Unmarried Week starts Sunday, hopes to show how non-spouses are cheated
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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."

DePaulo cited studies which said that people's happiness levels do not significantly boost when they marry. Research also refutes perceptions that singles are lonely and self-centered, she said.

"Several national surveys now show that single people are more likely than married people to be the ones who are reaching out and helping and supporting friends, siblings, neighbors and parents," she said. "They do more of the intergenerational work of being there for aging parents."

Yet they often don't qualify for time off under the Family and Medical Leave Act, which covers caretaking of spouses, parents and children, Coleman said. Their caretakers might face similar restrictions, he said.

"It's discriminatory," he said. "Siblings don't qualify, yet someone in their fourth marriage whose spouse is ill can take time off."

Tom Giesler, 37, of Oak Park describes himself as a "fairly solitary person" not interested in marriage. He knows single people who have been called immature, selfish and been treated poorly while eating in restaurants alone.

"That's a concern to me," he said.

A registered nurse, Giesler said he is not anti-marriage but interested in changing broader attitudes about the single life.

"It's still predominantly a married person's world, and [marriage] is still seen as being the preferred state," he said. "I think where we are moving is to see marriage as one option among several."

Yasmin Nair, a writer, activist and academic living in Uptown, described herself as a "single queer person" who believes "the whole marriage movement -- straight or gay -- has been careening in the wrong direction."

"I'm feeling like single people's rights are really being thrown aside," she said. "There is all this talk about gay marriage being good for people to get all these benefits. What about for those who don't want to get married?"





Yasmin Nair, a writer and activist in Uptown, says, "I'm feeling like single people's rights are really being thrown aside."

A-Fucking-Men!!!!!

Ever notice how many contests feature grand prizes of getaways for two? What if you're only a 1?

One of the teachers and I had this very conversation!

Our contract allows for extra days for immediate family illness- those days don't carry over. So every year, those of us who don't have sick children or husbands just "waste" those days- and end up covering those teachers' classes.
When our calendar doesn't match up with those teachers' kids', some of them take off to avoid babysitters. Who covers for them? Us. But we have the same contract.

We hardly ever use those days. Some people use them all- EVERY year.
I used them one year when my sister had surgery.

agree!

XxAxX said:

Having kids and being able to take the time off leads to resentment from bosses in my experience.

Indeed. But there are trade-offs in everything.

My job would actually prefer that I come in sick and then leave I took a day off due to an emergency for my kids and I was threatened with a five day suspension and/or reduction to part time

Vendetta1 said:

I don't have kids, but I have noticed this happening to coworkers.

AND ANOTHER THING! There's (still, weirdly) some sort of societal pressure for women to pop out at least one kid, but if you do so and then take the necessary maternity/family leave, not to mention sick days for the kids when needed, you run the risk of effectively being "punished" by your employer by a lesser chance for promotions or raises because you've worked less. So if you do have kids you run the risk of being paid less than you're worth, but if you don't you run the risk of people (your mother, your coworkers, complete strangers) pitying you for being barren and miserable. (as you so obviously are, unfulfilled as a woman in such a way. )


Nice sig, btw.

heybaby said:

Every try getting a sick day when you work retail, or some other similarly low-paying job? Employers demand sick notes signed by your doctor! It is reasonable I guess from their perspective, but nothing makes you feel like a child faster than having to get signed permission from some guy in a coat to have the sniffles.

meow85 said:

Thanks.

I definitely think moms get penalized. We may be able to take off for family leave but it is unpaid family leave. I had to take off to tend to my son and deal with my daughter's behaviors. It hurt me at bonus time at the end of the year. Someone who had been there half the time I had got double what I did.

Women get the short end of the stick period.

are single people gettin a raw deal???


nah, all they gotta do is play house on somebody elses yard and hustle them outta some pay.

ooh i like that

I feel sorry for the kids of today cause they will have to pay for the credit crunch in years to come so the more you pop out the less they will have to pay.


