opinion
single shaming
Women have an “expiry date” when dating. Haven’t we made any progress in 100 years?
Women in their mid-thirties are treated like food with an expiry date: quickly use up the leftovers.
© Martina Kovacova/ / Picture Alliance
“Single shaming” – everyone knows what the term means. This proves one thing above all: single women over 30 still have to deal with old expectations of society.
Do you actually know what it feels like to be constantly confronted with your own biological transience without having reached a mature age or fallen victim to a serious illness? Single women in their 30s know this all too well. Every family celebration, every new group of colleagues, every new acquaintance becomes a gauntlet running around the questions: “Uuuuuund you like that?” – What about me? – “Well, I mean, do you have children, a man?” – “No. But I have a life, friends, animals, a job that I love and, for the first time, a bit of financial freedom in life.” I’ve gotten into the habit of answering exactly that because I can’t stand it anymore that women are still being reduced to the fact that their only purpose in life should be to get one and procreate.
The term “single shaming” describes exactly that. As a single being repeatedly reduced to the fact that you failed because you didn’t get any. We all pretend to be oh so free-spirited, tolerant and progressive these days, but where that attitude hasn’t really caught on is with women in their 30s and 45s who are single. You are repeatedly reduced to just finding a partner. What you have achieved professionally, what you wish for in life. Whether this includes a partner and children at all or whether there are biological limitations that make the desire to have children unrealistic – nobody cares.
Single shaming: “Oh, you’ll find the right one too”
At this point I have a few questions that anyone who intends to smack someone with this sentence and look at with pity can ask themselves. That always happens hand in hand with this sentence.
- Who says I want to find him?
- Is that my only purpose in life?
- Who says I haven’t found it long ago?
- Am I worth less alone as a woman than with a partner and children?
More than 100 years ago, women won the right to vote in Germany and began to fight for themselves and their lives. And yet we, of all people, still have to deal with medieval views on family planning, mostly involuntarily. But what we single women have rarely done is fight back. Speaking out, asking a provocative counter-question and making it public that we are still being treated as we were 100 years ago on some topics.
Women should seek a mate before they are too old
The dating app Bumble commissioned a survey* with shocking results: 45 percent of those surveyed said that women are expected to prioritize finding and bonding with a partner before they “to are old”. In contrast, only 13 percent say society expects this of men. For this reason, every third of the women interviewed has the feeling that they have to make compromises when looking for a partner or in a relationship.
We women don’t have the ability to reproduce throughout our lives, that’s certainly true. But on the one hand there are ways like social freezing these days to make it possible for the necessary small change. And on the other hand, you should never get all your happiness in life from other people. Not from a partner, not from your own children, but from yourself.
PS: To all single-shamers, that also applies to you, by the way 🙂
*All figures are from YouGov Plc. The survey was commissioned by Bumble. The total sample was 6770 adults, including 2069 adults from the United Kingdom, 1053 adults from France, 1015 adults from the Netherlands, 2129 adults from Germany and 504 adults from Ireland. The survey was conducted between January 25 and February 4, 2022. The survey was conducted online. The numbers have been weighted and are representative of each of the countries (adults aged 18 and over).