Jesus was Single and Single People Should be Valued, Says Church of England – All Other Churches, Christians, and Denominations Need To Take Direction from This Church on This Issue

Jesus was Single and Single People Should be Valued, Says Church of England

While I’m thrilled to see a church acknowledge single adults and correct the marriage-, parenthood-, and nuclear family- idolizing as committed by Baptists and other churches and denominations, unfortunately, the Church of England jumped on to the progressive ideology bandwagon by proclaiming they cannot, or will not, define “woman.”

Shame on the Church of England for enabling the sexist “transgender” movement, but they do at least correct the single-shaming views, attitudes, practices, and doctrines of so many other churches or denominations.

More Christians, more para-church groups, Southern Baptists, and other churches and denominations really do need to course-correct from the singles-shaming or singles-marginalizing they engage in, and they need to repent of worshipping Marriage, Natalism, The Nuclear Family, and Parenthood.

(Link):  Church of England Says To Celebrate Single People, Since Jesus Was Single, Too

The report is indicative of an attitude shift within the church, which has traditionally encouraged its followers to get married and have children.

(Link): Single people should be valued by the Church of England just as much as couples, new report commissioned by two Archbishops urges

April 26, 2023

Single people should be valued by the Church of England just as much as couples, a major report has urged.

The study commissioned by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York points out that Jesus himself never married, and warns that single people may feel unwelcome if churches overuse the word family.

It also admits that being in a committed couple is no guarantee of being ‘happy ever after’ – and that even Adam and Eve had strains in their relationship.

…And it warns that ‘hook-up culture’ is now presented as normal to young girls but adds: ‘Loveless sex is not empowering.’

…The report says it is a ‘point of concern’ that the Government has increased the marriage age to 18 while leaving the age of consent at 16, saying: ‘It legally implies that sex before marriage is acceptable in a way that it was not legally until now.’

…Others who were divorced felt ‘unwelcome in their church and judged for their ‘failure’, with some leaving as a result.

‘Others commented that the declining numbers attending a church is symbolic of an institution which fails to understand and acknowledge the diversity of family life today,’ the report warns.

‘We heard that the Church of England often conveys an expectation of marriage which is not present in society, and that there is too much focus on marriage and family in the church community, especially as increasing numbers of people are choosing to remain single.’

…And it recommends that the Church: ‘Honour and celebrate singleness, whether through choice or circumstance, and recognise the full place of single people within the Church and society.’

It points out: ‘We are reminded that Jesus never married and remained single throughout his life. This was unusual as it was expected at that time that everyone would marry.’ 

(Link): A Church of England report released Wednesday said that single people “must be valued at the heart of our society.”

APRIL 26, 2023 / CBS NEWS

…A Church of England report released Wednesday said that single people “must be valued at the heart of our society.”

The 238-page report, titled “Love Matters,” was the third in a trilogy of major reports commissioned by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York. The first addressed housing and the second examined care and support.

The latest report, on families and households, reflected the church’s changing stance on singlehood and single-person households.

The church’s report acknowledged that a growing number of people elect to be single as a result of divorce, separation, the death of a partner, not having found a suitable partner, or as a deliberate lifestyle choice. It said that loving relationships matter to single people just as much as they do to those who are married with families.

Study Finds that 60% of Young Men Are Single (2023 Study), Many Are Lonely, Not Interested in Dating or Marriage, Articles Say

Study Finds that 60% of Young Men Are Single (2023 Study) – Many Are Lonely, Not Interested in Dating or Marrying, Articles Say

I first saw headlines about this study a few weeks ago but was too busy to blog about it then.

I don’t find this surprising.
About once every other year the past several years, more articles and studies keep being published about how more people (men and women) are either giving up on sex, not dating, not marrying, or deliberately putting off marriage.

I wouldn’t be surprised that if my fellow conservatives take note of this study and comment on it, hypocritically and infuriatingly,  it will be done with the utmost concern – conservative commentators and hosts, such as Matt Walsh, Al Mohler, and Tucker Carlson – will fawn all over today’s single, 20-something men, expressing all sorts of worry for men today.

