ALTERNATIVE LIFESTYLESHanel 1985). They have made a conscious decision
to forgo marriage for the sake of a single lifestyle.
Small but important components of this group are
priests; nuns; and others who, for religious rea-
sons, choose not to marry. Finally, regretfuls are
those who would rather marry but who have given
up their search for a mate and are resigned to
singlehood. They are involuntarily stable singles.
While the diversity and heterogeneity among
the never-married population is becoming increas-
ingly apparent, one variable is suspected to be of
extreme importance in explaining at least some
variation: gender. Based on data gathered in nu-
merous treatises, the emerging profiles of male
and female singles are in contrast. As Bernard
(1973) bluntly puts it, the never-married men rep-
resent the ‘‘bottom of the barrel,’’ while the never-
married women are the ‘‘cream of the crop.’’
Single women are generally thought to be more
intelligent, are better educated, and are more
successful in their occupations than are single
men. Additionally, research finds that single wom-
en report to be happier, less lonely, and have a
greater sense of psychological well-being than do
their single male counterparts.
One reason why single women are more likely
to be the ‘‘cream of the crop’’ as compared to men
is that many well-educated and successful women
have difficulty finding suitable mates who are their
peers, and therefore have remained unmarried.
Mate-selection norms in the United States encour-
age women to ‘‘marry up’’ and men to ‘‘marry
down’’ in terms of income, education, and occupa-
tional prestige. Thus, successful women have few-
er available possible partners, because their male
counterparts may be choosing from a pool of
women with less education and income. A second
reason for the gender difference is that some
highly educated and successful women do not
want what they interpret as the ‘‘burdens’’ of a
husband and children. Career-oriented women
are not rewarded, as are career-oriented men, for
having a family. Someone who is described as a
‘‘family man’’ is thought to be a stable and reliable
employee; there is no semantic equivalent for
women. Thus, well-educated, career-oriented wom-
en may see singlehood as an avenue for their
success, whereas well-educated, career-oriented
men may see marriage as providing greater bene-
fits than singlehood.
Demographers predict that the proportion of
singles in our population is likely to increase slight-
ly in the future. As singlehood continues to be-
come a viable and respectable alternative to mar-
riage, more adults may choose to remain single
throughout their lives. Others may remain single
not out of choice but due to demographic and
social trends. More people are postponing mar-
riage, and it is likely that some of these will find
themselves never marrying. For example, the num-
ber of women between the ages of forty and forty-
four today who have never married is double the
number in 1980, at approximately 9 percent (U.S.
Bureau of the Census 1998). Some of these women
may marry eventually, but many will likely remain
unmarried. Moreover, the increasing educational
level and occupational aspirations of women, cou-
pled with our continued norms of marital homogamy,
help to ensure that the number of never-married
single persons—women in particular—is likely to
increase somewhat into the twenty-first century.COHABITATIONCohabitation, or the sharing of a household by
unmarried intimate partners, is quickly becoming
commonplace in the United States. Some people
suggest that it is now a normative extension of
dating. According to the U.S. Bureau of the Cen-
sus, the number of cohabiting couples topped 4
million in 1997, up from less than one-half million
in 1960. Approximately one-half of unmarried
women between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-
nine have lived with a partner or are currently
doing so, and over half of all first marriages are
now preceded by cohabitation. Approximately one-
third of these unions contain children (U.S. Bu-
reau of the Census 1998). Cohabitation is now
seen as an institutionalized component to the
larger progression involving dating, courtship, en-
gagement, and marriage.Given the attitudes of even younger persons,
we expect trends in cohabitation to continue to
increase in the United States. Nearly 60 percent of
a representative sample of high school seniors
‘‘agreed,’’ or ‘‘mostly agreed’’ with the statement
‘‘it is usually a good idea for a couple to live
together before getting married in order to find
out whether they really get along’’ (Survey Re-
search Center, University of Michigan 1995).