“Make Room for Singles in Teaching and Research” (also available here) was the title of an article I wrote for the Chronicle of Higher Education, together with sociologist Kay Trimberger and law professor (and now Dean of UCLA Law School) Rachel Moran. When the Chronicle published the article, it was in a special issue on diversity.

I think that was apt. We need a singles perspective in academia in the same way we need the perspectives of other groups such as women and people of color. Without these different points of view, we end up asking a limited set of questions and coming up with a narrow set of predictable answers. We miss some things entirely and see too much of other things.

If you have been reading this blog for a while, you may have already noticed that the ways I talk about topics such as relationships, love, happiness, friendship, and what’s important in life are different from how many other bloggers and pundits and scholars discuss these matters. With me, the conventional wisdom – especially about the supposedly transformative power of getting married – just doesn’t cut it. What’s more, I like to argue from data. Often I can demonstrate that the pro-marriage case that scholars are perpetuating is not even supported by their own data. The beliefs about the benefits of marrying are so ingrained in our culture, and so rarely questioned, that even scientists can end up setting aside their usual skepticism and critical thinking, without realizing it.

I must confess that I didn’t always understand the diversity argument. I remember early in my career seeing a panel on “feminist methodology” in the program of the conference I was attending. That sounded nonsensical to me. Methodology is methodology.

Does “feminist biology” also sound odd? New York Magazine recently published an article, “Meet Janet Hyde, the Woman Behind the First Feminist Biology Program.” The entire article is worthwhile, but I especially appreciated the following example of why a female perspective is important. It is a quote from Janet Hyde:

“…most of traditional biology has come from the male perspective; so women are going to have new insight based on their experience and are going to notice more things. If we think about primate research, much of it was very gender biased, focusing on the male dictator and his troops. Then Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Sarah Blaffer Hrdy gave us a new view of what was going on in these primate troops, because what the females were doing was ignored or stereotyped. When we do research in biology we tend to project our own human gender roles on these species, and that can bias the observations. What we want to do is have less-biased observations.”

Now we need our first Singles Studies program.

Bella DePaulo (Ph.D., Harvard; Visiting Professor, UC Santa Barbara), an expert on single life, is the author of several books, including "Singled Out: How Singles Are Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored, and Still Live Happily Ever After" and "Singlism: What It Is, Why It Matters, and How to Stop It." Dr. DePaulo has discussed singles and single life on radio and television, including NPR and CNN, and her work has been described in newspapers such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and USA Today, and magazines such as Time, Atlantic, the Week, More, the Nation, Business Week, AARP Magazine, and Newsweek. Visit her website at www.BellaDePaulo.com.

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    Last reviewed: 19 May 2014