In one of the longest-running studies of the link between marrying and happiness, ongoing for more than 20 years, German adults are asked repeatedly, year after year, how happy they are. That way, researchers can see if people get any happier when they marry than they were when they were single. The German study found that when people marry, those who will stay married enjoy a “honeymoon effect.” They become a bit happier around the time of the marriage, but then that happiness dissipates over time. …

The Census Bureau just released their first-ever report on older people in the U.S. who do not have biological children. For those of us interested in single people, the report is relevant because 7 out of 10 older adults who have never married do not have any biological children. It is also important because single people with no kids are too often missing from policy discussions and legal protections, which so often focus on family instead, so this new attention is welcome.

For my “Living Single” blog at Psychology Today, I summarized what the report had to say about how…

A story just published in the New York Times tells us that we need to be “prepping for the year of many, many weddings.” So what’s that going to cost people who are single, not just for any one wedding, but over the course of a lifetime? I looked into the matter for a column I wrote for Unmarried Equality a few years ago. With the organization’s permission, I am sharing it here, adding a few updates along the way. …

The pandemic has a lot of people thinking about moving. Some already have. According to a survey conducted in July 2021 by the Washington Post and George Mason University, 28 percent of adults in the U.S. have seriously considered moving since the pandemic began. (For young adults, between 18 and 39, the number is even higher: 41 percent.) Another 17 percent have already moved.

Sometimes we get to choose a place to live that we already know we will love. But other times, our moves are constrained by practical considerations. Or we move to a place we felt confident about…

Sex is like marriage. According to the conventional wisdom, everyone wants both.

It has been clear for quite a long time that not everyone wants marriage. In the U.S. (and many other nations around the world), the percentage of the adult population who is married has been dropping for decades. Even among those who do marry eventually, they are taking longer and longer to get to it. Record numbers will stay single for life.

True, some aren’t married because they haven’t found The One. But for untold numbers of others, such as the single at heart, they just aren’t interested…

When I first started collecting books about single life many years ago, I learned about a 1936 book by Marjorie Hillis called Live Alone and Like It. I would have paid for a new copy but at the time, there were only used copies available.

When the beaten-up copy arrived, with its orange hardcover and yellowed pages coming unglued from the spine, I found a hand-written note on the inside.

With spelling and punctuation preserved, here it is:

February 2nd 1937

Happy Birthday Berenice,

I found this book so amusing that I tho’t you might like a copy — Now…

In 2009, I interviewed the psychotherapist Wendy Wasson about the fears, misperceptions and empowering possibilities of approaching the age of 30 when you are single. At the time, 30 seemed to be a particularly meaningful milestone for single people. That’s when other people started expecting you to leave your single years behind and settle down with a spouse. It is when lots of other people seemed to be doing just that.

Now, more than a decade later, I wonder whether 40 is the new 30. Every year in the U.S., the median age at which adults first marry, if they…

Do parents have more skin in the game, or more skin in their own children’s game?

In the latest bomb thrown to inflame the culture wars, it has been suggested that people who do not have children should not be allowed to vote, because they don’t have any skin in the game. Without any kids, the argument goes, they don’t care about the future. Instead, children should get to vote, through their parents. A parent to nine children, for example, would get nine votes, while an adult with no kids would get no votes.

I’m not using names or links…