Thoughts Regarding the Essay “Married or single, everyone is greedy,” by Esther Wickham, An Essay Which Misrepresents Adult Singles
Here is a link to the piece:
(Link): Married or single, everyone is greedy by Esther Wickham
Already, I have to object to the headline alone.
The author, Wickham, acknowledges within the essay that (Link): studies that show that married people are more likely to be selfish than adult singles, to not do things like volunteer at charities or help others, than are single adults.
Studies Show That It’s Married Persons, Not Singles, Who are Self Absorbed
Yet, Wickham tries to depict single adults as being “greedy” too.
No, I’m sorry, no. Studies show the opposite.
This isn’t to say that every single adult single is giving and self-less, but as a group, studies have shown that no, singles, as a group, are not “greedy.”
Conservatives: Old Strategy to Promote Marriage By Depicting Single Adults as Being Selfish, Greedy, or Maladjusted
Also, for decades now, it’s been a staple in conservative Christian circles, in various denominations, that all tend to be “hyper-” pro- marriage and “hyper” pro- nuclear family, to bolster the case for marriage by bashing singleness, and this has increased in the last several years, as marriage rates are on the decline.
Christians (and many conservative think tanks that are hyper pro-nuclear family and pro-marriage) think the way to “sell” and to market marriage to single adults is to make single adults think that singleness is terrible, singleness is greedy and selfishness, and that (Link): singles will supposedly be happier and healthier if they just hurry up and marry already.
(I happen to be a conservative myself, and I am not opposed to marriage or to parenthood, but I am in opposition to these essays by conservatives that bash singleness or single adults, or that exaggerate the benefits of marriage and the nuclear family.)
So one way many conservatives, both secular and Christian, tend to try to pressure or convince singles to marry, or to defend marriage itself, is to portray adult singles as being “selfish,” defective, immature, or as (Link): “ugly losers”.
See Also:
Secular and Christian conservatives also play the same game with childfree or childless people, women in particular:
Women who are single and/or childless past the age of 25 are often falsely portrayed by conservatives as intentionally choosing to be single and childless (when the reality is, plenty would’ve like to have been married but couldn’t meet an eligible mate), and are further inaccurately depicted in Christian blogs, radio shows, and so on as hating all men, hating babies, or as having chosen career over marriage.
Al Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, has gone so far as (Link): to shame single Christian women for being single off and on over the years, in various blog posts or speaking engagements he’s given, and (Link): has suggested that childless adults are not “fully human.”
Gender Imbalance In Conservative Religious Circles Keeps Women Single
A big reason why a lot of religious women remain single into their 30s and older is that there has been a gender imbalance going on for decades now: there are more single women than single men in many houses of worship.
That is, there are plenty of single women who’d like to marry, but there are no compatible single men for them to marry. They’re not all deliberately choosing to opt out of marriage.
More here:
(Link): Married to the Job: How a Long-Hours Working Culture Keeps People Single and Lonely by S. Jaffee
(Link): How the Dating Scene Became Stacked Against Women– via CT, by Gina Dalfonzo
I have articles and studies on this blog explaining that there has been a gender imbalance among Mormons and conservative Jews for years now, and this is also the case for conservative Christians.
Some Christians have been waking up to the fact that many Christian single women who’d like to marry aren’t marrying due to lack of suitable male partners,
so we get idiot Christian sociologists such as Mark Regnerus arguing in his articles that Christian women should lower their mate selection criteria:
he actually says if a Christian single woman is opposed to marrying a known pornography addict, that she should ditch that criteria and go ahead and marry a known porn addict.
More on that here:
The Christians who are aware of the lack of potential male mates for single women are actually asking Christian women to abandon Christian sexual ethics or their own personal convictions, all to get married to a man, any man will do, so desperate are these Christian pundits to guilt trip and pressure women into marrying because marriage rates have fallen. It’s disgusting.
The Christian ‘Equally Yoked’ Rule and “Just Have Faith and Wait” Advice Keeps Christian Single Women Single Indefinitely
Christian women especially are brainwashed by evangelical and Baptist Christian sermons and Christian literature to believe in something called the “equally yoked rule,” which states that a Christian single adult should only marry another Christian.
I was raised Southern Baptist (Christian), and I definitely was taught the “equally yoked” rule in dating and marriage sermons and Christian dating advice books when younger.
