Mixed Fruit, or the Unmarried Conglomerate (Donna Ward Interview, Part 3) June 22, 2021
Posted by Onely in book review, childfree/childless, Guest Posts.Tags: childfree memoir, childless memoir, Donna Ward, Manda Ford, Marriage Australia, Single Australia, single memoir
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Welcome to the latest installment in our series, Onelers Of The World. This is the third part of my interview with Australian author Donna Ward, who elaborates on aspects of her beautiful memoir She I Dare Not Name: A spinster’s meditations on life. Here are the first and second parts of the interview. The third part, below, talks about the Unmarried Conglomerate, the term Donna coined to refer to the diverse group of people lumped together simply because of what they are not: married. There’s also a bonus vocab section! (I am the one who bolded some of the sentences in Donna’s answers.)
Christina: In your book, you raise an interesting issue, one that is not discussed much in singles advocacy: By splitting society sharply into Married or Not-Married, we create a false sense that all unmarried people are alike, with the same feelings and needs:
Assuming spinsters and bachelors live the same lives as the conglomerate commonly referred to as single renders memoirs and social research on the subject impotent witnesses of less-daunting single lives. It conceals the social, personal, and political implications of living a life mostly, or completely, without a partner and children.” (10)
After you had this realization, you visited the U.S. Census website. Can you tell us why, what you found there, and how it made you feel?
Donna: Ha! Well, I guess it was one of a series of events that made me write the book. Way back, twenty years or so ago, when I began writing this book, I did a lot of reading about the research on the health, wellbeing, and you guessed it, happiness of non-married versus married people. I visited the U.S. Census website and discovered the American government was, can I say, worse at collecting data on singles than our Australian Bureau of Statistics. (more…)
Childfree/Childless Singles in Australia (Donna Ward Interview, Part 2) June 16, 2021
Posted by Onely in book review, Reviews.Tags: Australian marriage, childfree memoir, childless memoir, Donna Ward, She I Dare Not Name, single book review, single memoir, spinster, unmarried author
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Welcome to the latest installment in our series, Onelers Of The World. This is the second part of my interview with Australian author Donna Ward, who elaborates on aspects of her beautiful memoir She I Dare Not Name: A spinster’s meditations on life. The first part of the interview was about the differences between how singleness is viewed in Australia vs. in the US. Here in Part 2, we examine Donna’s experience of being childless in Australia. The bolded texts were bolded by me, because I had the same compulsion to highlight Donna’s interview insights that I had when I was reading She I Dare Not Name. . .
Christina to Donna: “But, do not be foxed!” you say, after having told us how Australians aren’t as marriage-happy as Americans. Because Australia nonetheless has plenty laws favoring people with families. You say, “As long as he or she has children, an Australian is a legitimate member of society.” Can you give an example(s) of specific instances where you would have had different privileges if you had had children?
Donna: Can I say, straight up, our laws are not as punitive or as stringent against childless singles as I hear they are in America.
Christina: You most certainly can!
Donna: We have never had a bachelor tax, for example, which was popular in Europe, the UK, and America from the eighteenth century, to encourage men to marry. Nevertheless, Australian economic and social policy is built on the assumption of the dual income family with children. So the cost of living—house prices, rent, utilities, food, holidays—is priced accordingly. Tax breaks exist for those with children on the assumption that there are no barriers to those living without the cost of children.
Our social welfare system and health insurance system, are based on the individual. This was a revolution that occurred during our progressive governments of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. During those decades, even though our Taxation Law assumes everyone will partner and parent, our social welfare system was designed around individual rights. This doesn’t mean they adequately support individuals, but it does mean it is an individual’s right to claim unemployment, supporting parent, and disability benefits, and the aged pension regardless of their marital status.
However, disability, health, and age care services are designed on the assumption that everyone has a family member, especially an adult child, who will steer them through the digital rabbit hole into these services, and safeguard them once they arrive. (more…)
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