M. LeBlanc: By my count, we've got one married lady in a commuter marriage with a kid and a full-time job, one married lady with a kid and a non-full-time job, one non-married lady with a full-time job, and another non-married lady with a full-time job in a commuter relationship who's about to be married.
So we've got this topic covered, don'tcha think?
I don't feel like I have the policy chops to assess whether singles are getting the short end of the stick with respect to policies and benefits. I do know that the coverage of marriage vs. single in my tax course in law school was very complicated. There was something called a "marriage penalty," but then, I have anecdotal evidence from friends who said they paid a lot less in taxes after they got married. I do know from filing my taxes that there seems to be a disfavoring of the "married filing separately" route, but I don't know why. I assume that's because they don't want households taking a particular benefit twice, and so if you want to take advantage of various benefits you have to file jointly.
I also know that there are various tax benefits, credits and deductions if you have children. However, I'm not in a position to say whether those benefits and credits actually offset the additional expense of having a child or children (my guess is they don't).
There's also the matter of the various federal benefits that are conferred upon marriage; these are often discussed in the context of the gay marriage "debate." And I think those are significant. Let's not forget about health insurance, provision for dependents by military and government employers, and so forth.
But I think we really have to separate the policy issues from the social issues. Because it's clear to me that from a social perspective, married people are given much more social support and validation than un-married people are. The outpouring of goodwill, offers of help, and advice I've gotten since announcing my engagement has truly been shocking. Particularly from other female attorneys at my organization who now seem more interested in helping me find a job in Washington DC now that I'm moving there to be with my "fiance" rather than because my boyfriend is there and I think it will be beneficial for my career. I have seen similar things with other married and planning-to-be-married people that I know. It is as if when you get married you join some invisible group, you are raised in status in some amorphous way.
I am very uncomfortable with being a recipient of that privilege.
Sybil: I will be in and out of this today because of too much bullshit to do, but I want to quickly note that this:
It is as if when you get married you join some invisible group, you are raised in status in some amorphous way.Is not something I have experienced, but maybe that is part of getting married young (I was 23), which is really not a status-y thing to do at all. It's sort of a hick thing to do from what I can tell from the now-less-hick-like environs in which I find myself. I do know for sure that more social support by way of more relationship possibilities existed for me once I became a mother. Other parents with whom I work found me interesting in more substantive ways and I think many of my closer relationships might not have happened without parent-status. But I also *know* that several people immediately found me less serious and less scholarly.
The fuss that attends an engagement is culturally rote and has to do, in part, with the giganto wedding industry, which needs to be parsed out of a heaping of privilege that attends marriage.
Bitch: Frankly, I think it's more complicated than a simple "status rises" thing. I got married at 24, in Omaha, while Mr. B. was in the military, and definitely this made me more "legit" among the wives of his coworkers. Among my friends, it was anomalous, but I don't think particularly stigmatized. One of his commanding officer's wives actually asked me point-blank at a party shortly before I moved away for my PhD program whether or not Mr. B. was "serious about his career"--which, if you know anything about military culture, was seriously uncool of her. I said "yes, and so am I about mine." <<-bitchy.
There are, obviously, definite social "perks" for married women, certainly past the age of say 30. You fit into a box people understand. You probably, if you're middle-class and educated, have a higher standard of living b/c your husband probably makes as much or more money than you do.
OTOH, there are also social stigmas, especially if you don't live a cookie-cutter suburban life. As Sybil points out, your coworkers and some of your peers are likely to make assumptions about your values and priorities that might be offensive. If you have kids, it's worse. God knows I feel a little defensive about being, let's be honest, a stay-home mom (no part-time job for me right now, actually). There's the whole "soccer mom" stereotype and the "Park Slope mom" stereotype and popular images of educated mothers as spoiled, entitled bitches, with their SUVs and their big strollers that take up room and their "demands" that people accomodate them/their children. I'm highly tuned into that particular stereotype, though, b/c I'm sort of the target of it: single mom, highly educated, staying home, only one kid, volunteers a *lot* in my kids' school, husband has high income, etc.