I was also taught by Christians to expect that if I prayed and trusted God to send me a husband, and if I lived a godly lifestyle, had faith, and attended church regularly, that God would provide me with a Christian husband, most likely at a church.
I followed all the Christian advice about how to live life, that taught me if I just followed it, God would bless me with a husband – but although I followed all that Christian advice, had faith, went to church, and lived a clean lifestyle (and later even tried Christian dating sites), I have never married to this day, and I am now a 50-something.
I wrote more about that here:
Related to that:
What happened over the course of my life is that every church I attended (I moved around growing up) there were no single men I attended at the churches I went to.
The only men in attendance at Baptist churches I went to when I was in my 20s and 30s were married men, or 82 year old widowed men, or a smattering of really weird, socially awkward, obese and smelly, socially mal-adjusted, creepy, 30- to- 50 something year old single men (but mostly, the ones I kept running into were men who were married or else way too old for me).
If I had married in my 20s, I was obviously wanting to marry a man in his 20s, not an 82 year old man.
Christian Women Brainwashed to be Pathologically Giving, Empathetic (Non-Selfish) – Codependency for Women is Enshrined Via Incorrect Biblical Interpretations and the Gender Complementarian Doctrine
I spent years being very codependent (which I am (Link): no longer).
My mother and the complementarian Baptist churches I was raised in presented “biblical womanhood” as being near identical to codependency, which means I was pathologically non-greedy, and un-selfish for over 35 years.
It wasn’t until my late 40s, due to life experience, and having read books and articles by psychologists about codependency, that I started, finally, in a healthy way, began prioritizing my own needs, dreams, and goals in life, instead of feeling obligated to run around rescuing other people and helping them meet their goals in life at the expense of my goals and dreams.
I spent over 35 years being non-greedy as an un-married adult – not greedy, but non-greedy.
Yes, Married People Tend to Run Self Absorbed, Because Unlike Singles, They Can Afford to Do So
And yes, anecdotally, (research studies aside), and I know that the author, Wickham, may not want to hear this, but the reality is, I can tell you that many married couples are, yes, “insular,” which makes them “greedy.”
Married couples turn to each other to get their emotional needs met, as well as companionship needs met.
Married couples do not like to hang out with single adults… but they will do selfish, self serving things such as phone their single adult friend when their spouse goes out of town on a business trip or deployment for weeks or months, because they get lonely without their spouse around.
The moment that married friend’s spouse returns, though, they go back to basically ignoring you, their single friend, because they were just “using” you so long as their spouse was out of town and they felt lonely.
I’ve had single adult women friends who began to ignore me 99% of the time the moment they got a boyfriend or got married – and then they stopped staying in touch with me (unless their spouse left for a business trip, as I just explained).
More here:
(Link): Women Who Dump Women Friends As Soon As They Get A Spouse or Boyfriend (Letter to Advice Columnist)
And to all you married people out there that keep turning to your spouse and get lazy at developing your relationships outside of your marriage: your spouse is going to die one day, perhaps before you.
I am constantly seeing “married with young children” couples complain about how exhausting it is to be a parent.
This is particularly true of the mothers who write (Link): these cloying essays on various sites begging their adult single women friends to run over and play “free babysitter” for them, or do housework for them, so they can take a nap.
I see many extremist, pro-Family Christians write articles going back decades and books advising single adults (especially women) that it’s our duty or obligation, as a single woman, to act as free maid service or free baby sitters to the married mothers out there.
I never, ever see Christians writing books or articles telling married couples with kids or no to provide help or assistance to their single and childless adult friends. This “help” only runs one way, and (Link): never in the direction of the single and childless adults.
After having re-read the essay by Wickham, I don’t think she has a full picture of why some remain single, and it’s not fully because “the institutions that traditionally provided couples with support” are on the wane.
The very first and crucial hurdle many women face, especially conservative religious women, is just finding a suitable, single conservative religious man to start with – such men are not in churches.
Most religious women are not going to try to find a man in a night club or bar. Dating sites are filled with perverts and weirdos, including self-professing Christian ones.
I will be returning to commenting more on Wickham’s essay below these excerpts:
Excerpts from the essay:
(Link): Married or single, everyone is greedy by Esther Wickham
Marriage — it’s an institution that a majority of people desire for themselves but one that struggles to flourish in a society that prioritizes individualism and scorns the institutions that traditionally provided couples with support. No wonder, then, that some have decided they’re better off without it.
