Does Society Hate Single Women?

Written by Sam

Thursday, 23 December 2010 15:08

In today's world we like to pretend that we are progressive and all for women's rights. The key word in that sentence is "pretend". The masses are all for women's rights as long as they don't interfere with the grand scheme of things. And that grand scheme is that it is alright for women to go out and have a career as long as they settle down, get married and have children. Feminism with limits.

You have to look carefully to see the signs of how society still has certain expectations of women. For instance, when the last Jennifer Aniston film "The Switch" came out about a single woman who decides to go the route of a sperm donor in order to get pregnant this scenario offended portions of the population. Imagine a single woman who does not want to settle and yet still wants to have kids. Some were threatened by this. Infamous blockhead Bill O'Reilly (of Fox News) commented that women like that were (and I quote) "a menace to society". Say what?

Single women still have to suffer under a barrage of statements like "You're single? What's wrong with you?" It isn't easy at times. What I've come to realize is that women are still defined by relationships. You are only thought of as "normal" and "whole" if you are in a relationship. Women are only validated if they are in a relationship with a man. Single men are not looked at the same way. Only single women are seen as missing out if they do not have a family.

It is not even just single women who are seen as threatening but also women who are not getting married and having children in their 20s. Women today are staying single longer and delaying having children. This choice is seen by some as detrimental to the structure of society. Society still looks at single women of a certain age suspiciously. Women are supposed to be coupled up and if they don't value the traditional family model then they are dangerous. What is also a little dangerous is the re-emergence of the domestic goddess and the fairy tale weddings. It is like the 1950s for women are back again. Not exactly a high point for women's rights and freedoms.

Is it really the fear of family values crumbling or are men just worried that they are becoming irrelevant. In some ways the feeling is understandable. Women are choosing to have babies without men and no one likes to be told that they are redundant.

My belief is that a certain amount of singledom is actually good for society. Some people, male and female, remain single for good reasons. A solitary lifestyle, the time to focus on themselves, the energy to be more creative, and the fact that for some marriage is not as beneficial as it used to be are all legitimate and healthy reasons why someone may choose to remain single.

It is equally legitimate for a single woman to decide to have a baby without a man. A family and what that means should have a looser definition in this the 21st century. It is not necessarily a mom, dad, kid, dog, and white picket fence. We live in an era in which women no longer have to marry for economic reasons, or even to start a family by a particular age.