I guess I feel like the question of whether marriage (and esp. marriage-with-kids) = status depends, a lot, on which peer group we're talking about. The peer group in which my marital/parenting status is "high" is a peer group I'm uncomfortable with. The peer group in which my marital/parenting status is "low"--educated city dwellers--is a peer group I prefer but I often feel like I have to "prove" myself to, in that cliched "oh but you're not like the others" vein.
Re. policy, as I'm saying on twitter, I completely agree that poverty policies, at least, tend overwhelmingly to focus on parents-with-kids. I think, though, that they often actually disfavor married couples--e.g., shelters for women with kids (but not couples with kids), income limits that preclude a partner with a job that isn't under-the-table, all the stories (which may be apocryphal) about ppl having to lie about whether their boyfriend/man lives there to keep their benefits, etc. I'm certain that having kids is the #1 risk factor for poverty, especially for women (blah blah divorce statistics, lost income, etc).
Agree wholeheartedly that the mortgage-interest-deduction is hugely regressive (though I also confess that I'm damn glad that I'll finally be able to start using it on 2009's taxes). Not sure it specifically favors married folks, though, or people with children as such; I have no idea what the statistics might be on, say, single people who own condos or whatever vs. married couples in single-family housing in terms of relative tax benefits of ownership (but would be v. interested to find out).
Agree 100% that a lot of economic realities/policies seem to benefit married women--e.g., my ability to have health insurance through Mr. B., my standard of living while being unemployed, etc. But long-term, of course, I'm fucked: I haven't earned enough in the States to qualify for any social security yet, and I'm in my 40s already. If we divorce or Mr. B. dies I have nothing. (Qualification: if he dies while his employer is providing a $1mil life insurance package to me, that's not true, but that's of course contingent on his employment.)
I see the economic benefits vs. downsides as still being a (much less severe) version of the pre-women's movement devils' bargain. *If* you marry and stay married--which of course isn't entirely up to you--then you're economically better off than if you were single, at least as long as your husband lives. It seems to me that the one thing that US culture has really internalized from the women's movement of the 70s is that (educated, middle-class) women have a right (and single women an obligation) to earn their own money, hold their own property/assets, etc. I think as a nation we're still not there yet as far as acknowledging that there is a distinction between what one is legally allowed to do and what's actually practical; hanging onto a career, building one's own assets and a pension and all that, if you're married and have kids, is still structurally discouraged. Blah blah stories about banks questioning our separate accounts, or automatically putting us on each others' accounts, or the relative limits of what I can put into a Roth IRA vs. what Mr. B. and his employer can put into a 401k.
It feels a little bit like an affirmative action argument to me: yes, there are policies that favor X historically oppressed group. I'm pretty resistant to the idea that those policies constitute discrimination against Y group (in this case, single women), inasmuch as it seems to me that single women have been the greatest beneficiaries of 70s feminism so far. (With the exception of no-fault divorce, which is obviously a huge huge change for married women.)
Sybil: B's point about disparate peer groups and the extent to which marriage signifies acceptance rings very true for me. My closest friend from grad school, in fact, has admitted that she had to get over the fact that I was married at 25 when I came to a PhD program in order to feel like she could develop a close relationship with me. The financial benefits we receive via tax deductions, mortgage interest write off (it's incredibly difficult, especially in this climate, for single women to get mortgages) and health benefits (which are enormously valuable and cheap in our case, but which have to do with husband's job at a foreign company as much as with marriage) are incredible assets, but the actual support I have received from my peer group is as well.
Ding: I’m much less interested in the social advantages to being part of a family unit because that, to me, is what happens in a capitalist, Western, patriarchal, hetero-coercive society, anyway.
But on the public policy end of things, I think you can make the argument that childless single people (whether single voluntarily, like me) or single involuntarily (an elderly, recently widowed woman, for instance), have been left out of policy discussions, even though they/we are just as vulnerable to the same economic conditions.
Or, maybe I can’t make that case - the data that’s available predominantly reflects the material reality of families, even single-headed ones, and rarely includes the economic conditions of single childless adults (unless those conditions happen to intersect with another vulnerable demo, like age or disability), low-income or lower-middle. But this absence flies in the face of growing demographic research that single childless adults, as a population, are growing. But, again, where are the policies that reflect that growing reality?
