Singleness and self-identity

Theoretical framework

Different disciplines in the social sciences utilize different models of identity. In this article, I draw on feminist postmodern theoretical work on identity and subject formation, work that challenges notions of identities as fixed or a priori essences of unitary subjects (Benhabib, 1992; Mackenzie & Stoljar, 2000; McNay, 2000). Rather than identity being understood as a set of traits or observable characteristics, this theoretical work views categories of identity as socially constituted and contingent constructions. Conceptualizing identity as a process draws attention to the need to consider the practices and discourses through which identities are constituted. This conceptualization takes account of the social, cultural, and material conditions giving rise to particular categories of identity, thus allowing us to situate individual subjectivities in specific times, places, and contexts.

I also draw on the earlier sociological work of Goffman (1959/1990a), specifically his dramaturgical model and the notion of presentation of the self. Goffman understands the self as being shaped by social norms, and especially through social interaction. He emphasizes that social actors partaking in social interaction are involved in a process of impression management. His notion of stigma (1963/1990b) is also useful in considering the impact of social norms on identity: Negative reactions to those outside of normative expectations potentially cast them as deviant and as such various strategies of impression management may be employed by these individuals in order to cope with actual or perceived stigma.

Taylor (1998) usefully distinguishes between categorical and ontological identity, with the former encompassing social categories and the latter referring to a coherent sense of self. The formulation of the latter however requires the former, as individuals as unique selves are formed only through participation in, and construction of, social categories. This conception encompasses the political significance of identification, a process that does not take place in a neutral context. Rather, identity formation takes place within social relations of power that construct categories of identity as dominant or subordinate (Taylor, 1998, p. 336). Considering partnership status as a social category, singleness has long been considered the subordinate Other to marriage, especially for women.

Singleness is clearly not an isolated aspect of identity and, as Koropeckyj-Cox (2005, p. 94) argues, may be less central to identity and social experience than other aspects of one’s life. Indeed, the thesis being considered in this article is that the significance of partnership status as an aspect of individual subjectivities may be waning. Presenting a theoretical and methodological framework for researching the identity of single women in Ireland, Bryne (2003) conceptually separates out self-identity, understood as our own sense of ourselves, and social identity, categorization of us by others. Single identity is a product of both self-identification and external categorization, and I draw on this framework in considering the extent to which positive self-identities are evident in the narratives of single women in Britain.

Procedures and method

The research data are from in-depth life history interviews conducted by the author in 2002 with 37 White heterosexual women ranging in age from 36 to 83 at the time of interview. Single women are not a homogenous category, and there are various categories of difference which could be considered, including age, class, ethnicity, and sexual orientation. The aim here is not to make claims on behalf of all single women but to explore in detail a particular group of women. All participants were never married and had not been in a cohabiting relationship for at least 5 years. Three participants reported current sexual partners, however these relationships were described variously as “intermittent” and “casual,” and all defined themselves as single. The sample also included three “solo mothers,” single women who had opted into motherhood via means such as artificial insemination and adoption. Criteria for inclusion in the sample included being over 35 and defining as heterosexual: the age limit is well above the average age of first marriage, and I anticipated these women would have to “account” for their marital status in ways not reducible to their sexuality as well as considering implications of remaining single over the long term in terms of financial provisioning or desires for children. While most participants (25 of 37) were aged under 50 at the time of interview, the age range of participants allowed me to consider changes and continuities in the experiences of women born in the 1930s through to the 1960s. The interviews ranged in duration from 40 min to more than 4 hr, however on average lasted 90 min, and all were recorded and transcribed in full. I took a life history approach, where participants were asked to talk about their education and employment history as well as any relationship history, during which I asked various open-ended questions about circumstances and motivations. The “life history” technique has been seen as particularly suited to documenting how individuals interpret, understand, and define the world around them (Faraday & Plummer, 1979, p. 776). In addition, in locating the individual within a broader sociohistorical framework, this technique enables an understanding of the choices, contingencies, and options open to individuals within specific contexts.

