Today, only twenty percent of Americans are married by age twenty-nine, compared to nearly sixty percent in 1960. And historically, when women were given options beyond early heterosexual marriage, the results were massive social change-temperance, abolition, secondary education, and more. It was the year the proportion of American women who were married dropped below fifty percent and the median age of first marriages, which had remained between twenty and twenty-two years old for nearly a century (1890–1980), had risen dramatically to twenty-seven.īut over the course of her vast research and more than a hundred interviews with academics and social scientists and prominent single women, Traister discovered a startling truth: the phenomenon of the single woman in America is not a new one.

In 2009, award-winning journalist Rebecca Traister started All the Single Ladies about the twenty-first century phenomenon of the American single woman. The New York Times bestselling investigation into the sexual, economic, and emotional lives of women is “an informative and thought-provoking book for anyone-not just the single ladies-who want to gain a greater understanding of this pivotal moment in the history of the United States” ( The New York Times Book Review).

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Rebecca traister books