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American families are not what they used to be—now, they are so much more. The growing number of single people—including lifelong single people—has resulted in a phenomenon that would have been vanishingly rare even just a few decades ago. I'm talking about families in which all the grown children are single and always have been.
That was the focus of a recent story in the New York Times, "Line up, children, single file." There were some interesting observations in the story. But when reporter Alyson Krueger consulted some of the supposed experts, she got some responses that just made me shake my head in disappointment.
Here's something that's not disappointing. I bet every one of you who has been reading this Living Single blog for some time can do better than those experts. I'll share some of their "insights" in this post and invite your critiques. Then, in a subsequent post (here or elsewhere—I'll let you know), I'll share my answers and point readers to yours.
The most noteworthy contributions were provided by Professor Helen Fisher. Here's her answer (as summarized by Krueger) to the question of why some in some families, all of the grown kids stay single:
Some families all possess the same genes that cause them to prioritize being creative and free rather than stable and secure. With no impetus on their own and no pressure from their fun-loving parents, the children have no reason to settle down.
If you think that's not so bad, just wait. She also had a comment about the parents of the grown children who said that they might miss having grandchildren in some ways, but really, it would not be so bad:
"Dr. Fisher said that the reality is even worse than they realize: 'They might be superficially sorry that Christmas has no new members and sorry they are not rocking a baby because it would be more fun, but from a Darwinian perspective, they’ve lost.'"
In actually talking to the grown single children and their parents, Krueger found that they appreciated significant aspects of their lives and did not just report feeling sorry for themselves. For example, a pair of sisters told Krueger how close they felt to each other, and one of the mothers said she was grateful for all the time she has with her daughters, which she would not have if they were married.
Another expert Krueger consulted was having none of that:
The danger, said Emily Steinberg, an Upper East Side psychiatrist, is that the siblings and parents become too close. “I’ve seen the current nuclear family almost dominate so much,” she said, “that they don’t feel the pressure or the need to find a partner for themselves.”
There are other nuggets in the article, too, so if you want to read the whole thing and point out some other ways not to talk about single people, please do.
[Notes: For a previous example of the readers of this blog just crushing it in their critiques of a claim about single/married people by a happiness expert, click here. And for more fun, generate your own tongue-in-cheek security questions here. Image is from Google Images, labeled for reuse.]