Recruitment

Participants were recruited in different locations in Britain, from large cities to small towns, the majority in the central belt of Scotland. The sample was recruited through leaflets and online requests placed with various organizations, including women’s groups, libraries, and retirement housing, and through “snowballing,” asking participants to put me in touch with others they knew who met the criteria (Burgess, 1984). I also placed an advert in a free newspaper. Potential participants were sent a letter with more information about the study and the format of the interviews and stating that all participants would receive a copy of the transcript with a right of veto. Interviews were conducted mainly in participants’ homes, with a few in participants’ workplaces or in hired rooms in public buildings.

Sample characteristics

The majority of participants (27 of 37) had a degree or postgraduate qualifications, while 6 had no or school-level qualifications. Based on the International Labour Organization International Standard Classification of Occupation, over half (20 of 37) of the participants had professional occupations. Four participants were retired, two participants were currently not in employment due to long-term ill-health, and two mothers were currently on maternity leave or taking a career break at the time of interview: all were classified by their last employment. While previous research has identified a long-standing relationship between remaining unmarried and higher educational qualifications and occupational status for women (Kiernan, 1988), the sample may also reflect recruitment strategies as well as the socioeconomic characteristics of those likely to participate in such research. The majority of the participants (21 of 37) owned their own homes, however the sample also included 7 women living in social housing provided through local authorities or housing associations to provide affordable housing to people on low incomes. This purposive sampling clearly did not provide a representative sample, nevertheless there was sufficient heterogeneity in terms of age, educational, and occupational status to allow insight into diverse histories.

Analytic approach

As described above, this article draws on a conception of identity as dynamic, continually in production, rather than as fixed. While identity is multifaceted, the focus here is on the role that singleness played in constituting self-identities. Using data generated in the in-depth interviews, I take a narrative analytic approach in examining the identities that these never-married single women constructed for themselves through their talk. Rather than considering the interviews as providing accounts of an external reality, these are understood as narrative constructions through which identities are being performed (Ricouer, 1980; Somers, 1994). I consider a narrative analytic approach productive for identifying the self and social identities available at particular points in time. Narrative analysis as a method captures dimensions of subjectivity and the social conditions that shape individual lives. It also enables exploration of processes of subjection—the ways in which certain subject positions are discursively available for individuals to occupy. In analyzing the data, I coded these in relation to themes, and these included identifying references to singleness as a social category, the subject positions made available to single women in dominant discourses. In some narratives, these were less explicit, and in interpreting these narratives I provide illustrative quotations to support my reading of these. As well as noting participants’ varying responses to their experiences, I also sought to identify the resonances of and meanings attributed by participants to these experiences.

Results

Stigmatized social identities

Despite dramatic changes occurring in the lives of women over recent decades, the narratives of participants indicated negative stereotypes of singleness remained prevalent. For example, Mandy, 39, listed “she must be gay or she must be a man hater generally or, you know, she’s frigid” and recounted “warnings” from friends about being “too independent.” Several recounted experiences which illustrated the prevalence of stigmatized social identities for single women, indicative of a continuing “othering” of single women through their positioning in marginalized social categories. These social categories however may be in opposition to identifications made by individuals themselves, and the narratives demonstrated participants negotiating the subject positions made available in dominant discourses. Participants’ responses suggest considerable variation in the subjective meanings ascribed to these experiences and as such also say something about the variable “single self-identities” constructed by participants. In Goffman’s (1963/1990b) account of stigma, he argues, stigmatized persons respond to the identity beliefs of normal society through a process of stigma management to ease tensional interactions. Yet, whereas some participants depicted perceived stigma as shaping their behavior, this was not universally so. For example, Kitty, 71, recounted spending much of her time alone, a situation she described as in part “forced” upon her by her low income and poor health but also in part a response to “suspicious wives” at social clubs she had previously attended: “I kind of stopped because of that attitude.” Betty, 48, similarly recounted experiencing “territorial wives” at social functions, however in terms that indicated this was something she considered risible and remained unbothered by. Wendy and Sarah, members of a Christian fellowship group, described considering “joining forces” and living together for companionship as well as financial reasons: Wendy, 54, had not worked for many years due to ill-health, and Sarah, 69, described the upkeep of her home as increasingly burdensome. However, their anxiety about being perceived as in a lesbian relationship was a potential barrier preventing this. Younger participants born in the 1950s and 1960s also referred to experiencing assumptions they were lesbian; however, their narratives indicated a general lack of concern about this, suggesting that the increasing acceptability of homosexuality has somewhat nullified the stigmatizing impact of this stereotype.