In a recent interview with the Atlantic, Dr. Bella DePaulo, 68, who worked as a psychology professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, admitted she’s spent her whole life as a single person with no desire for marriage.
… Yet DePaulo pointed out that many of the married couples who are supposed to be happier than her have begun to disconnect from their communities and isolate themselves. Their marriage, she said, becomes greedy.
…. Research suggests DePaulo is, in some ways, correct. A New York Times article “found that married respondents were significantly less likely than the unmarried to contact or see their parents and siblings. … The married are also less frequently spent time with or helped friends and neighbors. … More than 80% of never-married individuals said they’d called or written to their parents in the last month, compared with just 60% of married people. Likewise, around 70% of unmarried people but only 30% of the married had socialized with friends in the last month.”
However, DePaulo overstated her case. Married people inevitably have different priorities than those who are single. They are often focused on raising children and building a home, both of which are time-intensive responsibilities.
Moreover, it is normal for married couples to spend what free time they do have on each other.
… To be sure, married couples should make their communities a priority and resist the temptation to isolate themselves. But to say that most married couples are greedy for spending too much time with their spouses and not enough with family and friends is to misunderstand the very purpose of marriage.
Surely in a society that overemphasizes “self-love,” couples who prioritize each other should be viewed favorably. There’s nothing wrong with a “greedy marriage,” nor is there anything wrong with singlehood — so long as both lifestyles are lived in moderation, of course.
— end excerpts —-
DePaulo was right on the money and was not “over stating” her case.
History of Marriage in the USA
Contrary to what this author writes, no, marriage was not “always that way.”
I’ve read other research and studies that explain that in the past, in the United States, couples did not spend as much time with each other as they’ve been doing the last 50 or so years – they would invest more time with extended family and so on than they do now.
According to articles I’ve read by authors that have researched the history of marriage in the United States, it’s been a relatively recent development in the USA for adults to view marriage to be all about finding a soul mate, getting all one’s needs met in a marriage, etc.
(Link): Asking Too Much Of Marriage – Married People are Lonely
Choices
The author says, “They [married couples] are often focused on raising children and building a home, both of which are time-intensive responsibilities.”
These married couples Wickham is discussing often beg and plead with their single, childless friends to come over and babysit those children they chose to have, because they find parenthood overwhelming and would like someone else to do the work and relieve them of the parenting responsibility. I’ve called this out time and again on this blog.
I am calling this author out on portraying being a married couple so “time consuming.” It’s not.
One reason why married couples (with children) today might think they lack time comes down to their own choosing – a lot of parents, starting around the 1990s or so – began forcing or encouraging their sons and daughters to sign up for every activity under the sun: soccer practice; cheerleading; piano lessons; etc etc etc.
If you’re a parent and would like more free time on your hands, I suggest you stop being over-involved in your kid’s free time and stop micro-managing your children.
Instead of dragging your kid to soccer practice, then to piano practice, ACT or SAT study classes after school, and 45 other extra-curricula activities, let them come home from school, do their homework, and then ride their bikes outside or watch TV.
It’s a choice to drive them around to piano lessons and 34 other activities.
I have two older siblings. I grew up in the 1970s and the 1980s. When I was growing up, my mother, who was a stay at home mother, would spend the first 2 – 4 hours of the day cleaning house (dusting furniture, doing laundry), while my father went off to work by around 7:00 a.m., and he’d get home around 3:00 pm or so.
After my mother was finished with the first 2 – 3 hours of the day folding laundry, dusting furniture, and vacuuming the house, her usual activity was to spend the rest of the day, sipping ice tea on the sofa while she watched soap operas on television and/or puttering around in her garden, which she loved.
My Dad would get home from his job and do NO PARENTING (Dad never took an interest in my siblings or me), he’d crack open a beer, sit on his recliner in the den, and spent the rest of the day watching TV news or football.
I’m not advising that other parents pretty much ignore their children 99% of the time, as my Dad did to my siblings and me, but the point is that he had plenty of free time when he got home from his job (enough to drink a beer, unwind, watch several hours of television).
Parents, particularly in the traditional set up where one spouse works while the other stays at home all day, and especially as the kids get out of toddler stage (get old enough to brush their own teeth and so on) have plenty of free time, they just choose to use it either by driving their kids around to 56 different activities, or sitting around watching TV and telling their kids to shut up, go away, and leave them alone.
