How Financial Freedom Is Helping Women Build Dream Lives Without Waiting for Marriage
Much has been said about the ‘Male Loneliness Epidemic’. Across podcast discussions, think pieces, and even newsroom roundtables, our society has spent countless hours deliberating about young men and why they aren’t dating. In typical fashion, comparatively little has been said about women’s feelings on all this. The fact of the matter is that men and women are walking away from relationships. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, less than half of American households are headed by married couples, and as of 2020, around 1 in 4 are occupied by a person living alone.
But while all genders are increasingly single, there seems to be a growing trend among women toward avoiding relationships, particularly with men. One out of two 18- to 40-year-old American women are unpartnered, and many seem content to stay that way. In a 2023 study from the Survey Center on American Life, 68% of female respondents said that they do not believe women who get married and have kids are happier than women who do not. Dating, marriage, and homemaking—once considered to be women’s sole purposes—seem to be low on the list of modern women’s priorities.
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The most straightforward explanation for this cultural shift is that the economy isn’t what it used to be. People of all genders aren’t settling down because they can’t afford to. According to a study by the Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity, 60% of American households were making less than they needed to ensure a minimum quality of life. Since 2001, the cost of rent, childcare, college savings, and medical expenses has increased by more than 100%, while the federal minimum wage has been stagnant for 16 years. The dream of a nuclear family with a house, two kids, and a white picket fence is dead for everyone except those with generational wealth.
But while this explains why the birth and marriage rates are declining, it does not explain why women specifically are moving away from dating as a whole. An alternate explanation for this societal trend is that women’s standards are much higher now that marriage is no longer a requirement for survival. For years, women were fiscally dependent on their husbands. As recently as the 1970s, banks could refuse credit to women on the basis of being unmarried. But in modern America, the expectation is that everyone has to financially support themselves. Women can make their own money, and a man having a job is no longer enough to make him desirable.
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In a panel on the rise of single women, author Minda Honey told NPR’s It’s Been a Minute, “The men of our generation—they’re the first generation of men who are in a situation in which they are not automatically born into having the upper hand financially in a relationship with women. And so, like, they are being challenged.” In other words, the bar for being a good husband or boyfriend is much higher now than it was in the past, and the data shows that women don’t think men are measuring up. According to Pew Research, 56% of female daters said that it was difficult to find someone who met their expectations. In comparison, only 35% of men cited that as a major barrier in dating.
However, there seems to be a much darker reason that women are reluctant to join or rejoin the dating pool. Dating is an emotionally vulnerable process for every party involved, but for women it has a higher chance of being emotionally dangerous as well. In the same Pew Research survey on dating, 42% of female respondents said that they had been pressured to have sex with a partner at some point, versus 19% of men.
Additionally, the percentage of women who reported being touched inappropriately by a partner was almost four times higher than it was for men. This isn’t even mentioning the rise of conservative manosphere content in recent years. In a survey conducted by Equimundo, around 20% of men aged 18–23 reported that they ‘trusted’ the advice of Andrew Tate, an influencer and self-proclaimed ‘misogynist’ currently accused of sex trafficking.
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Given this context, it is understandable that some women are abandoning dating men altogether. They don’t want to risk emotionally opening up to someone who might end up being a misogynist—or worse. Journalist Vivian Park described this phenomenon exquisitely in her article Why Do Women Say They Hate All Men? for The Michigan Daily:
“I think this is what underlies the sentiment that causes ‘some men are bad’ to become ‘all men are bad.’ The uncertainty makes it hard to decipher when masculinity is good and when it is bad, and misogyny is unrelenting. Women cannot simply ignore or take a break from men or their masculinity, toxic or not, when it is present in our loved ones, our family, friends, significant others. It is tiring, exhausting. It is easier to believe that it is all men, to prevent the hurt that might come if we put ourselves in a vulnerable position in an attempt to believe otherwise.”
Women and men are both experiencing a ‘loneliness epidemic’ in the sense that both are dating, getting married, and having children with less frequency than in the past. The main difference between these ‘epidemics’ is that women don’t seem too upset by this. “You know, we’re seeing people touting their boy-sober and off-the-market status on TikTok,” Rachel Wolfe, economist for The Wall Street Journal, told NPR’s It’s Been a Minute. “And we’re really seeing a focus on self-improvement, friendship, the ability to find happiness on your own. It’s no longer like, oh, you just can’t get a man. Now there’s real pride in creating an independent life and not settling.”
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It’s not so much that women prefer to be single, but rather that they no longer have to be stuck with men who aren’t emotionally providing for them. Meanwhile, society doesn’t give men the tools to emotionally provide for themselves, let alone other people, which means men are entering the field at a disadvantage. Fortunately, it’s a disadvantage that men can overcome with some self-reflection, therapy, and a good friend group—but in the meantime, women are moving forward. They’re focusing on themselves, their careers, their friends; they’re cutting out everything that doesn’t ‘spark joy’. And for many women, dating men is first on the chopping block.
by Abigail Hogewood