Changing social identities may still position single women as Other in ways that limit social interactions. Gordon (2002) suggests that a stereotype of the glamorous lifestyle of the “city single” and the perceived contrast with the humdrum of family life may mean hesitancy among those living in family households to invite single women to their homes or parties. This study, and other research (Byrne, 2000) identifying exclusion of single women from coupled society in various settings, demonstrates a cultural expectation of the priority of coupledom, which potentially positions single women as marginal. Some participants described having their friendships “relegated” consequent to friends forming couple relationships, however the impact of this varied. Emma, 36, described a somewhat limited social life, in part due to financial constraints but also because “there is nobody to go out with, all my friends are sort of in relationships.” Yet, while for some this was a negative aspect of singleness, others depicted this as a negative dimension of coupledom. Sally, 40, attributed her reluctance to being in a partnership in part to previous experiences:

When I was in a partnership, I kind of didn’t like it […] because I wasn’t me, I was part of a couple. And that’s how people see you […] say I found someone who I wanted to have a partnership with, that would be difficult, being amongst all those other partnerships.

The different identifications an individual makes bear differently upon the coherence of her subjectivity depend on the meanings they have for her at any one time (Taylor, 1998, p. 341). Variations in participants’ responses to similar experiences suggest variability in the resonances of stereotypes of singleness and also say something about the subjectivities of single women. Some participants did represent being single as a problematic aspect of their identity, expressing a preference to be in a relationship or, where this was considered unlikely due to age or circumstances such as ill-health, depicting themselves as unwillingly resigned to the status quo. However, as I explore further below, representations of singleness as positive were also evident.

Accounting for singleness

The construction of various forms of “otherness” renders some modes of living unexceptional and taken for granted, while others become accountable: Whereas partnered women are rarely called upon to explain the status, the single woman is “expected to have an explanation for her ‘condition’” (Reynolds & Wetherell, 2003, p. 490). Participants in this research were not asked why they had not married, yet various “explanations” for singleness were evident in their narratives, suggesting an awareness that singleness needs to be accounted for. These explanations illustrate various “stories” participants drew on to make sense of their lives and thereby define who they are (Somers, 1994).

A prominent theme across many of the narratives was that participants did not present singleness as a choice. Principles of choice and voluntary agency are argued to increasingly operate in the sphere of intimate relationships (Beck & Beck Gernsheim, 1995; Giddens, 1992). Yet several scholars draw attention to the impossibility of depicting singleness as willingly and consciously chosen (Lahad, 2013; Taylor, 2012). This is also, somewhat paradoxically, evident in sociological theorizing emphasizing “choice biographies.” Both Giddens and Beck and Beck-Gernsheim address the potential of wider social changes for new forms of social identities outside the traditional range, nevertheless emphasize the key position of the couple relationship for personal identity. In their work singleness is either invisibilized in the quest for “pure relationships” (Giddens, 1992) or problematized as a negative outcome of modern market economies (Beck & Beck-Gernsheim, 1995, p. 144).

