Writers at WND and Real Clear Wire Sound Like They’re Freaking Out Over Increasing Numbers of Single Women Who Aren’t Marrying or Having Children
I saw this headline go through my Twitter feed earlier (this is how the writers at WND chose to word their headline – WND says this article at their site originally appeared at another site called “Real Clear Wire”):
“Single women could push U.S. into ‘demographic decline’ like in Japan”
It’s hard for me to say if the writers at WND are stating that “matter of factly,” but at first glance (and realizing they’re conservatives, with many of my fellow conservatives being very grossly obsessed about promoting marriage and the nuclear family), it sounds as though it’s blaming and criticizing women for being single and for choosing not to reproduce.
As a conservative woman myself, who’s never married or had children, I abhor both liberals (or progressives) AND conservatives shaming or criticizing people (women especially) over whether to marry or have children or not.
Both sides need to back off. Allow women to decide for themselves if they’d like to marry and/or have children.
Men seldom get as much pressure, shaming, criticism, and guilt tripping to marry and have children as women do – and it’s sexist.
Women do not exist merely to marry and have kids and assist a man (husband) make HIS goals and dreams come to pass.
Most of the article itself at WND isn’t too bad – it seems to be straight up reporting. I only spotted two or three possible subtle, sexist digs at single women.
In the past week, I’ve seen two or three other headlines from other sources, such as The Daily Mail, go through my feed about how there are more and more single women in the USA now (including large numbers of never married women), and how a lot of these women tend to vote Democrat.
I am always alarmed when such news stories and surveys are released, because unfortunately, every time such studies or stories are published, the sexist asshole conservative and Republican men (and conservative / Republican women who are traitors to their own biological sex as a group) become aware of such news reports, and they immediately begin tweeting and blogging their revolting, sexist, anti-single-women propaganda, and their “women shouldn’t have the right to vote” garbage.
Many of these conservatives, when they begin catching wind of whatever recent news reportage of women staying single and childless, begin their face-palming, vomit-worthy lamentations about how America in 2023 isn’t the same as good old 1952 America, where every woman got married by age 23 and had five children.
Many such conservative-penned tweets and articles, and Tucker Carlson on his nightly FOX news show, will demonize single women for being single, will attempt to make marriage look like nirvana (never mind that a lot of husbands cheat on their wives or murder them), and in yet others, these authors or cable news commentators attempt to lecture, scold, or shame single women into marrying immediately and popping out ten kids, whether these women want to or not, and whether or not these women even know many single men they can date.
I could go on for ten more pages about why such utterly predictable material is disgusting and sexist, but one thing I wanted to point out is that these excessively pro-marriage idiot conservatives never factor in is that getting married is not easy.
I myself had wanted to be married, and in spite of having friends fix me up on dates, in spite of going to singles classes at churches, in spite of joining dating sites, I couldn’t find a compatible mate.
Even if a single woman wants to get married, it’s no easy task to find a decent, compatible guy.
So, if you’re a conservative, unless you’re willing to actually help marriage-desiring single women to get married, to fix them up on dates with decent single guys you know, or to get your local church to host more singles mixers and so forth so these singles can meet and marry, shut up with browbeating single women to get married.
A single woman cannot wave a magic wand and make a husband magically appear before her – it involves going out on dates with various men, and that is no guarantee of finding a suitable marital partner.
Some of those men women go on dates with or see on dating sites may be perverts, controlling, immature, selfish, or personality disordered -in other words, none of those types of men are marriage material.
Shaming and hounding single women to get married does nothing to actually HELP a single woman run into and marry an eligible single man. So shut up, conservatives, shut up about scolding women for not marrying.
I find that conservatives generally ignore single women. But this comes in cycles.
Conservatives will annoyingly ignore single, childless women and their concerns unless and until
- another new study appears discussing how more and more women are staying single and childless which may impact future demographics, or,
- until a major election cycle where a Republican loses to a Democrat, because, it’s found, single, childless women as a bloc voted for the Democrat, helping the Republican to lose.
Then, all the sudden, only in these very limited contexts, will these anti-singles idiot conservatives and Republicans start frothing at the mouth and pearl clutching and writing their singles-shaming editorials and tweets that are chock full of sexism about “why aren’t women marrying and making babies any more.” The rest of the time, we single and childless women do not exist on their radars.
Hey, fellow conservatives:
Why don’t you pro-marriage, pro-motherhood, pro-nuclear family assholes start investing into single and childless women at all times, not just when your favorite Republican loses an election? Start reaching single, childless women where they are and start offering them incentives to vote Republican.