Why do I say this is hypocritical and infuriating?

Whenever these same conservative groups or persons comment on women being single, they always criticize the hell out of single women for being single (and/or for being childless), all nuance is stripped away, for these conservative commentators to make all sorts of sexist, negative, sometimes simplistic, assumptions about why women are single.

Some women are single by circumstance, not from choice, but that fact is often overlooked by the Tucker Carlsons, Al Mohlers, Abby Johnsons and Matt Walshes, who love to assume all women deliberately choose career over marriage.

The single men won’t get the same insulting, sexist treatment, for the most part for being single. Conservatives like Mohler, Carlson, etc, will actually find a way to blame all women, or blame feminism, for why so many of today’s men are passing up marriage.

Churches Need to Meet the Needs of Adult Singles, Stop Focusing on Dwindling Number of Married Persons with Kids at Home

American churches (as I’ve been saying forever on this blog) need to step up and start offering true community to any and all adults in their areas, including single (never married) or divorced or widowed adults – they need to stop pandering to married couples with children still living at home, which is what they keep doing.

Church attendance is dwindling in the United States. People are losing interest in the Christian faith. Maybe if churches got out of their “Nuclear Family” niche and attempted to meet the needs of single and childless adults, they could increase their numbers.

Some of the following articles say that young, single men today are lonely. Not only do they not have girlfriends or wives, the articles say, but they have little to no friends, either.

Marriage- and Nuclear-Family- obsessed Christians and churches have totally dropped the ball on ministering to single, childless adults.

And you’ll notice that conservatives will NOT mock single men for being single, like they do with single women, when they make their ageist and sexist jokes about single women dying alone in a house full of cats, or saying that single women over 30 have “hit the wall,” or tweeting photos of empty egg cartons.

They won’t tweet parallel, insulting, misandrist or ageist comments about single men dying alone clinging to a life-size anime doll, a toy stuffed shark, while previously having had watched porn on their computer, while having had to urinate 50 times a night due to an enlarging prostate. The effing, sexist hypocrites.

(Link): Study finds more than 60 percent of young men are single: ‘Who are all the young women dating?’

February 23, 2023

Sixty-three percent of men and 34 percent of women under 30 report being single, according to a Pew study

(Link): Most young men are single. Most young women are not. 

More than 60 percent of young men are single, nearly twice the rate of unattached young women, signaling a larger breakdown in the social, romantic and sexual life of the American male.

Men in their 20s are more likely than women in their 20s to be romantically uninvolved, sexually dormant, friendless and lonely. They stand at the vanguard of an epidemic of declining marriage, sexuality and relationships that afflicts all of young America.

(Link):  Six out of 10 young men are single — the disturbing reasons why

Excerpts:

They’re not getting jerked around by dating anymore.

New Pew Research Center data has found that nowadays, 63% of men under 30 are electively single, up from 51% in 2019 — and experts blame erotic alone time online as a major culprit.

“[Young men] are watching a lot of social media, they’re watching a lot of porn, and I think they’re getting a lot of their needs met without having to go out,” psychologist Fred Rabinowitz told the Hill.

“I think that’s starting to be a habit.”

The new, post-COVID numbers would surely back up previous research that the pandemic has made men prefer an evening alone instead of actually meeting a partner.

Just half of single men as a whole responded that they are “looking for a committed relationship and/or casual dates,” a decrease compared to 61% four years ago.

But these statistics tell a sadder truth about this generation of men, NYU psych professor Niobe Way told the outlet.

“We’re in a crisis of connection,” Way said. “Disconnection from ourselves and disconnection from each other. And it’s getting worse.”

The male numbers come sharply juxtaposed to the 34% of women under 30 who now say they’re single — which has seen only a slight pandemic rise in that age group.

Another factor at play might be the interests of women changing — especially as suitors of the same age are becoming apparently less desirable, experts said.

“[Women would] rather go to brunch with friends than have a horrible date,” LA couples and family psychologist Greg Matos said.

