Singles Research & Writing
Blogs About Singles And Single Life
- “Living Single” blog at Psychology Today
- “All Things Single (and More)” here on this website
- My writings at Medium
- Monthly column at Unmarried Equality
- Links to my guest blog posts are here. They include contributions to:
- “Solo-ish,” Washington Post
- “In Theory,” Washington Post
- “Room for Debate,” New York Times
- “The Science of Us,” New York Magazine
For links to many of my articles on single life, arranged by topic, go to “What we really know about single life.”
For links to the most popular blog posts from my first decade of writing the “Living Single” blog at Psychology Today, go to “10 years of living single: Badass loners are your favorite.”
Media Appearances and Mentions
Magazines and newspapers
Radio and podcasts
TV and video
Op-Ed Essays And Other Articles
HuffPost
TIME magazine
An Ode to Single Life, excerpt adapted from Single at Heart
HuffPost
What We Really Know About Single Life
This page started out as a collection of critiques of studies of married vs. single people. I have now expanded it to include collections of writings on all sorts of topics about single life. Scroll down to see them.
Myth-Busting about Single Life
HAPPINESS On getting married and (not) getting happier: What we know
PHYSICAL HEALTH and MENTAL HEALTH Getting married and (not) getting healthy
LONGEVITY Debunking the myth that married people live longer
RELATIONSHIPS, ATTACHMENT, CAREGIVING, VOLUNTEERING Single people are caring, connected, attached, and unselfish
SINGLE-PARENT FAMILIES Single parents and their children: Don’t believe the prophesies of doom
NO CHILDREN Adults with no kids: Naming, shaming, and talking back to the shaming
SEX Getting married and (not) getting sex (and other sex-relevant topics)
MONEY Getting married and getting more money (and other articles about the economics of single life)
COLLECTION OF CRITIQUES What’s wrong with studies and claims about the supposed benefits of marriage?
Other Topics
How we live now
21 century living arrangements
The best of single life
The real reasons for living single
The Community of Single People
The benefits of being single — for single people and for society
Some basics about single life
Demographics (number of singles, age when people marry, rates of divorce and remarriage, etc., and what it all means)
Defining single and naming different categories of singles
Personalities and types of single people
Gender differences (in living single, marrying, divorcing, remarrying, bereavement, living alone, and living apart together)
Single men (separate category because so much writing about singles is about single women)
Divorce, widowhood, remarriage
Singlism and matrimania, and why we need advocacy for single people
People deny singlism exists and get mad at you for pointing it out. Why?
Singles advocacy and the issue of privilege
How singles are celebrated and stereotyped and shamed
Singles in different domains and different places
Religions and places of worship
Advertising, marketing, and business
Psychotherapy and mental health
Housing (buying homes, housing discrimination, living arrangements)
The military and foreign service
Popular culture and beyond (TV, movies, magazines, literature, the arts, opera, etc.)
Celebrities, world figures, and people in politics and the media
We need to rethink these matters
Relationships, family, and love
Living single during a pandemic
Holidays (including single people’s celebrations of the milestones in their lives)
Marriage (including marrying yourself)
Resources: Books, talks, discussion groups, advocacy groups and more
Books about single life: Reviews and discussions
Blogs about single people and single life
Best TED talks and other talks for single people
Totally off-topic
Scholarly Papers
DePaulo, B. M., & Morris, W. L. (2005). Singles in society and in science. Psychological Inquiry, 16, 57-83.
DePaulo, B. M., & Morris, W. L. (2005). Should singles and the scholars who study them make their mark or stay in their place? Psychological Inquiry, 16, 142-149.
DePaulo, B. M., & Morris, W. L. (2006). The unrecognized stereotyping and discrimination against people who are single. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 15, 251-254. (Also available in the book Singlism: What It Is, Why It Matters, and How to Stop It.)
Morris, W. L., Sinclair, S., & DePaulo, B. M. (2007). No shelter for singles: The perceived legitimacy of marital status discrimination. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, 10, 457-470.