Byrne (2000) notes the majority of participants in her study on single women in Ireland categorize themselves as “involuntary singles” (Stein, 1981) and interprets this as a self-protective strategy used to distance themselves from perceived and felt social stigma. Analysis of the narratives in this study identified common “explanations” for singleness that similarly protected participants from censure, such as singleness being attributed to fate, that it “just didn’t happen”. For example, Katherine, 65, referred to a newspaper article about Kate Adie, a prominent BBC war correspondent who is also never married and childless, and commented “and like her, I never felt that it was a conscious decision.” Katherine, a retired research scientist, also depicted her career as the outcome of a series of opportunities that had emerged while a postgraduate student, rather than strategic decision making: “both my education and my work, a lot of it was not conscious decisions, although I have thoroughly enjoyed my work.” An enduring trope of spinsterhood has been the professional woman whose career success is presented as at the expense of marriage and motherhood. Taylor (2012) analyses contemporary representations of “professional triumph, personal failure” as working to manage the threat posed by the woman without the man (2012, p. 14). Such representations are also evident in scholarship on personal life. Thus, Beck and Beck-Gernsheim refer to the emerging problem “affecting those women who pursue an independent career but in most cases pay a high price, the loneliness of the professionally successful woman” (1995, p. 63). This identity risks situating single women as subject to pity. Rebutting attributions of singleness to individual choice can be interpreted as a means of resistance to a stigmatized subject position.

Joan’s narrative similarly drew on notions of destiny, despite her acting strategically to pursue partnership through joining dating sites: “it’s going to be chance and, so far, the chances have not come my way”. However Joan, 40, also related her singleness to an unwillingness to “settle.” She described a previous relationship she had ended as “wonderful, but not quite enough […] we loved each other but had not fallen in love. We could have made a marriage out of that, but we both decided that it wasn’t enough.” This desire for a deeper emotional commitment points toward Giddens’ (1992) emphasis on the “pure relationship” as a central goal of late modernity. However, Joan’s narrative also refers to other factors, including the pleasurable aspects of singleness. She had lived alone for several years, which she “loved,” and commented:

We both realized we loved our way of life, we loved our independence. It was lovely to see him sort of three, four times a week and weekends and so on, but at the end of the day, it’s really nice to be in my own space.

A discourse of romance as fate confirms that the single woman would be in a relationship if chance had permitted it, thereby protecting her from responsibility for singleness and simultaneously permitting the status quo. This is also the case with explanations of singleness as the outcome of external demands such as employment. For example, Katie, 53, worked long hours in shift work and attributed her singleness to the financial requirements of singleness: “it’s not because you don’t want to get married or have a relationship, you don’t have the opportunity because of the hours that you work.” Such explanations resound with contemporary debates about individualization and the impact of employment on personal relations, with increased turnover attributed to the “logic of the market” (Beck & Beck-Gernsheim, 1995). However, Katie’s account complicates this somewhat. Rather than just the requirement to work long hours, it was because she did so that she was less willing to put up with behavior she considered unacceptable for the sake of maintaining the relationship. Asked why previous relationships had ended, she commented:

The usual reasons, one drank too much, one regularly borrowed money off me which I never got back, and … you put up with these thing for so long, I would put up with these things for so long and then think ‘I work too hard to put up with this’—and I would put up with it for quite a while. And then I would say ‘no, that’s enough’, and that was the end of the relationship.

While Katie did not discount the possibility of another relationship, she also indicated this was not a priority: “If someone comes along, fine, but I’m not dashing to meet somebody […] sometimes I just think I can’t be bothered.” Representing singleness as unproblematic points to a disjuncture with discourses in which it is understood necessarily as a “cost.” Whereas singleness may not be represented as chosen, several participants nevertheless depicted a sanguine attitude toward being single.

Participants also depicted themselves as “choosy,” unwilling to put up with relationships unless they were worthwhile, potentially positioning them as too fussy or demanding. Within this explanation however, some referred to wider social changes resulting in a “mismatch” between women and men. The narratives of several younger participants portrayed a context in which women’s economic independence provides them with more options over the type of relationships they wished to maintain. Thus Brenda, 37, commented that whereas previous generations of women:

married because they needed to support themselves (this) has changed … I don’t need somebody to look after me financially, I need somebody who will look after me, be with me, emotionally—and I will look after them emotionally […] the men who are my intellectual equals don’t want to look for women who are intellectual equals.

