All the single ladies : unmarried women and the rise of an independent nation /
Rebecca Traister.
- New York, etc : Simon & Schuster, 2016.
- xvi, 339 p. ; 20 cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Introduction -- Ch. 1. Watch out for that woman: the political and social power of an unmarried nation -- Ch. 2. Single women have often made history -- Ch. 3. The sex of the cities: urban life and female independence -- Ch. 4. Dangerous as Lucifer matches: the friendship of women -- Ch. 5. My solitude, my self: single women on their own -- Ch. 6. For richer: work, money, and independence -- Ch. 7. For poorer: single women and sexism, racism, and poverty -- Ch. 8. Sex and the single girls: virginity to promiscuity and beyond -- Ch. 9. Horse and carriage: marrying-and not marrying-in the time of singlehood -- Ch. 10. Then comes what? And when? Independence and parenthood.
In 2009, award-winning journalist Rebecca Traister started All the Single Ladies about the twenty-first-century phenomenon of the American single woman. It was the year the proportion of American women who were married dropped below fifty percent; and the median age of first marriages, which had remained between twenty and twenty-two years old for nearly a century (1890-1980), had risen dramatically to twenty-seven.
But over the course of her vast research and more than a hundred interviews with academics and social scientists and prominent single women, Traister discovered a startling truth: the phenomenon of the single woman in America is not a new one. And historically, when women were given options beyond early heterosexual marriage, the results were massive social change – temperance, abolition, secondary education, and more. Today, only twenty percent of Americans are married by age twenty-nine, compared to nearly sixty percent in 1960.
9781501160691
Single women--History--United States Women--Social conditions--United States Feminism--History--United States
United States--Civilization United States--History United States--Social conditions