Something is happenin here, what it is ain't exactly clear - 4/12/07

Thu Apr 12 13:53:52 EDT 2007

- OPRAH 
- CELEBRATING SINGLEHOOD
- SIDEBAR: BEING SINGLE HAS ITS BENEFITS
- 'FEMININE MISTAKE' IS A HARD SELL ON FINANCIAL AUTONOMY
- AND, FOR THOSE SERIOUSLY READY TO GET MARRIED....
- AND SO IT GOES.....

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- OPRAH 
I continue to hear from many of you who say you are writing the Oprah Show
and forwarding my "Oprah" to various lists and blogs. Some of you are asking
me for permission. You don't need permission, this cat is out of the bag.
I'm also still receiving lots of commentary - will share this one I received
today.   - diane  

> Diane,
> I was not only baffled by Oprah's stance for singlehood, but appalled!  I am a
> 40 yr-old, unmarried African American woman with one child.  I sent an email
> after the show to disagree with their interpretation of the 70% statistic and
> provided the CDC's poverty data for unmarried African American women with
> children.  For those women, being single is detrimental to them and their
> children.  It's NOT "an evolution" or "freedom of choice."  I now have
> bittersweet feelings toward Oprah and the show.  Please remain vigilant in
> getting the show to disseminate accurate information on marriage.  Oprah
> professes to being a Christian.  Therefore, I hope she will eventually embrace
> the institution of marriage or keep her mouth shut about her "shackin'-up"
> relationship with Stedman, which sends a negative message to all American
> girls and young women.
> Myra Pinckney
> South Carolina 

##############################
- CELEBRATING SINGLEHOOD

Oprah is definitely not the only one. - diane

> As their ranks multiply, singles aren't waiting for a partner to buy a home or
> even have a child. They've decided to embrace singlehood for however long it
> lasts. 

Free as a bird and loving it: Being single has its benefits
USA TODAY
April 12, 2007 
Sharon Jayson

Being single means bucking the pressure to join the married half of U.S.
society.

Despite lavish celebrity weddings, a multitude of dating websites and stacks
of self-help books about finding your soul mate, singles are a growing
segment of the population ‹ and increasingly say they are perfectly happy
with their singlehood, thank you very much.

The Census Bureau reports about 97 million unmarried Americans ages 18 and
over in 2006, the most recent numbers available. That represents 44% of
Americans 18 and over; a quarter have never been married; 10% are divorced,
6% widowed, and 2% separated.

"It's probably the best moment for singles in our history Š because of the
attitudes of popular support and the numbers," says Pat Palmieri, a social
historian at Teachers College at Columbia University, who is writing a
history of singles in America since 1870. She is 60 and has never been
married.

Young adults are delaying marriage and have a longer life expectancy,
experts say, so more Americans will spend more of their adult lives single.
As their ranks multiply, singles aren't waiting for a partner to buy a home
or even have a child. They've decided to embrace singlehood for however long
it lasts.

"I don't have to be dating someone to be happy," says Jennifer MacDougall,
26, an office assistant in Wilmington, N.C. She says her friends share her
outlook.

"When I was younger, I thought that was how it worked. You went to college
and got married. When I got to college, I realized that was not how it
worked and not how I even wanted it to work. I wouldn't mind being married
someday, but I want to feel comfortable with myself and what I'm doing."

That attitude may arise from the frenetic quality dating takes on after
college, says Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, co-director of the National Marriage
Project, a research initiative at Rutgers University.

"It is not a bad trend that we are removing the stigma from being single and
talking about alternative ways to lead a single life," she says.

Households in which no one is married now make up 47.3% of the USA's 114
million households, according to recently released Census data for 2006.
(Numbers from 2005 released last year showed unmarried households at a 50.3%
majority, but the percentage fluctuates year to year.)

"Unmarried here means not married right now," says Andrew Cherlin, a
professor of sociology and public policy at Johns Hopkins University in
Baltimore. The data reflect larger numbers of elderly singles, probably
widowed or divorced, and twenty- and thirtysomethings who haven't tied the
knot, such as unmarried people who share living quarters or romantic
partners who live together.