Traditional models of behavior in the matching of couples draw on socioeconomic status, and previous research on the socio-economic characteristics of the never married has argued that the higher incidence of spinsterhood among women “of higher ability, education and occupation” may be due to selectivity in the marriage market whereby “men may have preferences for wives of lower or equal status but not higher” (Kiernan, 1988, p. 259). However, the explanations evident in the narratives of participants in this study indicated their preference for other forms of equality as a central component of contemporary relationships. Thus, Louise, 37, stated:

a lot of guys I think have still got this mentality that they’re, you know, they’re looking for … their ‘mother’ to look after them… you know, they’re still kind of looking with the old-fashioned values, whereas girls (sic) are now saying ‘well, no, sorry mate, after I come in from my work the last thing I’m going to do is go into the kitchen’.

Some participants explicitly related this to feminism, for example, Fiona, 49, observed:

we’re in the wrong … you now, we got feminism and nobody thought of liberating the men at the time so all of the men, even the generation below, have not really, are not really coming from the same perspective.

Women’s greater capacity to negotiate regarding the division of roles has been argued as making it more difficult for them to find a partner prepared for greater domestic and parental commitment (Di Stefano & Pinnelli, 2004, p. 341). The extent to which the absence of such a relationship was depicted as a loss however varied across participants, and several “explained” their singleness in terms of satisfaction with their single status quo. There are nevertheless difficulties in claiming this. Geraldine, 36, stated a preference for singleness yet also feeling inhibited about “going public”: “I don’t actually want to be in a relationship, but I think people find that strange … just in the past year or so I’ve actually been more open with my friends that’s what I don’t want.” Difficulties may include one’s own doubts about the authenticity of claims of satisfaction with being single, as the excerpt below from Louise’s narrative suggests. Here, rather than explaining singleness in relation to gender relations as in the excerpt above, she attributes this to personal preference, depicts friends’ rebuttals and her own doubts, and includes caveats she may change her mind:

I’m actually a person that’s quite happy being on their own […] I don’t know if five years down the line my biological clock will go off and I’ll think ‘I must breed, I must reproduce’, I don’t know, or ‘I just must have a man’. But right now, I’ve enough interests and I think I just don’t have enough hours in the day. Now whether I’m subconsciously doing that to fill up my day I don’t know, but I don’t think I am […] And maybe I’ve just been unfortunate, because some of my pals are like ‘you’ve just been out with bad guys (laughs) and that’s put you off’. But I don’t think it’s that either.

Expressing a preference for singleness is in contradistinction to dominant discourses wherein singleness is represented as either a personal failing or the outcome of other factors and assumed to be at a cost. While difficulties in claiming this are evident, inclusion of this preference among the repertoire of explanations for singleness in these narratives is nevertheless suggestive of an emerging cultural acceptability of remaining single as an alternative, rather than a necessarily deviant, partnership status. A few younger participants drew on singleness as a resource in a construction of themselves as “pioneering”; in these narratives, they present their singleness as potentially consequential for the identities available to women. Thus, Mandy, 39, commented:

we are a minority, as it were, so in a sense we are kind of leading the way. And that kind of filters down through society and maybe there will be other women out there who will question what they want and hopefully break free from rigid stereotyping and rigid pre-conceptions about what women should be and how they should be in the world.

For some participants, singleness was thus represented as a positive aspect of identity. Several depicted the experience of singleness as personally empowering. Some reporting aspirations to a relationship nevertheless described valuing a sense of capability associated with the self-sufficiency necessitated by singleness, looked at further below.

