It is June 13, 2016. The year is not even halfway over, but Time magazine just published its 37th story about marriage. Below is the letter I sent to the editor of Time, at letters@time.com. I also wrote two much more extensive critiques as blog posts: (1) At Psychology Today: “What’s wrong with telling married people to stay married?” (2) At Psych Central: “Why is Time magazine shaming single people and their children?”
My Letter to the Editor of Time Magazine
At a time when more people than ever before are living full, meaningful lives as single people, and when Americans spend more years of their adult lives unmarried than married, Time keeps insisting that single people just aren’t as good as those married folks. Time even claims, misleadingly, that science says so. What cover story will Time publish next, now that we’ve been treated to “How to Stay Married (and why)”? Perhaps “How to stay barefoot and pregnant (and why).”
–Bella Depaulo (PhD, Harvard), author of Singled Out: How Singles Are Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored, and Still Live Happily Ever After
To the editors: I published two blog posts critiquing your cover story on marriage. Feel free to quote from them if you like. (1) At Psychology Today: “What’s wrong with telling married people to stay married?” https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/living-single/201606/whats-wrong-telling-married-people-stay-married. (2) At Psych Central: “Why is Time magazine shaming single people and their children?” https://blogs.psychcentral.com/single-at-heart/2016/06/why-is-time-magazine-shaming-single-people-and-their-children/
cc: Nancy Gibbs, Michael Duffy, Radhika Jones, Jeffrey Kluger, Susanna Schrobsdorff