The expectations of American men are also rising in the minds of women, according to masculinity expert and University of Akron professor Ronald Levant, who added that “unfortunately, so many men don’t have more to give.”

But perhaps the largest issue now with young men — one highly impacting their social abilities — is that they are, as a whole, more lonely people than women, a recent study showed.

Who Does Best at Being Single? by B. DePaulo

Who Does Best at Being Single? by B. DePaulo

(Link): Who Does Best at Being Single?

Excerpts:

by Bella DePaulo

Living single can be such a vastly different experience for different people. At one end are the people who are distraught to be single and often invest heavily in becoming coupled.

At the other end are the “single at heart”—people for whom single life is their best life—their most authentic, meaningful, fulfilling, and psychologically rich life. The single at heart are not settling for being single—they are embracing it. In single life, they flourish.

[A study conducted by Girme and her colleagues was done on this topic]

Who Thrives When Single?

Girme and her colleagues mentioned many factors associated with happy and successful singlehood, including [I will not be copying the entire list below on this blog; you can view the entire list here]:

• • Embracing values such as freedom, creativity, and trying new things.
  • … Having good social support.
  • Having quality friendships.
  • Having a secure attachment style.
  • …Getting older. (Some research suggests that after about the age of 40, single people become happier and happier with their single lives. Starting at even younger ages, single people who are not pining for a romantic partner are especially likely to become happier and happier.)

Who Has a Harder Time With Single Life?

According to the researchers:

• • People who buy into ideologies that insist that being married or coupled is the normal, natural, and superior way to be.
  • People who believe in traditional norms about gender and parenting.
  • People who are afraid of being single.
  • People who really want to be romantically partnered.
  • People who are divorced.
  • People who don’t have much social support.
  • People who have an anxious attachment style.
  • … People who feel pressured to couple or marry by family members.
  • People who experience even more than the usual dose of singlism—the stereotyping, stigmatizing, and marginalization of single people, and the discrimination against them.

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

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).

A Newly Published Survey Shows that Only Half of US Women Under 45 Have Children

A Newly Published Survey Shows that Only Half of US Women Under 45 Have Children

I am not anti-marriage or anti-Nuclear Family, but I also don’t support conservatives who marginalize or shame adult singles for being single (and/or for being childless) and who slavishly focus on things like the marriage or birth rate declining.

All my fellow conservatives will do when or if they see reports like the one below (about half of women not having children) is to write more propaganda pieces shaming women for being childless, when they should accept the situation for what it is and start asking themselves how can they, or society, support childless adult women better?

No amount of conservative shaming will cause women to suddenly run out and start having children.

As to the women who’d like to marry prior to having children – they don’t believe in or want to have children out of wedlock – conservatives have no solutions, including Christian ones.

Christians scream and yell at single Christian women to marry, but there are no single men for Christian women to marry, unless they are willing to marry Non-Christian men, and the Christians who cling to the “equally yoked” rule won’t tolerate that.

All these conservatives – Christians and otherwise – won’t lift a finger to actually help a single women who’d like to marry (and possibly have children) to marry.

If you’re a conservative who complains about single women being single (and/or childless), and yet, you’re not lifting a finger to actually help marriage-desiring single women to marry, you are part of the problem and have not earned a right to opine on these issues. So keep your nuclear-family- and pro-natalism- worshipping pie hole shut.

All those types of conservatives do is shame women for being single (and childless) and complain about women being single and childless…. shaming women for being single or childless won’t help women get married and / or have children, and complaining about a problem will not solve a problem.

Writing editorials extolling the supposed wonders of motherhood will not actually bring a husband into a woman’s life.

Help the single women get married first, then those women can have children (if they choose to have children).

Shaming, guilt tripping, pressuring, or lecturing women into marrying and/or having children does not work, and it may end up in some women making some very long lasting harmful decisions – and those pushing these women into marriage and motherhood won’t be there to pick up the pieces.

(Link):  US births continue to decline as nearly half of women under 45 are childless: study 

January 12, 2023

The number of births in the US has continued to decline — repeating a decades-long trend — as nearly half of American women under 45 are childless, according to a new study.