Changing subjectivities in changing contexts

In the section above, I presented my interpretation of participants’ variable responses to enduring social practices such as the stereotyping of singleness and exclusion from coupled social activities as demonstrating the varying resonances these held for self-identity. Here I analyze the way various practices undertaken by participants themselves were narrated as an aspect of the construction of positive self-identity. One such practice was the maintenance of social relationships. Common to many narratives was an emphasis on the sustaining of relationships with friends and family. The importance of friendship in affirming a positive sense of self-identity and confirming self-worth (Allan, 1989, p. 155) may be especially significant for single women subject to stigmatization as lonely and isolated. Recent scholarship on personal life suggests that contemporary changes in wider society have contributed to significant changes in the sphere of intimate relationships, changes that may mean individuals shifting their locus of intimacy and support away from kin toward other people and a consequent “decentring of heterorelations” (Roseneil & Budgeon, 2004, pp. 138–142). The significance of friendships as the foundation of practical and emotional support evident in the narratives of participants in this study supports previous research identifying this as important to previous generations of never-married women (Allen, 1989; Simon, 1987/2010). This long-standing feature of the lives of never-married women challenges assumptions of the (hetero)sexually based dyadic relationship as an exclusive source of intimacy.

However, also prevalent in the narratives was a pleasure in being and undertaking various activities alone. These ranged from leisure activities such as going to the cinema to holidaying abroad on one’s own. For some, this was expressed in somewhat prosaic terms, as practically easier if no companion was readily available. For others however, while doing so may have initially been motivated by a lack of alternatives, this was often experienced with great pleasure and presented by some as an advantage of singleness. The majority of participants lived alone, and some depicted running one’s own household and undertaking activities usually coded as male, such as “do-it-yourself” jobs, as giving rise to a gendered sense of capability. Of those participants living alone, several described this positively, in spite of initial trepidation. Thus, Mandy, 39, who had been living alone for a year, recounted:

I love it now, but the first six months were really challenging, really difficult. I spent the first six months out, every night, every day […] But it’s great now …it is just so reassuring and wonderful and I feel a bit guilty about it sometimes.

Single people living alone have been perceived as “in a conspicuously isolated, lonely and therefore vulnerable situation” (Adams, 1981, p. 222). The emphasis on the pleasures of living alone evident in many narratives may be interpreted as a rhetorical “talking up” in light of prevailing presumptions of loneliness. The somewhat defensive accounts of those who were currently living with, or had previously lived with, relatives or flatmates suggests the “double bind” faced by women who do not conform to heteronormativity whereby any living arrangement that does not include a male partner is at risk of disparagement.

Nevertheless, several participants referred to living alone as a particular advantage of singleness, with some stating they would now not consider cohabiting in any future relationships. Byrne’s research on never-married women in Ireland similarly found few of those living alone would consider giving this up and notes that deciding to live alone is “a statement to oneself, a recognition of the self as “preferring” to live alone” (2010, p. 30). Having a home of one’s own is a relatively new option for single women, historically more likely to live in the household of a male relative. Living alone is also materially and culturally more possible for women in some geographic regions of the world than others (Jamieson & Simpson, 2013). The pleasure associated with this aspect of singleness by several participants exemplifies the way in which wider social changes give rise to experiences that challenges both gender roles and an assumed complementarity, of women as men’s Other. I suggest these experiences may allow the development of a sense of self that undermines dichotomous identities predicated on an assumption of partnership. These narratives depict contentment with singleness for some, a contentment that underpins a positive self-identity. This is illustrated in Franny’s narrative. While Franny, 58, depicted her singleness in terms of fate, she nevertheless also indicated she experienced this positively, with living alone an important aspect of that:

I used to have conversations with my mother, ‘when you’re a big girl and married and have your own house’ … And I never thought I wouldn’t get married, but then I never thought that I would have my own house without being married […] I have sometimes thought about my life and how lucky I am to be able to live this way, with a home of my own and a job. I am only the second generation of my family to have this freedom.

