Not a single meaning: Definition and evolution of singlehood in France and the United States

Singlehood appears to be an understudied topic in the social sciences, and a particularly diverse field of research. Focusing on the United States and France, this article reviews existing literature to answer three questions that are prerequisites for theorizing singlehood (1) What is singlehood? We first discuss the diversity of terms used in ordinary language to designate singles, and the different statistical measures that coexist in the scholarly literature. (2) Who and how many are single? We show that different definitions lead to different counts of the single population and discuss the driving forces behind the rise in singlehood. (3) What is new? Drawing on literature on the couple norm and the single lifestyle, we then turn to the question of the specificity of the contemporary era. In the last section, we discuss the implications for theorizing singlehood. The answers to all three questions lead us to promote a life course approach to singlehood.