(Link): U.S. birth rates reach record lows – even though number of kids most people say they want remains steady 

(Link):  The modern family size is changing. Four charts show how.

Delayed parenthood and fewer kids: An analysis of new fertility data shows how the modern U.S. family has evolved over time.

January 12, 2023

By Aria Bendix and Joe Murphy
Families are smaller and people are waiting longer to have children than in years past, according to an NBC News analysis of data released this week by the National Center for Health Statistics.

The overall fertility rate in the U.S. declined from 2015 to 2020, additional NCHS data shows, reaching a low of fewer than 6 births per 100 women ages 15 to 44. (The rate then rose 1% from 2020 to 2021, though the overall trend still faces downward.)

The U.S. birth rate — the number of births per 1,000 women — declined from 2018 to 2019 among women in their 20s and early 30s but increased among women ages 35 to 44, the report showed.

Sociologists pointed to a few factors that may explain these trends. One is that contraception has become more reliable, while another is that people are getting married later in life, and most births in the U.S. still happen within marriage.

The Myth of the Career Woman by M. Notkin – Why Women Are Still Single in Their 30s and Older

The Myth of the Career Woman by M. Notkin

I’m a conservative, but I’ve been beyond fed up for years now at how so many other conservatives, as well as sexists of whatever variety, assume that the reason why most women are single past the age of 30 is because they chose career before marriage.

Along with that is the other annoying, very wrong, and sexist assumption by men online that all of us women who remain single past the age of 30 had lots and lots of “nice guys” who wanted to date us back in our 20s, but we coldly, cruelly turned them all down.

I don’t know what the hell those men are talking about, because I did not have lots and lots of men asking me out on dates when I was in my twenties.

But it’s simply not true that all women choose career over “marriage and family.”

Why aren’t men giving up careers to be stay at home fathers, taking care of children?

I never cared much one way or the other if I ever had children, but I had wanted to be married. And I’m not single because I “chose career over spouse.”

I have more observations about this essay below:

(Link): The Myth of the Career Woman by M. Notkin

The image of the single, childless “career woman” is drawn so sharply in our minds, so deeply ingrained in culture and overused in media, it obfuscates the real story. Contrary to popular belief, most working women are not putting their careers ahead of love, marriage and motherhood.

Never mind that there are no “career men” — no one accuses a single, childless man of prioritizing career over love and family just because he’s single and can pay the rent.

But women are made to wear this label — though I have yet to meet a woman who has declined a date with a guy she’s interested in because she’d rather be on a Zoom call.

While college-educated women are settling down and having children later than was once the case, the “career woman” is mostly a mid-century myth, an outlier like Mad Men’s Peggy Olson, who belongs to a time when women went to college to earn their “MRS” degree.

Why Can’t Other Christians Understand I Am Happy Being Single? by Emily Brown

Why Can’t Other Christians Understand I Am Happy Being Single? by Emily Brown

The essay I am excerpting below is pretty good and contains a lot of truth.

It’s certainly true that a person who wanted marriage but remains single can eventually learn to accept their own single status, mostly make peace with it, but well-meaning friends and family (Christians are the worst, they worship marriage),
can make one of their well-meaning comments, and it can send you spiraling – until you learn to let it bounce off you, develop boundaries, and let that well-meaning person know that their comment does offend or hurt, even if that wasn’t their intent.

I also recall years ago seeing Christian singer Carman, who died in 2021, who was single until he got married in his 50s, say on a TBN program (while he was single) that he would be going along okay in life doing just FINE with his single status,
until he’d run into a Christian friend or family member who’d make those passing, sometimes well meaning, comments or questions like, “Why are you still single? Aren’t you depressed or lonely being single?”

Carman said on those occasions, his thoughts were, “You know, I WAS doing okay with being single UNTIL you had to rub my single status in my face and act like I SHOULD feel inadequate about it.”