Schutz, A., Hertel, J., DePaulo, B. M., Morris, W. L., & Stucke, T. S. (2007). She’s single, so what? How are singles perceived compared with people who are in romantic relationships? Zeitschrift fur Familienforschung (Journal of Family Research), 19, 139-158.
Morris, W. L., DePaulo, B. M., Hertel, J., & Taylor, L. C. (2008). Singlism – another problem that has no name: Prejudice, stereotypes, and discrimination against singles. In M. A. Morrison & T. G. Morrison (Eds.), The psychology of modern prejudice (pp. 165-194). New York: Nova Science Publishers.
Morris, W. L., and DePaulo, B. M. (2009) Singlehood. In H. Reis & S. Sprecher (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Human Relationships. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
DePaulo, B. (2011). Single people. In D. Dunn (Ed.), Oxford Bibliographies Online: Psychology.
Casper, W. J., & DePaulo, B. (2012). A new layer to inclusion: Creating singles-friendly work environments. In N.P. Reilly, A. Gorman, & M. J. Sirgy (Eds.), Work and Quality of Life: Ethical Practices in Organizations (pp. 217-234). New York: Springer.
DePaulo, B. (2012). Single, no children: Who is your family? In A. Vangelisti (Ed.), Routledge Handbook of Family Communication (2nd ed., pp. 190-204). New York: Routledge.
DePaulo, B. (2013). The proliferation of life choices and the resistance that follows. Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, 13, 34-37.
DePaulo, B. (2013). Happy singles. In L. Bormans (Ed.), The World Book of Love (pp. 46-47). Tielt, Belgium: Lannoo Publishers.
DePaulo, B. (2014). Single in a society preoccupied with couples. In R. J. Coplan & J. C. Bowker (Eds.), The Handbook of Solitude: Psychological Perspectives on Social Isolation, Social Withdrawal, and Being Alone (pp. 302-316). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell.
DePaulo, B. (2014). A Singles Studies perspective on mount marriage. Psychological Inquiry, 25, 64-68.
DePaulo, B. (2016). Singles and mental health. In H. Friedman (Ed.), Encyclopedia of mental health (2nd ed., Vol 4, pp. 158-165). Oxford, UK: Elsevier.
DePaulo, B. (2017, Summer). The urgent need for a Singles Studies discipline. (Forum on Rebecca Traister’s All the Single Ladies.) Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 42, 1015-1019.
DePaulo, B. (2018). Toward a positive psychology of single life (pp. 251-275). In D. Dunn (Ed.), Positive psychology: Established and emerging issues. New York: Routledge.
DePaulo, B., Kislev, E. (2023). Singles and mental health. In: Friedman, H.S., Markey, C.H. (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Mental Health (Vol. 3., pp. 240-250). Elsevier, Academic Press.
DePaulo, B. (2023). Changing thinking, changing language, changing lives: The power and promise of Singles Studies. In K. Chowkhani and C. Wynne (Eds.), Singular selves: An introduction to Singles Studies (pp. 11-20). New York: Routledge.
DePaulo, B. (2023). Single and flourishing: Transcending the deficit narratives of single life. Journal of Family Theory and Review, 15(3), 389-411.
Abstract
The Community of Single People
The Community of Single People (CoSP) is an online Facebook group started in July 2015. It is a place for discussing all aspects of single life except dating or other attempts to escape single life. It is a closed group, so you need to ask to join. As long as you are not trying to use the group to find a date, getting admitted should not be a problem.
Here’s what I’ve written about the Community of Single People, beginning with the first announcement:
- Let’s start a community of single people
- The community no one knew we needed (when there were around 600 members)
- A year with 1,170 single people embracing single life
- The Community of Single People Is 2 Years Old
- 3 Years in a Singles Community that Has Nothing to Do with Dating
- Community of Single People: 3,433 members from 100+ nations (4-year anniversary post)
- Happy birthday, Community of Single People: We are 5 years old
- Single people online together for friendship, not romance: Year 6
- The power of communities of single people (Year 7, 2022)
- The Community of Single People: 8 Years, 100+ Nations, 7,500+ Members