Post by OverseerCWFJ on Sept 13, 2004 15:28:24 GMT -5
In the workplace, unmarried people wind up making an average 25% less than married colleagues for the same work because of the marriage-centric structure of health care, retirement, and other benefits, calculates Thomas F. Coleman, a lawyer who heads the Los Angeles-based American Association for Single People.
In the civic arena, rising school taxes and growing inequities in pensions between marrieds and singles represent a big bonus for legal couples. The unmarried are often subjected to discrimination in housing and credit applications. They pay more for auto and homeowners' insurance and are shut out of valuable discounts on gyms, country clubs, hotel rooms -- even football-ticket lotteries. In some states, unmarried people, perhaps laid off from jobs and scrounging to pay their bills, are barred from taking on roommates to help pay the rent.
Outdated Definitions
These silent levies may have seemed less important in the days when most homes had a working dad and a full-time mom -- and kids largely resided with their two biological parents. But today, chances are that if you live to the age of 70, you will spend more of your adult life single than married. Moreover, a record number of children -- 33% -- are now born to single parents, many of them underemployed, uninsured mothers. Yet "most workplaces are still modeled on an outdated definition of an ideal worker -- someone who works more than 50 hours a week and doesn't take breaks to raise children," says Joan Williams, co-director of the Gender, Work & Family Project at the American University Law School. "God forbid if you are single mother trying to live up to that ideal without a wife." (Go to Part IV)
In the civic arena, rising school taxes and growing inequities in pensions between marrieds and singles represent a big bonus for legal couples. The unmarried are often subjected to discrimination in housing and credit applications. They pay more for auto and homeowners' insurance and are shut out of valuable discounts on gyms, country clubs, hotel rooms -- even football-ticket lotteries. In some states, unmarried people, perhaps laid off from jobs and scrounging to pay their bills, are barred from taking on roommates to help pay the rent.
Outdated Definitions
These silent levies may have seemed less important in the days when most homes had a working dad and a full-time mom -- and kids largely resided with their two biological parents. But today, chances are that if you live to the age of 70, you will spend more of your adult life single than married. Moreover, a record number of children -- 33% -- are now born to single parents, many of them underemployed, uninsured mothers. Yet "most workplaces are still modeled on an outdated definition of an ideal worker -- someone who works more than 50 hours a week and doesn't take breaks to raise children," says Joan Williams, co-director of the Gender, Work & Family Project at the American University Law School. "God forbid if you are single mother trying to live up to that ideal without a wife." (Go to Part IV)