The following is from Relevant, which only permits a person up to around five free articles per month:

(Link): Why Can’t Other Christians Understand I Am Happy Being Single?

Excerpts:

by Emily Brown

As a lifelong single person, I’ve had a lot of time to come to terms with my singleness. And not even just come to terms and begrudgingly accept it, but truly learn to enjoy and love being single.

So when people ask how I feel about being single I don’t have to fake a smile. I excitedly share the happiness and joy I feel about being single.

That being said, there are still moments where I do feel sadness or shame or embarrassment about my singleness.

Do you know why? It’s because of the response people give me when I tell them how I feel about being single. Because when I tell people that I’m single they often respond with some iteration of:

“I’m sure you’ll find someone soon!”

Uh, thanks?

Nowhere in my explanation of my relationship status did I mention I was upset or worried.

Yet why do people — and let me be clear on which people I am specifically talking about: already married Christians — always assume I am sad about being single?

It has been a long, long journey to finding happiness. I worked really, really hard to unlearn the lie that being with someone would make my life complete and replace it with the truth that God is all I need.

I had to realize that there isn’t anything wrong with me and being single is not a curse.

…But it can take just a few words from well-meaning, ultimately misguided people to crack holes in my happiness.

Number of ‘Lonely, Single’ Men is on the Rise as Women with Higher Dating Standards Look for Partners Who are ‘Emotionally Available, Good Communicators, and Share Similar Values’, Says Psychologist

Number of ‘Lonely, Single’ Men is on the Rise as Women with Higher Dating Standards Look for Partners Who are ‘Emotionally Available, Good Communicators, and Share Similar Values’, Says Psychologist

If any of the usual conservative commentators, male or female, get wind of this article by this psychologist, they will somehow try to pin the blame for more men going single longer – on all women, or on feminism.

I’m a conservative who doesn’t agree with progressive woke ideology, but I’ve noticed that other conservatives, despite claiming to believe in the concept of ‘personal responsibility’ never- the- less do not want to hold men accountable for the failures of men, whether on the individual level or men as a group.

Then, these same conservatives, who bemoan the “victimhood” mentality of progressivism, go on to depict all men as being poor, put upon victims.

If men of today are finding it more difficult to get dates, they need to take personal responsibility and work on improving themselves, rather than go the usual “blame feminism” or “blame all women” route, which is what they normally do.

I can see secular and Christian conservatives blaming women for this phenomenon – they are going to blame and shame women, and yell at women to lower their standards.

I find it absolutely refreshing to learn from these articles that women are now vastly out-numbered on dating sites.

I think I read the figure is 62%; that is, 62% of the participants on dating sites are male, the rest are female, so that women have the pick of the litter, LOL. This is a nice turn around.

This is the total opposite of churches.

Most churches have gender imbalances that favor single men – most churches have way more single women than single men. If you’re a single, practicing Christian woman that wants marriage, you need to dump the “equally yoked” rule and perhaps giving dating sites a second look.

Not that dating sites and apps are a god-send, because there are weirdos, rapists, and wackos on there, but you have more single men to choose from on dating sites than in many churches.

(Link):  The Rise of Lonely, Single Men by Greg Matos

Excerpts:

Dating apps and a drastically changing relationship landscape.

KEY POINTS

• • Dating opportunities for heterosexual men are diminishing as relationship standards rise.
  • Men represent approximately 62% of dating app users, lowering their chances for matches.
  • Men need to address skills deficits to meet healthier relationship expectations.

(Link): Number of ‘lonely, single’ men is on the rise as women with higher dating standards look for partners who are are ’emotionally available, good communicators, and share similar values’, says psychologist

August 15, 2022
by Jessica Green

Men are lonelier than ever as they struggle to meet the higher dating standards of modern women, according to a psychologist.

American psychologist Greg Matos wrote in a recent Psychology Today article that the current state of young and middle-aged men’s love lives shows they need to ‘address a skills deficit’.

He said: ‘I hear recurring dating themes from women between the ages of 25 and 45: They prefer men who are emotionally available, good communicators, and share similar values’.

