Why Being Single Sucks: What No One Wants to Talk About, by B. Smith

Why Being Single Sucks: What No One Wants to Talk About, by B. Smith

This article discusses how sometimes the single life can be lonely. The author is writing from a secular perspective.

I’ve said on this blog in years past that if Christians did their job properly, Christian singles would have their companionship needs met by the church, but Christians are too focused on meeting the needs of Married Couples and droning on about the importance of The Nuclear Family to give any thought to adults who remain single past the age of 25 or 30.

If Christians were doing their jobs properly, they’d be helping those singles who want marriage to get married – by hosting social events geared towards single adults, by asking their single friends if they could fix them up on dates.

Christians could also provide platonic companionship by inviting single adults over for dinner or out to the movies, but married couples usually don’t want single adults in the mix, sometimes because they don’t like “odd numbers” around the dinner table and the paranoia of Christians who believe in the moronic “Billy Graham Rule.”

Christian singles are left to their own devices as to how to seek out companionship. Most churches simply do not care to meet the needs of singles, but will tell them the church is not for them,  that the church does not exist to help single adults get their needs met.

Originally spotted this on Melanie Notkin’s Twitter:

(Link): Why Being Single Sucks: What No One Wants to Talk About

Excerpts:

We often celebrate the power and pleasures of the single life, but skim over one of its harshest realities: loneliness

….In 1981, 26 percent of Canadians aged 25 to 29 were unmarried. In 2016 (the last yearcensus numbers were gathered), that number skyrocketed to 57 percent. During that time, the percentage of unmarried women in their early 30s jumped from 10 to 34 percent.

Check Your ‘Cat-Lady’ Preconceptions About Childless Women by K. Wallace

Check Your ‘Cat-Lady’ Preconceptions About Childless Women

(Link): Check your ‘cat-lady’ preconceptions about childless women

by Kelly Wallace

“49% = Number of women ages 40 – 44 who are voluntarily childless”

 “More women choosing a childfree life”

Editor’s note: Kelly Wallace is CNN’s digital correspondent and editor-at-large covering family, career and life. She is a mom of two. Read her other columns and follow her reports at CNN Parents and on Twitter.

(CNN) — Women without children like Patrice Grell Yursik, who just celebrated her 12th wedding anniversary, get the same questions all the time.

“I can’t even tell you how many cab drivers in Chicago, in New York, in L.A., have asked me, ‘So any kids? No kids, why no kids?’ It’s just the way that people engage with you,” said Grell Yursik, 35, of Chicago, creator of the beauty and lifestyle blog Afrobella.com.

She and her husband have not decided whether they want to have children.

Laurie White, a 43-year-old writer and social media manager, who has referred to herself over the years as “accidentally childless,” said people always come up with solutions for what they perceive as her “problem.”

“Why don’t you just parent by yourself? Why don’t you adopt? There are so many kids who need homes,” White, of Olney, Maryland, said people tell her. “It really discounts whether or not that’s something a) that I want to do and b) whether that’s something that’s really wise for me to do as a single person.”

Kitty Bradshaw, creator of an online destination covering lifestyle in Los Angeles and New York, said, “More and more guys are saying ‘Oh there must be something wrong with you if you are 35 and you’ve never been married and you’ve never had kids.’ “

Bradshaw, White and Grell Yursik are not alone by a long shot; 47% of women between ages 15 and 44 don’t have children, according to 2010 U.S.

Census Bureau data, an increase from 35% in 1976.

That’s a massive group comprising nearly half the women of childbearing age, and yet this demographic remains misunderstood, poorly portrayed in the media and nearly invisible to Madison Avenue, many women without children say.

‘The Otherhood’

Best-selling author Melanie Notkin, 45, coined the term “The Otherhood,” the title of her newest book, to refer to women like herself who don’t have children either by choice or based on life’s circumstances.

In her case, she experienced what she calls “circumstantial infertility … the pain and grief over not having children” because she’s single.

Too often society perceives women like herself as making a choice between having a career and having love, marriage and children, she said.

“This implication that we have chosen a career as opposed to falling in love is, as I say in the book, about as preposterous for me as having an elephant as a household pet,” Notkin said at a recent panel discussion hosted by DeVries Global, a public relations and social media agency.

Otherhood – An overlooked demographic – the Childless and Childfree Women and Singles Especially Women Who Had Hoped to Marry and Have Kids But Never Met Mr. Right (links)

Otherhood – An overlooked demographic – the Childless and Childfree Women and Singles (links)
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The book Otherhood: Modern Women Finding A New Kind of Happiness by Melanie Notkin is available for sale on Barnes and Noble, and other sites.

From a page about the book:

More American women are childless than ever before—nearly half those of childbearing age don’t have children.

While our society often assumes these women are “childfree by choice,” that’s not always true.

In reality, many of them expected to marry and have children, but it simply hasn’t happened. Wrongly judged as picky or career-obsessed, they make up the “Otherhood,” a growing demographic that has gone without definition or visibility until now.

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Disclaimer: I am not anti-motherhood, nor necessarily against people taking their mothers out to brunch on Mother’s Day.

I am, however, against the onslaught of syrupy Mother’s Day hoopla on and before the day, and the church services that honor mothers because:

• Some people (women included) were abused by their mothers and so find the holiday awkward or painful,
• some people had or have mothers who are/were cruel or overly-critical,
• some people’s mothers are dead and they miss them terribly,
• some women desire to be a mother but cannot because they are infertile, their spouse is infertile, or they are single and cannot find “Mr. Right” (and don’t believe in getting pregnant outside of marriage, or don’t feel they could support a baby alone)
• some women choose to be child free, but feel excluded or shamed by church and secular staggering emphasis on motherhood on the holiday

Some Christians have turned motherhood (as well as fatherhood and marriage) into idols, which they should repent of.
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This post discusses “Otherhood” (women who delay motherhood for years, or who are infertile, or ones who were open to having children but who’ve not met “Mr Right,” and for whatever reason, do not want to have a child while single, but would prefer to be married before having kids)

OTHERHOOD

(Link): The Otherhood: Single women face ‘circumstantial infertility’

Excerpt

Melanie Notkin wanted love, marriage, and then the proverbial baby carriage — in that order.

By the time she reached her early forties, the entrepreneur and author was still single and appreciated the likelihood that, despite wanting desperately to be a mother, she might never give birth to a child on her own.

Like many women her age, Notkin, 44, a Montreal native, expected to reap all the social, economic, and political equality that her mother’s generation didn’t have. At the same time, in addition to her education and her career, she anticipated a traditional family track.

In her new book, released today, “Otherhood: Modern Women Finding A New Kind of Happiness,” Notkin uncovers the personal stories of women like her, who are part of a growing demographic trend and suffer what she calls “circumstantial infertility.”

Often, people presume that when a woman like Notkin is childless, it’s probably by choice. But many of the childless women in their thirties and forties simply want to do it the “old fashioned way,” she says, and find the right relationship before making a lifetime commitment to have kids.