"Most people who are single seem to want to eventually be married," says
Michael Rosenfeld, author of The Age of Independence, about young adults
living on their own. "But they're putting it off. In the past, there just
weren't that many single, young adults supporting themselves. It's a new
phenomenon, post-1960, and getting stronger every day."

Singles do continue to face obstacles, from work policies and tax codes that
favor married couples to extra fees lone travelers must pay. But society is
beginning to recognize singles' needs: Individual servings of packaged
grocery items are just one example.

Also, a Pew Research Center study released last year found that most singles
aren't actively looking for a committed relationship: 55% of 3,200 adults 18
and older surveyed in 2005 reported no interest in a relationship. For ages
18-29, 38% said they weren't looking for a partner.

"When I graduated from college, I spent more time not in relationships than
in relationships," says Len Sparks, 37, an engineer from Boston who says
he's now in a relationship.

"Most of my 20s, I just didn't date. I had one relationship. Outside of
that, I just worked. I worked really hard and was getting promotions and
changing jobs and moving from city to city."

Bella DePaulo, 53, a social psychologist and author of Singled Out: How
Singles Are Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored and Still Live Happily
Ever After, says most books for singles try to teach "how to become
un-single. What I love about my single life are the nearly limitless
opportunities it offers," she says.

Other new books touting the solo-is-fine theme:

€ Better Single Than Sorry: A No-Regrets Guide to Loving Yourself and Never
Settling by Jen Schefft, who appeared on TV in The Bachelor and The
Bachelorette and rebuffed two marriage proposals.

€ I'd Rather Be Single Than Settle: Satisfied Solitude and How to Achieve It
by Emily Dubberley, a relationship and sex writer from Brighton, England.

€ Naked on the Page: The Misadventures of My Unmarried Midlife by Jane
Ganahl, who previously wrote a newspaper column called "Single Minded."

€On My Own: The Art of Being a Woman Alone by Florence Falk, a "60-plus"
psychotherapist in New York City.

€Singular Existence: Because It's Better to be Alone Than Wish You Were! by
Leslie Talbot of Boston, founder of the website SingularExistence.com.

"We do have an unfortunate tendency to favor couples and perhaps disparage
single people," Cherlin says. "These books are aimed at boosting the
self-image of single people."

DePaulo agrees not everything is rosy. "I don't love everything about being
single," she says. "I don't like the stigma or the stereotyping or the
discrimination."

Talbot says she wrote her book to counter the belief that being single is "a
deficiency or liability ‹ a temporary condition that hopefully, if you're
lucky, you'll get over."

She says there's a fine line between being alone and lonely. "There's
nothing lonelier than being with somebody you don't want to be with."

Are you single and loving it? Share your thoughts below on the benefits of
being single.

#####################
SIDEBAR: BEING SINGLE HAS ITS BENEFITS
USA TODAY, April 12, 2007, Sharon Jayson

For years, studies have touted the benefits of marriage, but new research is
finally giving singles their due.

In 2006, the number of never-marrieds 18 and older hit 55 million, Census
data show, up from 45 million 10 years earlier.

"We have spent the last decade talking about how great marriage is, but
there are also costs," says sociologist Naomi Gerstel of the University of
Massachusetts-Amherst.

Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, co-director of the National Marriage Project, says
it is important to de-stigmatize singlehood because people don't have to
marry to have fulfilling lives. Singles "want their place in the demographic
picture of America."

Among findings:

€Marriage reduces social ties, suggests analyses by Gerstel and Boston
College's Natalia Sarkisian, published last fall by the American
Sociological Association. A yet-unpublished study found less parental
contact, including financial and emotional support, less among married
offspring. "Unmarried siblings pick up the slack," Gerstel says.

€A boost in happiness associated with marriage returns to pre-marriage
levels over time, found psychology professor Richard Lucas of Michigan State
University. He analyzed 20 years of data from 70,000 households in Great
Britain and Germany. He also has found that among singles studied, those who
never married report the highest rate of well-being.

€Across social classes, women are less likely than in the past to see
marriage as an economic benefit and are raising their standards for a
long-term relationship, says New York University sociologist Kathleen
Gerson, who is studying 120 men and women ages 18 to 32.

€Pressure from family or friends to marry doesn't hurt women's self-image,
says a study by Penn State's Chalandra Bryant and Duke University's Linda
Burton, presented to the Society for Research in Child Development.

