Single File: Singles are active family participants

DEAR SUSAN: Maybe I'm flying blind, but just yesterday I heard at the gym that married people are much more giving, community-minded and selfless than single people because they don't have to get a date for Saturday night and they don't busy themselves with party after party so they can meet people. The thing is married people are more settled. I agreed with the fellow who passed along that tidbit. Are we off base?

-- From the "Single File" blog

DEAR BLOGGER: You and your fellow exerciser are, in a word, wrong. A gentler way of saying it would be -- with a gentle sigh -- you two are misinformed. The truth is childless single individuals give more time and practical support to parents, kin and friends than married couples. According to researchers Naomi Gerstel of the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Natalie Sarkisian of Boston College, childless unmarried people are doing lots of family work, with 1 in 4 American workers spending at least seven hours a week caring for an aging parent. So the next time some mindless comment minimizes unmarried participation in the family, the community and the world at large, you now have some facts and names to stanch the fiction -- and return dignity to deserving Singleworld. (Broad grin.)

DEAR SUSAN: I disagree with your comment that "women have a terminal case of gratitude." Hardly. If anything, they have a terminal case of ANTIPATHY!

-- From the "Single File" blog

DEAR BLOGGER: That comment about terminal gratitude didn't originate from my computer; it's borrowed from Gloria Steinem's rant during the huge upheavals of our society when the gap between the genders seemed too wide to bridge. And yes, we've come quite a ways since those dark days. But your comment -- complete with exclamation point and capital letters -- underscores the width (and depth) of the chasm. And to some degree, I do agree with you about the anger of today's young women -- and the male guilt that seems to be the response.

But even with the luxury of time and calmer hormones, my viscera detect loud rumblings in the chatter between the sexes. And they are worrisome. Young women seem to be ingesting their mothers' frustrations and spewing it out in anti-male diatribes. Yes, men have quashed women's dreams in past generations, but this is 2015, the year for gender reconciliation, and younger men can step up to the plate and get their chance to be an encourager, a partner and, best of all, a close ally.

It seems to this columnist that friendship between the sexes can herald a new type of togetherness -- with spaces for self-actualization -- that your mother only dreamed of. Young women today can make that dream reality for themselves -- not through anger at men but through a genuine wish to know their love partner. It sounds corny, I agree. But liking before loving is the way to go. Think it over.