Yet, he claimed he’s found that modern men’s biggest problem is communication, which is ‘the lifeblood of healthy, long-term love’.

It comes as data shows dating apps are overrun with men – who represent 62 per cent of users – and figures collected in the US in 2019 showed more men than women were single.

Dr Matos said society fails to teach young boys the importance of communication, which has resulted in growing numbers of unintentionally single men.

Lifeway Research: Pastors Encourage Single Adults, Some Provide Targeted Ministries

Lifeway Research: Pastors Encourage Single Adults, Some Provide Targeted Ministries

I’m afraid this is too little too late, and it also still sounds like a lot of pastors and Christians are apathetic about meeting the needs of single (especially never married) adults who are over the age of 30.

If you’re a church, or a secular or religious conservative, you need to meet people where they are and meet their needs where they are currently, rather than lambasting people for not being married, shaming them, or lecturing them about being single and the so-called importance of the Nuclear Family.

And stop putting the onus on single adults to meet their own needs and the needs of other single adults.

If your church has staff and devotes funds to minister to married with young children, drug addicts, divorced adults, or people in the grieving process,
you need to also set aside church staff and funds to set up programs and services to cater to single adults over the age of 30,
rather than making this hypocritical exception where you put the burden on single adults to set up single adults ministries and fund raise for single adult ministries.

To put this another way, many churches expect that older single adults who want more attention and effort poured into older single adults at the church will be told to take the matter into their own hands and to create and maintain singles classes and singles activities, rather than the church making it happen.

Most of you churches these days behave like international secular corporations, like a McDonald’s, where you cater to various special interest groups  (such as married couples, divorced adults, people in addiction recovery, or millennials or gen Z), but you’re telling me, you hypocrites, you cannot be bothered to view older single adults as another interest group you would be willing to market to and serve? That makes no sense.

I’m sorry, but no. That is complete hypocrisy.

If your church (like many churches) has classes, social functions, pot luck meals, and sermons devoted regularly to ‘married- with- children couples’ and THEIR particular needs and concerns,
and you don’t demand that married members set up these classes and provide elbow grease to other married couples (and you don’t), it’s totally hypocritical and infuriating to demand that single adults do the heavy lifting for single adult ministries.

If your church is willing to pick up the slack and provide services to married couples (and all of you do this, because you WORSHIP parenthood, natalism, marriage and the Nuclear Family), you can damn well also cater to the needs and interests of older single (and childless) adults as well, and stop asking the single adults to sponsor, create, manage or maintain the programs in place for older single adults.

Another news flash for churches and preachers:

You’re not going to diminish the phenomenon of delayed marriage or the increasing number of single adults by doing any of the following
(which you’ve tried before for over a decade now, these approaches do not work, and actually drive singles away from churches AND from the faith itself, in some cases):

• shaming or criticizing single adults for being single and assuming they are still single because they are failures, losers, ugly, fat, too picky, selfish, or man-hating, career-obsessed feminists,
• by yelling at them to run out and marry right away
  (that is not how marriage actually happens);
• wrongly thinking dating sites are an instant solution to finding a mate, so advising all the Christian singles you know to “just try dating sites like e-Harmony!”,
• lecturing adult singles over the age of 30 on the so-called wonders of The Nuclear Family and marriage
  (as though the reason they’re not married yet is that they dislike, or don’t value, marriage or The Nuclear Family – eye roll),
• telling single adults bogus how- to- get- married advice that does not work
  (such as, ‘Just trust in the Lord, pray, wait, have faith, and in due time, He will send you a spouse!,’
  ‘Once you’re content in your singleness is when God will send you a spouse,’ etc)
• refusing to help marriage-minded single adults who’d like to get married opportunities at church to meet other marriage-minded singles for the express purpose of dating leading to marriage
  (i.e., saying that doing so would make church a “meat market,” that church’s only purpose is to “worship the Lord”),
  or
• patronizingly instructing older single adults that their only or main purpose so long as single is to act as free labor to the church or to society in general (eg., to act as free babysitters to the married- couples- with- children, to act as free maid service to mop the church’s kitchen floor, etc).

