time rich - a myth about single women

``Oh! my dear Lydia,'' she cried, ``when shall we meet again?''


``Oh, lord! I don't know. Not these two or three years, perhaps.''

``Write to me very often, my dear.''

``As often as I can. But you know married women have never much time for writing. My sisters may write to me. They will have nothing else to do.''

Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 11.

I'm not sure when the myth that single women have more time than married women first surfaced, but it seems to have been around for a while.  Austen put it into the mouth of silly Lydia Wickham - which should be reason enough for us not to repeat it - but still it does the rounds...  I often hear it from preachers and others who are looking for a bright side to singleness.  "A single woman doesn't have kids, therefore she has heaps of time to serve on all these church rosters..."

There is no reason why we should assume that single women are time rich.  Many of us assume it, thinking back to when we were single (at uni) and assume that our single friends have stayed in that stage of life.  But an older single woman (say in her thirties) is not still in the uni stage of life.  She has responsibilities.  She most likely has a full time job that occupies her from 8am till 6pm five days a week.  Outside of that time she needs to exercise, house clean, shop... mostly with no one else to help her.  If she wants any human contact outside work, she'll need to arrange it (which is pretty painful) and go out of her home to get it.  If she lives with other people, she may be able to socialise at home, but this brings with it some potentially difficult terrain...

In our society that links busyness with importance, to assume that someone is not busy is to imply that they are not important.  Of course, the link between busyness and importance is far from justified... but to be labeled 'time rich' is still insulting.  If Shirley has a full-time job, it's unlikely that she has any more discretionary time than a mum with a couple of kids.    

As a mum with little kids at home, I had plenty of time to do stuff.  Yes, there were the little baby stages which were pretty intense, but I had quite a lot of flexibility, time when I could go out and meet friends in the park, meet friends at bible study, meet friends at playgroup, meet friends at the pool... When the kids were asleep or occupied, I could blog or plan conferences or do desktop publishing jobs for church or whatever...  And now while my kids are at school and I work a few days a week, I have time to do all sorts of things that a woman with a full time job cannot do.

At times when we are sick or sad or lonely or depressed or overwhelmed, our productivity will decrease.  We'll be able to do fewer things than usual.  Just getting through the day will take more effort.  Many of us experience this when our kids are little and we put it down to motherhood.  But many of our childless sisters are experiencing these things too - with little sympathy.  To assume that a single woman will have time to do things that we cannot do is to unkindly burden them.

A married woman with kids may or may not be time rich.  A married woman without kids may or may not be time rich.  A single woman may or may not be time rich.

Let us have no more condescending generalisations about time and single women.