Where Wickham writes:
Moreover, it is normal for married couples to spend what free time they do have on each other. A husband’s top priority is his wife, just as a wife’s top priority is her husband. …
To be sure, married couples should make their communities a priority and resist the temptation to isolate themselves. But to say that most married couples are greedy for spending too much time with their spouses and not enough with family and friends is to misunderstand the very purpose of marriage.
— end —
Who says this is normal? It’s only been considered normal in the last 50 – 60 years. (Nobody says you have to prioritize your spouse or time with your spouse over your community or friends – that is a choice you’re making.)
Prior to that, culture didn’t convey the idea to married couples that they should get all to most emotional and companionship needs met through a spouse only.
The Bible says the direct opposite. In (Link): 1 Corinthians 7, it says:
28 … But those who marry will face many troubles in this life, and I want to spare you this.
32 I would like you to be free from concern. An unmarried man is concerned about the Lord’s affairs—how he can please the Lord.
33 But a married man is concerned about the affairs of this world—how he can please his wife— 34 and his interests are divided.
An unmarried woman or virgin is concerned about the Lord’s affairs: Her aim is to be devoted to the Lord in both body and spirit.
But a married woman is concerned about the affairs of this world—how she can please her husband.
35 I am saying this for your own good, not to restrict you, but that you may live in a right way in undivided devotion to the Lord.
— end excerpts —
Consider this:
(Link): Why Comic Characters and Super Heroes Can’t Marry – Marriage Makes People Selfish
In today’s context of marriage, it’s going to be more difficult for Superman to fly around the world saving babies from burning buildings if Lois Lane is expecting him to primarily devote his time to her in their house in the suburbs, playing kissy face with her or tackling a “honey to do” list she writes for him weekly.
Unlike Married People, Single People Have Little Choice But To Be Non-Greedy, If They Want Companionship
Wickham doesn’t seem to understand that the phrase “greedy marriage” is describing the fact (which (Link): has been documented and researched) that married couples, yes, choose to spend their free time more so with their spouse and at the detriment or expense of “family and friends,” or volunteering at local charities, which yes, does make them “greedy.”
Single people might be incentivized to get out of the house more and to therefore do things like volunteer at charities (even widowed people tend to do this because their spouse is now dead) because they’re seeking some kind of companionship.
And church and Hollywood holds this “greedy behavior” in marriage up as “normal,” as a life goal we should all aim for, and it goes something like this:
You won’t be complete and find inner peace, meaning, and happiness, and you won’t get all your emotional needs met, unless you marry; and once you marry, you should spend every free moment with the spouse and not bother to cultivate friendships outside the marriage…
Which results in this:
(Link): Man Who Lost His Wife Puts Sign in Window Asking for Friends: ‘It’s My Last Resort’
This is also a possibility for married people, the ones who don’t socialize and try to maintain friendships with those outside of their marriage, because they think it’s normal and natural to make their spouse a “top priority”:
(Link): Bride Battling Cancer Dies 18 Hours After Exchanging Vows
(Link): Christmas Morning House Fire Leaves Father and Two Children Dead, Wife and Oldest Child Injured
(Link): Joanne The Widow Lady Wants to Know Why God Didn’t Answer Her Prayer to Keep her Husband With Her
(Link): When You’re Married and Lonely by J. Slattery
(Link): You Will Be Ignored After Your Spouse Dies
(Link): Groom Finds Bride Dead Morning After their Wedding
I am a 50-something, never married and childless woman, and though I’ve tried having and maintaining friendships with married mothers, those married mothers don’t make time for the friendship, usually.
I’m always having to reach out to them via social media, texting, or e-mails.
And when we do chat on the phone, many of them (not all, but some) never want to talk about anything other than their husband and children (which gets to be mind-numbingly boring).
These types of married mothers never want to discuss books, art, philosophy, gardening, or movies. They never ask about what I’m up to, because if it doesn’t relate to marriage and parenthood generally, or to their marriage and parenting in particular, they do not care!
I think Wickham took the phrase “greedy marriage” the wrong way.
I don’t think saying, “but it’s totes okay for a husband to prioritize his wife!” solves the issue.
Married couples have been conditioned in today’s society to make more of marriage than it was ever meant to – and so, these married couples choose to take what free time they have and instead of maintaining friendships and such, they do go “insular,” as the study put it.