(Link): Lifeway Research: Pastors Encourage Single Adults, Some Provide Targeted Ministries

August 16, 2022
By Marissa Postell

As the number of single adults in the United States continues to grow, so does the need for ministry to single adults in churches.

According to a 2020 profile of single Americans by Pew Research Center, nearly 1 in 4 (23%) U.S. adults ages 30-49 are single—not married, living with a partner or in a committed romantic relationship.

And the 2021 U.S. Census Bureau data on America’s Families and Living Arrangements reveals many of these have never been married.

The Federalist Writers Continue to Disregard That Some of Their Readers Are Conservative, Single, and Childless – Re: “Childless Chris Evans’ Inspiring Condemnation Of Anti-LGBT Bigots: ‘Those People Die Off Like Dinosaurs’”

The Federalist Writers Continue to Disregard That Some of Their Readers Are Conservative, Single, and Childless – Re: “Childless Chris Evans’ Inspiring Condemnation Of Anti-LGBT Bigots: ‘Those People Die Off Like Dinosaurs’”

June 22, 2022

Post updated below, November 2022

I just wrote, (about two days ago!), (Link):  another rebuttal of sorts to another editorial at the Federalist that was, once again, in a round about way, shaming anyone single or childless for being single and childless.

And here we are again.

The owners of The Federalist, and their writers, really need to be aware that some of their readership consists of single, childless, conservative adults.

Not every un-married, childless adult out there hates the nuclear family, marriage, or parenthood, or is liberal or Democrat.

Some of us single and childless adults are conservatives who don’t agree with the progressive LGBT agenda.

Several days ago, when actor Chris Evans was informed that some nations were banning his new Disney / Pixar movie, Lightyear, because it contains a lesbian kissing scene, Evans made some kind of response in the media about how people who object to lesbianism or homosexuality will one day die off, and their views will go extinct, and he thinks that is a good thing.

While I myself do not support the entirety of the LGBT-agenda, in- so- far as they advocate things like wanting to force Christian bakers to bake wedding cakes for homosexual weddings, or legally (Link): permitting biological men who identify as women into women’s domestic violence shelters, bathrooms, and prisons, I also do not support any conservative retort that amounts to denigrating singleness or the state of being childless.

It is not necessary, fair, or kind, to push back against progressive LGBT propaganda, or to defend marriage and parenthood, at the expense of singleness and childlessness, but I will discuss this further below.

Here’s the latest singles-shaming, childless-shaming piece from The Federalist, only this time, it’s by another author, not the same one I was critiquing the other day over her essay (I will analyze it below the link and excerpts):

(Link): Childless Chris Evans’ Inspiring Condemnation Of Anti-LGBT Bigots: ‘Those People Die Off Like Dinosaurs’

Excerpts:

June 22, 2022
by Hans Fiene

Evans’s lack of children gives much greater weight to his insistence that all LGBTQIA2 opponents will go the way of the dodo.

… Next, when you remind them that they’re on the wrong side of history, they’ll repeat the debunked claim that history is more likely to be written by those who exist than those who don’t.

[When Evans was asked what his views were about anyone who was objecting to his new Lightyear movie due to its representation of homosexuality, Evans responded by conveying that]

 Their complaints will perish with them. Their bigotry will be swept into the dustbin of history. You simply need to wait for them to enter extinction.

To understand why his words are so comforting, it’s important to remember that Evans is an unmarried 41-year-old man with no children. Had his words been spoken by a man who sired offspring, they would be of no comfort to you.

… Evans’s lack of children, therefore, gives much greater weight to his insistence that all LGBTQIA2 opponents will go the way of the dodo. How can you not be comforted by the glorious confidence of this man who has reached middle age and yet has zero children to enroll in Miss Naughty’s Preschool for Drag Princesses? If kidless Captain America is certain that transgender eight-year-olds will still be a thing when the children of anti-LGBTQIA2+ Christians, Mormons, and Muslims inherit the earth, why should we fear?

