Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

There is so much to love in this book. In many ways it serves as a validation of single life. There are stories of women with careers, friendships, hobbies, and children that fulfill them, all without a spouse. Unmarried women have helped to usher in major social change, including abolition and the labor movement. Traister illustrates that single women are multi-faceted and have full lives beyond trying to find a man. All women who spent some portion of their adult life single will see themselves in this book. Just to be clear, Traister doesn't disparage marriage. In fact, she is married with two children herself, although she was in her mid-30s before that happened. This book is about women who spend at least some portion of their adults lives unmarried. Most of the time that's due to marrying later, but there are divorced women and women who live with serious partners as well. The point is that this demographic has been growing steadily larger, and is becoming a political, social, and economic force. The best part of this book is the history, which focuses on the late 1800s to the present. It's always refreshing when someone acknowledges that the "traditional" 1950s model of a house in the suburbs with the husband working and the wife keeping the house was a historical anomaly and only applied to a relatively small section of society. Traister recognizes that poor, minority women usually had to have jobs outside the home. Feminism has frequently celebrated white, middle-class women for doing much the same thing that these women have always had to do. Traister not only acknowledges they exist, but fits them into the broader framework of society and how demographics and history have affected them. There is a practicality running through the book that I really appreciated. It's easy to condemn women for having children while single/poor/young, but Traister looks at the economic and social choices that lead women to it. She also looks at some of the more pragmatic downsides of being single. Who will take care of us when we're old? Who will help us haul furniture home from Ikea? What if we just get tired of both earning our own wages and keeping our own homes? The only quibbles I have are that Traister didn't acknowledge the dark side of female friendship. The chapter about the bonds of friendship between women was positively glowing, and there are many wonderful things to be said. However, mean girls and frenemies are a widely acknowledged phenomenon among young women, and it seemed odd to only cover the positive sides of female friendships. I would also have liked a little more depth on child-free women. It's mentioned briefly, but the emphasis is certainly on single mothers, women who have children later in life, and fertility treatments. The number of women who choose to forgo having children entirely is also growing, and should have gotten a little more coverage.