Aren’t single childless people unemployed? Aren’t single childless adults also victims of this horrible economy? Aren’t single childless adults living in poverty? Aren’t single childless adults in mortgage crisis? Don’t single childless adults have trouble with accessing healthcare, much less paying for it? What are our housing issues (which do exist, in a changing landscape that is seeing less rentals for more condos)? Where are we as a target demographic in the largest public support legislation since the Depression? (Practically nowhere, once you wade through the language.)
I’m not saying our issues are greater than others but it’s sort of frustrating that we’re a demo that rarely gets any policy play. (I mean, even one of the bigger policy players in Chicago frames all their work on asset poverty around families, even though their own research shows that single childless adults are at risk, too!)
Yes; it is a social non profit given that single-women headed families are among the most economically vulnerable. (The elderly and disabled are similarly vulnerable.) But I also know that low-income single childless adults face economic vulnerabilities that just aren’t addressed through public policy. While my single parenting and chronically unemployed aunt has access to food stamps, housing vouchers, TANF, Medicaid, welfare (as imperfect as it is), whatever, I would not say my theoretical single childless uncle would have that same access.
(Which reminds me – who gets left out in this single childless adult limbo when it comes to poverty? Dudes. Especially dudes of color.)
For instance, the IL Earned Income Tax Credit is available to working poor families, based on income eligibility. Though it’s not the perfect solution to poverty in the state, and it’s one of the lowest in the country, it’s a solid effort to economically support working families in Illinois. However, childless adults were *not eligible* for a benefit that has made real material impact on income-poor families in the state, despite the fact that single childless people live on similar economic bubbles. Basically, the tax burden on low income single childless adults has remained the same since the 70s, while for single-headed families, it’s been reduced steadily (it’s still teeny but at least it has been going down.) Recent legislative clarifications may have changed IL law to include ‘all taxable individuals’ but the eligibility is still based on income level rather than net worth, which would benefit more single childless individuals.
And it’s this notion of net worth that is sort of at the center of all this, in my head. (I’ve been readiing a lot of policy on this so it’s sticking in my head and arguments about changing how we measure vulnerability make sense to me.)
Under an income measure of poverty, I don’t count even though, from where I’m sitting, I’m pretty vulnerable. If I had lost my job this summer, in this economy, I’d have 6 mos of unemployment, no COBRA (because it’s too expensive and I’d have to use all my meager savings to pay rent), and then I’d be homeless. Really. (I have a friend who’s living this reality right now.) And all of this is more likely because I have a low net worth – I don’t have assets and, since I’m from a community of color to boot, I’m less likely to. Married people, for the most part, are encouraged/conditioned to acquire assets (home, savings, investments) in the name of supporting a family. What are single childless populations conditioned to do? Become married. (ok, that might be a cheap shot.)
I also think this policy concentration on income rather than net worth/asset poverty artificially skews our picture of who’s vulnerable in our society, to the detriment of both singletons and marrieds. (And I hate both those monikers.) I think that concentrating on income we don’t question some assumptions made about single childless adults:
· Our expenses are lower than married people, or parenting adults, because we’re childless
· Our needs aren’t as great or we simply don’t need what families need
· We are self sufficient and already get what we need
· We are economically stable because we can do more with less
Really? Are all those things true? I seriously doubt it.
There’s all sorts of intersectionality going on, too - age, race, geography, intergenerational net worth – so it’s not like I’m saying that single childless adult issues trump all other social problems. But it would be nice to get on the board – or at least have the gap acknowledged.
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That's all we had time for yesterday; we're wordy-ass bitches, as you can see. Let's keep the discussion going in comments.
Labels: m. leblanc
, which I had originally bought the first one purely on the strength of the author's name, of course, but it turns out that the series is totally fun for clever kids who enjoy metafiction, so. And PK was all "ooh!" when I pulled it out of my suitcase. I think he was even more excited about the book than he was about the Mexican jumping beans I picked up during a brief plane change at the Phoenix airport. And the cats are glad I'm home and now I need more coffee and probably something solid to eat so I'ma hit "post" and if my cobloggers can't be bothered to feed you real content today this might be all you get because PK wants to make cookies.
Other bloggers do it, don't they? But this is even better, because I'm going to use content you probably haven't actually seen before. Via Matthew Yglesias' 
