Single Women are Happiest According to Research

Are single women happier than their married counterparts? Research says yes.

Don't sweat the pandemic dating small stuff-- you can feel A-okay curling up with a good book and forgetting about the mad rush to meet someone new. Why? Because Paul Dolan, author of Happy Ever After and behavioral science expert from the London School of Economics believes single women are actually the happiest. His lecture at The Hay Festival in Wales explains his research.

Photo by Roberto Nickson on Unsplash

Unlike their peers who have domestic responsibilities to fulfill with chores including cleaning and homeschooling in the year 2020, single childless women are more likely to be healthier and live longer. Sounds about right to any married mother. The exception, of course, is divorce and single parenting. Those are known causes of additional stress.

In one study from Canada, male participants were shown to benefit the most from being in a relationship like marriage.

"The longitudinal nature of these data suggests this relationship is causal, with those entering marriage more likely to lose existing connections than those who do not marry," explains Dolan. "Social connectedness is linked to happiness – so this might go a long way towards explaining why single people aren’t as miserable as many people would imagine (and, it seems, sometimes even hope) them to be."

Dolan also points to a study from Israel, where there are relatively strong ideals around marriage, that asked people to look at comparable biographical accounts of both married and single people (invented by the researchers) and then to rate the extent to which they displayed several traits. Most study participants related happiness traits to married people, and "depressive" traits to singletons.

This revelation probably goes against everything girls and women are told from day one, but will offer much-needed comfort in a world where pandemic dating is all but too complicated, if not dangerous. Just six months into the pandemic, domestic violence rates have skyrocketed, and the changing dynamics and home workloads have tangibly changed the way women are planning families.

A recent study from The Guttmacher Institute surveyed about 2,000 women, with more than 40 percent of respondents reporting they changed their plans about when to have kids and how many children they’d have due to the pandemic. While there is only a small amount of data so far on how the pandemic is affecting marriage and divorce rates (we'll have to wait till early 2021 for those numbers), previous mega-disasters could predict current and future trends. This report from the Association for Psychological Science in the spring noted that after Hurricane Hugo, just about every major life change occurred in increased rates. Divorce, marriage, and birth rates all increased in areas directly affected by the natural disaster. Researchers seem unsure how the pandemic will play out in terms of family structures, because widespread death often fuels tribe-like connections between people that may not have otherwise existed.

What we do know, however, is that research seems to suggest being a single woman is just fine (if not downright dandy)-- and certainly nothing to be ashamed of.