All the single ladies / Traister, Rebecca

Examines the twenty-first-century phenomenon of American single women and the unusual statistic of marriage for twenty-something Americans, where only twenty percent get married before age twenty-nine. Discusses historical cases and generations where young, single women have caused great societal change, such as in the abolition, temperance, suffrage, and labor movements of the past.

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.