Discussion

In this article, I look at whether participants in this study narrate a positive single self-identity, and if this is the case, how they do so. The “separating out” of categorical (or social) and ontological (or self) dimensions of identity allows a focus on the extent to which a positive single self-identity is being constructed in the narrative accounts of this particular group of women. These narrative accounts demonstrate an enduring prioritizing of partnership in the stereotypes of singleness participants encounter as well as in their exclusion from coupled social interactions. I argue that the varying resonances these experiences hold for participants can be read as indicating that these do not necessarily impact negatively on self-identity. I also argue that positive single self-identities are evident in claimed satisfaction with singleness. In part, this satisfaction derives from the particular pleasures associated with singleness, for example, living alone. This study supports previous scholarship based on firsthand accounts of single women (Allen, 1989; Byrne, 2000; Gordon, 1994; Simon, 1987/2010; Trimberger, 2005), which demonstrates satisfaction with singleness. This claiming of a satisfaction with singleness runs counter to the public identities of single women in dominant discourses.

Various social theorists argue that the modern self is required to construct a life through the exercise of choices from among alternatives, and these choices serve as emblems of our identity, a message to ourselves and others as to the sort of person we are. As with other research on single women, the majority of women in this study did not present their singleness as the outcome of choice. Prevalent explanations of singleness utilized personal circumstances, such as the demands of employment, or notions of fate, serving to protect the single woman from responsibility and hence from censure. Other explanations however accounted for singleness in terms of the participant not being willing to settle for any relationship. These preserve the possibility that participants would consider future relationships, nevertheless also situated them as agentic and selective. Implicit in these accounts, and explicitly expressed by some participants, were wider social changes providing women with the possibility of economic self-sufficiency, which in turn provided options over the relationships they wish to maintain. Within these explanations, some participants drew on feminist discourses in expressing resistance to inequalities in heterosexual partnerships. For several participants, satisfaction with singleness was also part of the explanations provided in their narratives. Such satisfaction is in contradistinction to dominant discourses of singleness as a deficit identity. It is thus not only through choosing singlehood that social identities around singleness can be transformed: Claiming contentment with singleness can also be understood as subverting normative gender identities.

Taylor (2012) argues that within popular culture the “un-representability” of women choosing singleness both normalizes heterosexuality and coupledom and continues to position singleness as an illegitimate way of being in the world (p. 22). She argues that modern sociopolitical changes in (some) women’s status and the prospect of women becoming less dependent on men have meant that popular culture has become a “central site” in ensuring the continued desirability of heterosexual desire (2012, p.23, see also McRobbie, 2009). Taylor’s focus is on popular culture as a resource providing the narratives though which we come to constitute ourselves/are constituted as subjects. In this article, I argue these data demonstrate single women drawing on other resources in their construction of a positive single self-identity, namely, the actualities of single women’s lives. My analysis of these narratives shows women drawing on their experiential knowledge of singleness as the foundation for positive single identities. In constituting singleness as a positive aspect of self-identity, these narratives contribute to the emergence of alternative discourses around singleness, including a discourse in which singleness can be explained with reference to its positive dimensions for women. The claiming of a positive single identity reflects emergent possibilities of more diverse subjectivities for women and is suggestive of a waning of partnership as a central aspect of female identity. Byrne argues that “in naming and claiming identities outside the traditional range, the possibility for new forms of social identities is created” (2003, p. 445). In this article, I suggest that the positive single self-identities evident in these narratives contribute to new discourses emerging in the context of wider social change, discourses challenging a normative femininity predicated on an assumed complementarity with men.

Limitations and additional future research

This research study was carried out with a particular group of women in a specific social context, and the analysis presented here is based on data generated with never-married women in 2002. Given the size and nature of the sample, this research makes no claims to be representative of single women more generally. The age range and geographic location of the women in this sample suggests findings are specific to never-married women in the United Kingdom experiencing singleness in the latter half of the 20th century. The ability to head one’s own household as a single woman is not an experience that is available to large proportions of women across all geographic regions. The generalizability of the research is also limited by the theoretical framework employed: Given understandings of identity as socially constituted, empirical investigation of identity needs to be historically and culturally situated. The focus of this research has been on the implications of singleness for the gender identities of women. Future research studies might explore how contemporary single women and men represent themselves in specific social contexts.