Where i work its not if you have kids its how far you live from work, if you live closer to work you are more than likely get called in at short notice weather your married with children or single

oldpurple said:

Same at mine, they actually had us write down how many minutes it would take us to respond to work in an "emergency"

oldpurple said:

I used to live walking distance to the school. When it snows, some people stay home if there are flurries. Plus, the people who stay home because their kids' districts close, even though ours doesn't.
Again: who covers those classes? Those who live close.

We recently had to bid for new hours at our work and I didn't want someone who had children get the better hours over me solely because they had children. Luckily, they kept it pretty fair. I have a friend/co-worker who has a bad habit of bitching about how unfair it is that I have all this PTO and that she has to use hers on sick days for her kids, semi-implying that she should be offered more PTO than me because she has children even though I've worked with the company for a year longer than her. I put up with it for awhile but now I just say "You chose to have kids. I chose not to."

I used to get annoyed with the way I was treated because I was single but then I remembered that when I come home from work I don't have to put up with any screaming, bawling brat. I don't have to spend any of my money to pay for anyone else's clothes, food, toys. I don't have to tell anyone where I'm going and when I'll be back. And if I want to buy a new car, I don't have to consult with anyone else before I do so. That's enough incentive for me to put up with the less than glamorous deals...for right now anyway.

yeah and i feel like married folks are the ones that shouldn't even have the hand in torturing us single minded souls....dammit.

Vendetta1 said:

Agreed.

I suspect my being single was a factor in me being laid off.

ThreadBare said:

I'd rather be single and pay a bit more, than deal with children and the price of raising their ungrateful asses.

lazycrockett said:

ThreadBare said:

That's what it boils down to.

People without kids may not get family friendly perks but they can take advantage of opportunities that people with kids have to pass on. I was not selected for a special project at work that I was very interested in because I had taken off a lot of time to tend to my kids when they were sick.

There's pros and cons for every choice we make.

meow85 said:

Its actually pretty worse in Starbucks, I was sick for about a week, and instead of staying my butt home to recover for a few days, i worked where I couldn't speak because, I could only call out and not suffer repercussions without getting the shifts covered; which is hard these days since they cut people. ugh.

it sure is lonely

About f---- time some one spoke up about this BS!!!

Check this out: so I am in the military (reserve), but when I got deployed, our superiors down right said that they would give priority for leave to married people or people with dependents1 WTF!!!???? What really pisses me off is the assumption that single people don't care enough about their immediate family as married people care about their spouses and offspring. Shit! I'm single and all I have is my parents and siblings, that is it! Why would I love them less than a parent loves a child? That doesn't make sense.

One more: last year I re-classed and had to go to training for almost 5 months. Normally I would get extra money (BAH) for housing, but apparently my orders exceeded the number of days allowed and now I was considered permanent duty (PCS) therefore, my home was now the military post. They said they did this because it was unfair for the Activ duty single people who never got housing money. This is BS not only because Active duty people work FULL time for the military and their home is where the military decides it it, but reserve soldier like myself HAVE to come back home, we are not staying there forever. But okay whatever, I'll give them that. But guess what is the exception for this rule? Yes, if a reserve soldier is married or has dependents, than they do get the housing money. BS!!

What's even more f-up is that military single parents get all of these extra benefits but are almost always the ones who don't get deployed because they don't have anyone to take care of their children and ask for a compassionate release. So why the hell are they in the military then if they don't want to get deployed? I call it BS!!

Vendetta1 said:

And co-workers too

Boo Hoo!!!! Get married, then. I don't have any sympathy for single people-you get to go out whenever you like, don't have to answer to anyone, and don't have kids to take care of? Must be nice!!!
Don't get me wrong-I love my spouse and kids and wouldn't trade them for anything in the world, but it is a true blessing to have FMLA for to take care of things FAMILY related that us married folk need to tend to. That's what it is for, after all. Go cry in your beer cup at the club.

kenlacam said:

You know what, you made that sound kinda fun. And I don't even have to look for a babysitter!