Bella DePaulo

So there you are at a crowded cocktail party, wine glass in one hand, crab puff in the other. You spot a woman standing by herself and stroll on over. “Hi,” you say. “I’m Chris.” “Alice,” she replies. You raise your glass in that awkward gesture that means, “I’d shake hands, but I don’t have one free.” “So,” she says with a smile. “How much do you weigh? How much money did you make last year?”

There are a lot of misconceptions about single people in the modern-day workplace. A former employer once brushed me off when I raised the issue of salary, telling me that because I was a single person with no children, my concerns couldn’t really be about money—after all, I had no one else to support.

The 21st century is the age of living single.

Mom, dad, and two kids, in a home of their own—in the US, it is still the most sentimentalized way of living. But its frequency as a way American families live has long been waning. In 1970, more than 40% of households were comprised of nuclear families; today, that figure is not even 20%.