(Link): Single women could push U.S. into ‘demographic decline’ like in Japan
Excerpts:
‘One of the great untold stories of American politics’
By WND News Services
Published January 21, 2023
[Editor’s note: This story originally was published by Real Clear Wire.]
By Joel Kotkin & Samuel J. Abrams
Soccer Moms are giving way to Single Woke Females – the new “SWFs” – as one of the most potent voting blocs in American politics.
Unmarried women without children have been moving toward the Democratic Party for several years, but the 2022 midterms may have been their electoral coming-out party as they proved the chief break on the predicted Republican wave. While married men and women as well as unmarried men broke for the GOP, CNN exit polls found that 68% of unmarried women voted for Democrats.
The Supreme Court’s August decision overturning Roe v. Wade was certainly a special factor in the midterms, but longer-term trends show that single, childless women are joining African Americans as the Democrats’ most reliable supporters.
Their power is growing thanks to the demographic winds.
The (Link): number of never married women has grown from about 20% in 1950 to over 30% in 2022, while the percentage of married women has declined from almost 70% in 1950 to under 50% today.
Overall, the percentage of (Link): married households with children has declined from 37% in 1976 to 21% today.
A (Link): new Institute for Family Studies analysis of 2020 Census data found that one in six women do not have children by the time they reach the end of their childbearing years, up from one in ten in 1990.
Single adult women now total some (Link): 42 million, comparable to the key African American voting bloc (46 million), while vastly larger than key groups like labor union members (14 million) or college students (20 million).
The Pew Research Center (Link): notes that since 1960, single-person households in the United States have grown from 13% to 27% (2019). Many, particularly women, are not all that keen on finding a partner.
(Link): Pew recently found that “men are far more likely than women to be on the dating market: 61% of single men say they are currently looking for a relationship or dates, compared with 38% of single women.”
The authors say the following like it’s a bad thing – that’s what it seems like – it’s GOOD that there’s not as much stigma anymore for people being single and childless:
There’s clearly far less stigma attached to being single and unpartnered. Single women today have many impressive role models of unattached, childless women who have succeeded on their own …
This phenomenon is not confined to the United States. Marriage and birthrates have fallen in much of the world, including Europe and Japan.
Writing in Britain’s Guardian newspaper, (Link): columnist Emma John observed that, “Singleness is no longer to be sneered at. Never marrying or taking a long-term partner is increasingly seen as a valid choice.”
The rise of SWFs – a twist on the personal ad abbreviation for single white female – is one of the great untold stories of American politics. Distinct from divorced women or widows, these largely Gen Z and Millennial voters share a sense of collective identity and progressive ideology that sets them apart from older women.
More likely to live in urban centers and to support progressive policies, they are a driving force in the Democratic party’s and the nation’s shift to the left. One paradox, however: Democrats depend ever more on women defined in the strict biological sense while much of the party’s progressive wing embraces the blurred and flexible gender boundaries of its identity politics.
Attitudes are what most distinguish single women from other voters. An American Enterprise Institute survey shows that married men and women are far more likely than unmarried females to think women are well-treated or equally treated. …
… There is even a sense in which women are redefining families, and themselves, by choosing to neither get married nor have offspring. …
While both married and unmarried women have made impressive gains in the workplace, family status appears to be driving a big cleavage in politics among women. Research shows that having children tends to make one more conservative – critically, divorce does not change this calculus decisively, although it moderates leftism. …
… The fault lines, however, run deeper and appear to be generational. The data show that 40% of Millennial women – those born between 1981-1996 – identify as liberal and 20% identify as conservative. For single women of the baby boom generation (born between 1946-1963) the number of liberals drops to 25% and the number of conservative women increases to almost 30%. …
We are witnessing, as sociologist Daniel Bell noted a half century ago in “The Coming of the Post-Industrial Society,” a new type of individualism, unmoored from religion and family, something fundamentally transforming the foundations of middle-class culture.
This echoes what the popular futurist Alvin Toffler in 1970 described as a growing immersion in work at the expense of family life. He envisioned a revolution in marriage that would result in a “streamlined family,” and, if children are in the picture, relying on professional child-raisers. …
… This economic reality impacts political choices. Not part of an economic familial unit, they tend to look to government for help, whether for rent subsidies or direct transfers.
Critically, unmarried women also tend to be employed heavily in “helping professions” like medical care and teaching, an expanding field even as many traditional male jobs, particularly in manufacturing, construction, and transportation, have disappeared. Whereas high taxes and regulation pose problems in the general economy, women predominate in fields that actually benefit from more government spending. …
The lowest birthrates are found in ultra-blue cities and states, magnets largely for singles and the childless. …
The Great Demographic Race
In the near future, American politics, both national and local, may turn on the degree to which people remain single, and also whether they decide to have children.