Unlike married couples who are told it’s fine and dandy to be greedy (as they’re “supposed” to pour all their time and energy into a partner), single adults are not encouraged to be greedy, nor are singles greedy by default.
Since we singles do not have a marital partner on which to rely, if we want companionship (or help with certain tasks), we are forced to get out of the house and attend social functions, church services, and to volunteer at charities.
So I wouldn’t say that singles are “just as” greedy as married people, no.
Related Posts on This Blog:
(Link): Is Singleness A Sin? by Camerin Courtney
(Link): American Romance Standards Are Changing as People Have Less Sex and Marriage Rates Drop
(Link): Yes, You Need to Prioritize Your Marriage Over Your Kids by V. Pelley
(Link) Why You Shouldn’t Love Your Kids More Than Your Partner By B. Luscombe
(Link): Loneliness: Coping With the Gap Where Friends Used to Be by Olivia Laing
(Link): Asking Too Much Of Marriage – Married People are Lonely
(Link): What Does Marriage Ask Us to Give Up? By Kaitlyn Greenidge
(Link): Unmarried and Childless Women Are the Happiest, Happiness Expert Claims
(Link): Nearly 4 in 10 American Adults Live Without Spouse or Partner As Single Population Grows: Pew
(Link): Fewer Americans See Their Romantic Partners As a Source of Life’s Meaning
(Link): Do You Need a Partner to Have a Happy Life? by D. LaBier
(Link): Study: Couples Without Children Have Happier Marriages
(Link): Marriage-Pushing Zealot Wilcox Suggests that Being Single is Immoral: National Review Article
(Link): Widows Have Better Well Being Than Married Couples says new study
(Link): Why We Thought Marriage Made Us Healthier, and Why We Were Wrong by Bella DePaulo
(Link): Marriage & Motherhood Are No Longer The Milestones Of Adulthood. Now What? by J. Filipovic
(Link): I Married Young. I Was Widowed Young. I Never Want A Long-Term Partner Again by R. Woolf
(Link): Adult Singles Do Not Need A Marital Partner to Be Whole or Complete
(Link): How American Parenting is Killing the American Marriage by D. Teller
(Link): Do Married Couples Slight Their Family Members as Well as Their Friends? / “Greedy Marriages”
(Link): Lonely Woman Wonders How to Make Friends (letter to Ask Amy)
(Link): The single life: Some people never find the love of their lives. And live to tell about it.
(Link): Celibate Christian Woman Asks Christian Host Why God Will Not Send Her a Husband
(Link): The Christian and Non Christian Phenomenon of Virgin Shaming and Celibate Shaming
(Link): Family as “The” Backbone of Society? – It’s Not In The Bible
(Link): Craigslist confessional: I’m in my 40s, never married, and a virgin—but I’m happy by Abigail
(Link): Single Adult Christian Pressured Into Marriage by Her Church – And Regrets It
(Link): Even If You’re Married You Can Die Alone – Elderly Married Couple Found Dead
(Link): I’m a Christian Married to an Atheist — Here’s How We Make It Work by S. Allen
(Link): Coronavirus: Even Married People With Children Die All Alone
(Link): Five Things Single Women Hate to Hear
(Link): Depressing Testimony: “I Was A Stripper but Jesus Sent Me A Great Christian Husband”
(Link): What Christians Really Think About the Church’s Relationship Advice by Anna Broadway
(Link): Men with ‘Golden Penis Syndrome’ Are Ruining Sex and Dating for Women
(Link): Why Comic Characters and Super Heroes Can’t Marry – Marriage Makes People Selfish
(Link): The Nuclear Family Was A Mistake – by David Brooks – and Related Links
(Link): Bethke: “Christians Do Not Need To Get Married To Live A Full And Flourishing Existence”
(Link): Really, It’s Okay To Be Single – In order to protect marriage, we should be careful not to denigrate singleness – by Peter Chin
(Link): Pat Robertson’s Incredibly Insensitive Advice to Gail the Unmarried Woman
(Link): Single People Aren’t Problems to Be Fixed or Threats to Be Neutralized By Ella Hickey
(Link): Can’t Find “The One”? Blame Easy Dating Apps
(Link): Dear Abby: I Gave Up Dating, and 30 Years Later, I’m Lonely
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