherings??

I was too shocked, and too averse to boat-rocking (it was, after all, my first "real" job) to say anything, but one of the divorced men saved me the trouble - he raised quite the stink, and the directory was re-printed with every faculty name included.

Not quite the same as being relegated to the "children's table" at Thanksgiving, but almost.

[louisa05]

I have many relatives who only include unmarried adults on invitations as children invited with their parents. Before I was married, it was not uncommon for my mother to call and tell me I'd been invited to a family wedding, bridal or baby shower, or graduation or whatever on their invite. Somewhere around 30, I began making it a point to not go if the invitation came with my name attached to my parents and mailed to their house. If you didn't send it to me, I was not invited, now was I?

Of course since I have a husband, now we rate our own invitations sent to our house.

[SpeakNow]

I have many relatives who only include unmarried adults on invitations as children invited with their parents. Before I was married, it was not uncommon for my mother to call and tell me I'd been invited to a family wedding, bridal or baby shower, or graduation or whatever on their invite. Somewhere around 30, I began making it a point to not go if the invitation came with my name attached to my parents and mailed to their house. If you didn't send it to me, I was not invited, now was I?

Of course since I have a husband, now we rate our own invitations sent to our house.

I sort of have the same problem. The only thing is that I've moved so many times in the past 6 years that people send invites to my parents because they don't know my address.

[louisa05]

Speaknow--I could have lived with that. But these invites were always addressed to "[My parents' names] and louisa05" as if I were 12. Not a separate invite addressed to me.