Married or single, women want the same things

Between the well-documented rise of single-person households and the new era of cultural fascination with the new “spinster,” there seems to be keen interest these days in separating women into two categories: married or single.

Journalist Kate Bolick deserves some of the credit (or blame — take your pick) for this turn, thanks to the recent publication of “Spinster” as well as her 2011 Atlantic cover story “All the single ladies.” I expect good things from her book, which interweaves reflections on her life with tales of five female writers (Maeve Brennan, Neith Boyce, Edith Wharton, Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Edna St. Vincent Millay) famous for living independently and marrying late or ambivalently.

But the existence of her book, the reportedly lucrative deal that spawned it and the dozens of articles linked to its publication suggest our growing obsession with what is no longer a terribly meaningful distinction. Focusing on marriage as the defining event of a woman’s life leaves out a whole range of alternative human experiences — being married and then divorced, being gay in a place where it’s illegal to marry a same-sex partner, living with a partner to whom one is not married, being celibate, having multiple lovers.

What’s more, marriage isn’t what it used to be. I have married friends — people who got marriage licenses and had marriage ceremonies — for whom monogamy is not the defining aspect of marriage or even an aspect. I know married people who live apart from their spouses. And I know people in marriages that are nontraditional in other ways, for instance, in which the wife is the primary earner or the man stays home with the kids.

Being single isn’t what it used to be either. For women especially, that once meant having no sex life (or leading one that had to be concealed from family and friends.) Married and unmarried women have more in common with each other today than they ever have.

So why are mainstream media outlets so obsessed with casting women as either/or? It seems as if women are always expected to be one thing or the other —married or single, moms or child-free, moms with office jobs or moms who stay at home. And in most narratives, we’re fighting it out for something, though the prize is never clear. Witness the never-ending mommy wars, the media-created conflict between stay-at-home moms and working women (two categories that are hardly mutually exclusive in an age when most people work and many do so part time or from home). Who wins when women are pitted against one another like this?

Every election cycle brings a new spate of polls slicing up voters into cutesy, infantilizing mini-demographics, from the soccer moms of 1996 to the mama grizzlies of 2010. Yes, there are still differences between married and single women that make it logical, at least demographically, to draw distinctions between them. For most women married to men, marriage is an economic boon. Men earn more, on average, and life is easier with two incomes than with one. Even in the United States (assuming your husband treats you decently and has a job) it’s generally socially and economically easier to be a woman with a husband than without.

But women’s political interests do not necessarily alter with their relationship status. All women benefit from free birth control; more than 99 percent of women ages 15 to 44 who have had sexual intercourse have used at least one contraceptive method, and women use contraception regardless of their marital status. All women benefit from abortion rights; about 61 percent of abortions are obtained by women who have one or more children already. There is no social benefit to forcing women, married or single, to undergo unwanted pregnancies or to raise children they’re unwilling or unable to parent.

By the same token, no woman who wants a baby should be ostracized for having one on her own, and all women have the right to parent children who won't be consigned to poverty and low social status if their mothers lack male partners. This Monday in South Korea was Single Mother’s Day, part of an effort to raise awareness of single moms in a country where more than 90 percent of children given up for adoption are born to unmarried mothers. Many believe these children are given up primarily because of the social stigma unwed mothers continue to face. Some women want to raise children without men, some long for husbands who never materialize, some leave their children’s fathers or are left by them, and some are involved with men who stick around without evolving into reliable co-parents. Regardless of how they come to be single moms, it’s unconscionable to punish women or children for lacking a man of the house — and immoral to push women to marry (or marry again) for social or economic security.

Eliminating the gender wage gap is just as crucial for married women as it is for singles. As Leslie Bennetts reminds us in “The Feminine Mistake,” even if you’re currently married to a man who earns enough for your family to live on, that may not always be so. And what woman or man wants to get or stay married out of economic need? The pay gap is as much an economic issue as it is a matter of social justice. Social and economic support for all mothers — not just white, heterosexual ones married to high-earning men — benefits single women who become pregnant and don’t want abortions, married women with child-related expenses that outstrip their incomes and married women who get divorced. And clearly all women benefit from a society that does not tolerate violence against women. Rape happens not only to college students on dates, and you don’t have to be married to be beaten by a man.

That’s the thing about these categories. They’re not set in stone. A woman may be single for most of her life and marry at 78. She may be married for most of her adult life and divorced at 66, like Tipper Gore. An increasingly large proportion of women spends some of their adult lives single and some of it married.

The circumstances of our lives may change, but the things we want and need remain the same. It’s not just young, single women who need birth control, access to abortion and economic independence, and it’s not just married women who benefit when neighborhoods are safe and children are given a decent education, medical care and enough to eat.

That’s why women can’t let the constant focus on what sets us apart distract us from our common interests. Women know what we need — not just single women or married women or white women or mothers but all women.

I admire Bolick’s work, and I am interested in the lives of so-called spinsters. But from a political perspective, it’s time to stop obsessing about marriage and start demanding the things we all need to live freely and equally, regardless of our marital status.