Right now, the short run demography favors the Democrats. People are getting married at the (Link): lowest rate in American history and the birth rate remains depressed. The longer people stay single, and perhaps never marry, the better things will be for the Democrats.
… In many places, particularly on the coasts, single women have become a politically rising force. Twelve women were elected governor in 2022, a record. Maura Healey’s election as the nation’s first openly lesbian chief executive shows that in states like Massachusetts, once a Catholic conservative bastion culturally, there is enough support for single women in politics to overcome traditional reluctance to elect childless and non-heterosexual candidates.
“It’s thrilling to see Maura break down historical obstacles to both women and LGBTQ candidates to lead Massachusetts,” says Janson Wu, executive director of the Boston-based GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders. “It really shows the progress we’ve made as a society, in understanding that what counts is really the quality of the leader and not who they are.”
Future Policy Conflicts
Public policy may have a strong influence on this dynamic. The single, the unattached, and the unmarried are already demanding state provisions to guarantee “affordable” urban housing, more money for transit, and steps toward a guaranteed income for individuals – all of which will, in turn, provide incentives to remain unattached.
In contrast, the demands of family-oriented voters may be more focused on economic growth, safety, improving basic education, and ways to save money for their offspring.
If the policy preferences of singles become more significant, the United States may have to brace for the kind of long-term demographic decline already evident in Japan and parts of Europe.
… Some women in particular embrace singleness not just as a lifestyle, but a chance to redefine the role of women in society.
Author Rebecca Traister, herself married with children, has followed this movement, calling it a “a radical upheaval, a national reckoning with massive social and political implications … a wholesale revision of what female life might entail.”
“We are living through the invention of independent female adulthood as a norm, not an aberration,” she adds, “and the creation of an entirely new population: adult women who are no longer economically, socially, sexually, or reproductively dependent on or defined by the men they marry.”
— end excerpts —
The essay ends by asking Americans what kind of society they want to have – which seems to suggest an anti-singles tone, as in, “OMG, if things keep going as they are, we’ll end up with a lot of single, childless women, which is a nightmare, and when we all really want and need to be living in a society where all women are married mothers!” – if that’s what they were going after, eff them on that point.
How about we Americans live in a society where organizations (both left and right), churches, and both progressive and conservative think tanks stop pressuring women either way on whether to marry or have children.
Just allow women to decide for themselves what they believe is right for their own lives – and get off their backs.
Related:
(Link): College Women, Don’t Listen to Marriage Concern Trolls
(Link): Republicans And Women: Single Women Vote Democratic Because They Wish They Were Married, Pundit Says
(Link): American Romance Standards Are Changing as People Have Less Sex and Marriage Rates Drop
(Link): Asking Too Much of Marriage (Marrieds Just as Lonely as Singles)- Editorial at Christianity Today
(Link): Four in 10 Adults Between the Ages of 25 and 54 are Single, Up From 29% in 1990
(Link): It’s Better To Be Single, According To Science by Erin Brodwin
(Link): The War Over Marriage Is Raging; Single People Are Winning by B. DePaulo
(Link): Unmarried and Childless Women Are the Happiest, Happiness Expert Claims (2019 Study)
(Link): ‘Stop Nagging!’: Why China’s Young Adults Are Resisting Marriage and Babies
(Link): Do Married Couples Slight Their Family Members as Well as Their Friends? / “Greedy Marriages”
(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): Marriage-Pushing Zealot Wilcox Suggests that Being Single is Immoral: National Review Article
(Link) Have we made an idol of families? by A. Stirrup (copy)
(Link): Is The Church Failing Childless Women? by Diane Paddison
(Link): Lies The Church Tells Single Women (by Sue Bohlin)
(Link): The Best Age To Marry Is When You Meet The Right Person
(Link): The Nauseating Push by Evangelicals for Early Marriage
(Link): Men Who Have Children Younger Die By Mid-Life -early marriage also involved, says researchers
(Link): Are Single People the Lepers of Today’s Church? by Gina Dalfonzo
(Link): I’m a Christian Married to an Atheist — Here’s How We Make It Work by S. Allen
(Link): Getting Married Is Not an Accomplishment by N. Brooke
(Link): Stop Believing God Told You to Marry Your Spouse by G. Thomas
(Link): Las Vegas Man Stabs Wife 30 Times After She Asks For Divorce, Reports Say
(Link): I Want to Divorce My Unbelievably Selfish Husband, Advice by S. L. Brown
(Link): Democrat Vice President Kamala Harris Meets With Female Activist Who Ranted ‘F*ck The White’ Women
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