STRONG THE ENTITLEMENT IS IN THIS ONE.

Hot Air's David Strom sees "Women's Health: Being Single Makes You Happy!," has doubts.

The current cultural elite narrative that being single and childless is great is contradicted by every credible study ever done.

Single women, it has consistently been found, are about half as likely to report being "very happy" as married women.

Not that you would know this if you read Women's Health Magazine. In fact, being single gives women "joy," so quit dating and enjoy your freedom, gals!

And yes, the article does open with a good-news-is-bad-news-is-wrong vibe.

Single women, by and large, are actually quite happy, quite fulfilled, and quite content, thankyouverymuch. And as their numbers continue to grow, their experiences and wisdom could help shape the way we all approach our mental and emotional well-being. We just have to listen, as the whispers grow to a roar.

Read on, dear reader, and ask whether the article's author, and perhaps a few of the authorities the author consults, are due for a privilege check.

“It’s more doable to be single,” says Bella DePaulo, PhD, a social scientist and the author of Single at Heart. “If you don’t want to cook, there’s takeout. If you don’t want to do your laundry, there’s laundry service. If you don’t want to do repairs in your house, you can go online and find people.”

Our interconnected world also means we don’t need to rely on a live-in partner for socializing or emotional support. “Communication technologies have made it much more fulfilling to be single,” DePaulo says. “If you’re single and you live alone, you’re not isolated. You are one text message, email, chat room away from the rest of the world.”

While stigmas still persist around singlehood—especially for women—DePaulo also notes that the increase in unmarried people may be self-perpetuating.

The effect of all those creature comforts on income and wealth inequality are left as an exercise.  When the television is on at headquarters, there's a good chance that a few of the advertisements are for those sorts of service: it's also possible to hire in a cleaning service or to have the dog food delivered as well as to interact selectively with people online rather than take pot luck at the bar, coffee house, or library.  And Professor DePaulo has long been a critic of the marriage-industrial complex.

Mr Strom surely takes the dimmest possible view of all that doable singleness, with sufficient privilege.

Actually, all of those options are available to everybody, of course, as long as you have money. I am pretty sure that laundry services and takeout food aren't exclusively available to single women. They are, instead, available to wealthy people.

As for socializing? Gee, you can fulfill your need for human companionship with an email or text!

No wonder these people are mentally ill.

Arguably, someone who encounters real people at the bar or coffee house or library might have to engage in a little give and take rather than blocking or muting or otherwise blowing off anyone offering a differing perspective.

Which is what happens when somebody dips a toe into dating, whether online or in person.

Of course, we can’t have a discussion about single women in 2025 without acknowledging the dating dynamics at play. DePaulo’s research doesn’t dive into the particulars of dating (“That’s the one thing about single life I do not study,” she says), but it takes only a brief conversation with a Tinder or Bumble user to understand how truly chaotic the act of wining and dining has become.

A Women's Health writer is not going to concede that the affluent white female urban liberals have gone nuts, but what other inference can one draw from what follows?

A word that San Diego–based therapist and relationship coach Leah Aguirre, LCSW, author of Is This Really Love?, hears often from her female clients is overwhelming. Dating apps have given singles the impression that their options are both limitless and incredibly limited, she says. “There are a lot of matches and connections, but nothing comes out of them. You’re having these very surface-level, unfulfilling interactions that don’t go anywhere. For women, especially, they feel like they cannot find partners that are aligned with their values.”

Indeed, for heterosexual couples, the ideological divide between the sexes only grows. Among Gen Z in particular, that gap has widened significantly, with women becoming more liberal and men becoming more conservative—making common ground that much more elusive. Aguirre is seeing that dynamic play out in her clients’ experiences.

“I work with a lot of liberal, educated, very open-minded, progressive women, and it’s a struggle to find liberal, open-minded men,” she says. And even if a man identifies as a liberal, he may still lack basic empathy about the current state of the world and/or his date’s lived experiences. “People are engaging with men who don’t seem upset or disturbed by the political climate,” she says. “That’s frustrating and concerning for these women.”

Another dating stumbling block for a lot of the women Aguirre works with is finding a man with the same level of emotional intelligence. “A theme I’ve been seeing as a therapist in the last 10 years or so is women saying, ‘He didn’t ask about me’ or ‘I don’t think he really knows me.’ It’s these declarations of love or interest without really knowing the woman.” Can it hardly be coincidental that #makemencuriousagain has been popping up on social media?

Possibly.  Town Hall's Matt Vespa suggests that "lack of basic empathy" goes both ways.  "Learn not to be an insufferable moron, and we can discuss later."  The article suggests women can go their own way without fretting about whether they're partnered up or not.