Indeed they are! And you should be so confident of their idiocy that you do not fear forgoing procreation and leaving the children of your ideological enemies to continue your march towards queer justice. They’ll gladly oblige!

“Every time there’s been social advancement as we wake up, the American story, the human story is one of constant social awakening and growth and that’s what makes us good,” the film star added.

Absolutely! The human story is one long march towards libertine justice! Societies only grow stronger the more they encourage sterility and physically destructive sexual behaviors. That never brings about cultural collapse. So don’t feel an ounce of dread when you look at those Christian parents filling their 12-passenger van with their Christian children.
— end excerpts —

According to the end credits under that essay on The Federalist the author is…

Hans Fiene is a contributor to The Federalist. He is a Lutheran pastor in Missouri and the creator of Lutheran Satire, a series of comical videos intended to teach the Lutheran faith. Follow him on Twitter, @HansFiene
— end —

The Anti-Singles, Anti-Childless Pastor

Yikes. No. No, no, no, no.

To the Lutheran pastor who wrote this piece:
Your own Lord and Savior (Link): never married or had children, and yet His teachings and deeds were not forgotten.

Jesus of Nazareth’s world views were passed down by his spiritual children, initially by word of mouth, and then, in writing.

The Nuclear Family Has Failed – by Yoram Hazony – Re: How the Formerly Extended, “Traditional” Family Was Better for Individuals and Societies

The Nuclear Family Has Failed – by Yoram Hazony – Re: How the Formerly Extended, “Traditional” Family Was Better for Individuals and Societies

(Link): The Nuclear Family Has Failed – by Yoram Hazony 

Excerpts:
May 13, 2022

When people talk about the structure of the family, they often find themselves arguing for or against the “nuclear family”, which consists, on most tellings, of a father and mother, with perhaps two or three children in their care for the first 18 years of their lives.

These children are then supposed to leave the house, move somewhere far away, and make nuclear families of their own.

Contemporary conservatives are especially inclined to embrace this image of the family, although it is not entirely clear why.

The “nuclear family” is not the same as the traditional Christian or Jewish family that existed before the two World Wars. On the contrary, the nuclear family is closer to being an invention of industrialisation and the 20th century.

And there are good reasons to think that this form of family is, in fact, a failed experiment, one that has done immeasurable harm to almost everyone: to women and men, children and grandparents.

The time has come for us to consider retiring the ideal of the nuclear family, and replacing it with something that looks more like the family of Christian and Jewish tradition.

What is the traditional family?

How Everyone Got So Lonely by Z. Heller (Article Discusses Incels, Sexism, Being Single By Circumstance, other topics)

How Everyone Got So Lonely by Z. Heller (Article Discusses Incels, Sexism, Being Single By Circumstance, other topics)

(Link): How Everyone Got So Lonely

Excerpts:

The recent decline in rates of sexual activity has been attributed variously to sexism, neoliberalism, and women’s increased economic independence. How fair are those claims—and will we be saved by the advent of the sex robot?

By Zoë Heller
April 4, 2022

[The article opens by going over all the information I’ve been posting to this blog the last several years: more and more Americans (and people in other nations as well) are remaining virgins or celibate, and some are opting out of dating and marriage.
Some are doing so out of choice – with some they may want to have sex and/marry but are still single or celibate due to circumstance.]

… The chief driver of this so-called “sex drought” is not, as one might expect, the aging of the American population but the ever more abstemious habits of the young. Since the nineteen-nineties, the proportion of American high-school students who are virgins has risen from forty-five per cent to sixty per cent.  …

[The article covers many of the explanations various studies and authors have been citing to explain the lack of sexual activity, especially among the young – everything from more people in their 20s and 30s living at home with their parents, to porn, to video games.]

… For the British economist Noreena Hertz, the decline in sex is best understood as both a symptom and a cause of a much wider “loneliness epidemic.”

In her book “The Lonely Century” (Currency), she describes “a world that’s pulling apart,” in which soaring rates of social isolation threaten not only our physical and mental health but the health of our democracies.