Lee Tunstall of Calgary, Alberta, says she felt left out when friends were
getting married in their 20s and 30s. "Now at 42 Š I think I might have been
the wise one."

-- By Sharon Jayson, USA TODAY

###########################
- 'FEMININE MISTAKE' IS A HARD SELL ON FINANCIAL AUTONOMY

Here are lines from the book ad:
"A Man is Not a Plan"
"The most shocking thing about Bennet's book is that women still need to be
reminded of the risks of being economically dependent on a man."
"A must read for every woman."

'Feminine Mistake' is a Hard Sell on Financial Autonomy
April 10, 2007 
By LESLIE CAULEY, USA Today
The Feminine Mistake is a well-crafted cautionary tale for women of all
ages.

Its basic message is passionate and unflagging: Women who depend on men for
economic stability do so at their own considerable peril.

Leslie Bennetts, who writes about celebrities for Vanity Fair, uses a
dizzying array of statistics to back up her thesis: Women should make work a
top priority with the lifelong goal of self-sufficiency.

 "No matter what the reason, justification or circumstances, it's simply too
risky to count on anyone else to support you over the long haul," she
asserts.

This prescription for life isn't just an economic necessity, Bennetts
argues. It also makes for longer lives, healthier marriages and balanced
children.

As for the sweet -- some might say tired -- notion of staying home to raise
children, Bennetts has stern advice: Don't.

Women who drop out of the workforce or even scale back for children run the
risk of being derailed from their careers, she says.

Showing her reporter stripes, Bennetts expertly underscores her code-red
alert through a string of sad-sack anecdotes involving women who made the
feminine mistake and sorely regretted it.

In one case, a high-society woman recounts how she used to flit around the
globe on expensive vacations when she was married. After her divorce, she
has been reduced to cleaning houses to make ends meet.

Other women talk about the pain -- economic as well as emotional -- of
husbands ditching them for younger and, in most cases, career-minded women.

In The Feminine Mistake, even those who are married and not worried about
financial support are desperately unhappy. Most are reluctant to make any
changes in their lives because they have no means of outside support.

Bennetts shares her own family experiences by way of explaining her views.
In the heartbreaks endured by her mother and grandmother, it is easy to
understand why the author is so passionate about her subject.

But therein also lies a weakness. At times, her campaign for financial
autonomy is so shrill and unrelenting that it borders on a harangue.

Her disdain for women who do not share her view is almost palpable. When one
stay-at-home mother offers that she has never asked her husband to put
assets in her name, Bennetts chides that it's "as if ensuring her share of
the family's net worth were less urgent than making her weekly pedicure
appointment."

Likewise, Bennetts, who has an 18-year marriage and two children, does not
allow for the possibility that some traditional marriages work and work
well.

Not all husbands are louses looking for an easy out, and not all
stay-at-home wives are needy nitwits.

Even Betty Friedan, author of the 1963 best seller The Feminine Mystique, to
which Bennetts pays homage, acknowledged that marital bonds are exquisitely
complex.

But such debates are partly what makes The Feminine Mistake such a
provocative read.

Packed with pragmatic, well-researched advice, this manifesto on the power
of financial independence is bound to inspire discussion among career women
as well as stay-at-home moms.

##############################
- AND, FOR THOSE SERIOUSLY READY TO GET MARRIED....

If single life is so great, how do all these on-line matchmakers make so
much money? - diane

Those Seeking Marriage Go To FindYourSpouseOnline
For men and woman who are serious about finding marriage

SAN DIEGO/EWORLDWIRE/April 12, 2007 --- FindYourSpouseOnline.com is a dating
Web site that focuses specifically on marriage-minded people. Visit to post
a profile for free and browse through the database of marriage minded
people.

While most dating Web sites focus on dating, FindYourSpouseOnline.com is
building a database of people who want to get married.

Says Founder Christoph Schertler, "We believe that once people have made up
their mind to find marriage, their commitment level is much higher and the
chances of finding the perfect match are raised. Our profiling system is
specifically designed to address all the important areas that should be
discussed before considering to tie the knot."

Visit 'http://www.findyourspouseonline.com' to learn more.

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