The study of singlehood: from a marginalized relationship status to an emerging social category

This article presents an evolving conceptualization of the study of singlehood. In most studies, singlehood has been studied as a temporary and undesirable deviation from normative life trajectories centred around marriage and family formation, and later around cohabitation. However, demographic trends, such as an increasing age at first marriage, rising divorce rates, and a growing number of individuals opting to live alone, have prompted scholars to revisit these initial assumptions. This article delineates a framework that traces the transition from studying singlehood as a deficit to studying it as a social category, which starts from singlehood as a social deficit, goes through the recognition of voluntary singlehood and an empirical examination of the lifestyles of singles, and continues to the development of singlehood as an identity and the interdisciplinary and sociopolitical implications emerging as singlehood is increasingly theorized as a social category. While the first two still dominate scholarship, even within the field of singles studies, the latter three are groundbreaking in that they allow the study of singlehood as a social category while accounting for diversity and structural dynamics.