Gingersnap
09-18-2009, 10:31 AM
Are single people getting a raw deal?
Unmarried Week starts Sunday, hopes to show how non-spouses are cheated
Comments
September 18, 2009
BY KARA SPAK Staff Reporter/kspak@suntimes.com
They're not all Peter Pan playboys or cat-loving spinsters.
Today's single Americans -- 43 percent of the population, up from 28 percent in 1969 -- are banding together and speaking out.
Whether single by choice or by circumstance, they are fighting to participate in the Family and Medical Leave Act and against working holidays solely because they don't have kids.
They want competitive insurance rates and don't want to sleep on mom's couch when they visit home.
"Why should equal rights depend upon your marital status?" said Tom Coleman, executive director of Unmarried America, the group behind Unmarried and Single American Week which starts Sunday. "One day you have equal rights because you're married and the next day you lose a spouse and your auto [insurance] rates go up."
The average American will spend more of her adult life unmarried than married, Coleman said.
Nearly 96 million Americans over 18 years old are not married, a group that includes those who are divorced and widowed, said Bella DePaulo, a Harvard-trained social scientist, fellow at the Chicago-based Council on Contemporary Families and author of Singled Out: How Singles Are Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored, and Still Live Happily Ever After.
Single people -- gay or straight, alone or in a committed relationship outside of marriage -- are paying more for everything from travel packages to dinners out, she said.
"Any kind of promotion where the more people you have, especially if they are a family unit, the less you pay, that's being subsidized by single people who are paying full price," she said. "These stereotypes persist, and the discriminatory practices persist."
Just what we need: another mouthy special interest group.
Suntimes (http://www.suntimes.com/lifestyles/1777428,CST-NWS-single18.article)
Unmarried Week starts Sunday, hopes to show how non-spouses are cheated
Comments
September 18, 2009
BY KARA SPAK Staff Reporter/kspak@suntimes.com
They're not all Peter Pan playboys or cat-loving spinsters.
Today's single Americans -- 43 percent of the population, up from 28 percent in 1969 -- are banding together and speaking out.
Whether single by choice or by circumstance, they are fighting to participate in the Family and Medical Leave Act and against working holidays solely because they don't have kids.
They want competitive insurance rates and don't want to sleep on mom's couch when they visit home.
"Why should equal rights depend upon your marital status?" said Tom Coleman, executive director of Unmarried America, the group behind Unmarried and Single American Week which starts Sunday. "One day you have equal rights because you're married and the next day you lose a spouse and your auto [insurance] rates go up."
The average American will spend more of her adult life unmarried than married, Coleman said.
Nearly 96 million Americans over 18 years old are not married, a group that includes those who are divorced and widowed, said Bella DePaulo, a Harvard-trained social scientist, fellow at the Chicago-based Council on Contemporary Families and author of Singled Out: How Singles Are Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored, and Still Live Happily Ever After.
Single people -- gay or straight, alone or in a committed relationship outside of marriage -- are paying more for everything from travel packages to dinners out, she said.
"Any kind of promotion where the more people you have, especially if they are a family unit, the less you pay, that's being subsidized by single people who are paying full price," she said. "These stereotypes persist, and the discriminatory practices persist."
Just what we need: another mouthy special interest group.
Suntimes (http://www.suntimes.com/lifestyles/1777428,CST-NWS-single18.article)