Connie the single mother until I saw her age, 60. Aren't her kids grown up by now? Do we still refer to women as single mothers(for 'sympathy' factor) when their children are adults?
Are women still single mothers when their children are all over the age of 18?
Yes and no.
The question is more relevant to the 50+ age set, the types that are now on Match and OurTime in large and ever growing numbers. One of the fastest growing segments of online dating is the 50-65 age group. The 50+ age group has yet to become big adopters of the swipe apps, but they are still a sizable portion now of the legacy website type dating tech services.
With gray divorce on the rise as well and an aging populace in the United States and other Western nations, there are more age 50+ singles than ever.
If you're a 55 year old woman today, you were born in 1964-65. You probably had your kids between 1987 and 2000, which covers a good portion of the Millennial generation and the early part of Gen Z.
If you're an older guy (45+) and looking to date women 45+, you're likely to run into single women with kids over 18.
I don't think women with children over 18 whose children live in a separate residence should count as a single mom. However, if a woman has children over 18 and they live at home, then she is essentially a single mom.
Even when a woman in her 40s/50s has a kid or kids over 18 who live in a separate residence, it does not mean that there's no parenting involved. These women will still be interacting with their children regularly. Additionally, Millennails and Generation Z members are often in unstable work situations. If the 20 something kid of a 55 year old single woman gets laid off and has to move back home, that's an unpleasant situation. That happens a fair amount.
In long term relationships with participants in their 50s/60s with adult children in their 20s/30s from prior relationships, there are a lot of uncomfortable family dynamics involved. The adult children have an uneasy relationship with each other because they didn't grow up with the other partner's adult children and they are not excited to spend their holidays (non-pandemic times) with another random 25-34 year old who they didn't meet until their 20s or 30s.
I think they will just sponge off men even more than usual.
Unemployed women do not experience an SMV drop when they lose their jobs. An unemployed woman who is single might become even more focused upon a man's job in evaluating new dating options than when she was unemployed. If you're a man, trying to form a new romantic relationship when unemployed is a huge challenge, even if you have decent savings and are at no immediate risk of homelessness or having to move in with a parent, sibling, or friend. Unemployed, unattached women are usually getting good kickbacks from their parents if they are under 40 and white collar, so they usually aren't at any risk. Even if an unemployed, unattached woman has to go live with their parents, it means very little to her SMV. During the worst of the Great Recession in the late 2000s/early 2010s, I knew a woman in her late 20s who was marginally employed/unemployed who was dating a man with an annual salary in the low 100,000s. Try finding an unemployed man dating a woman making $110,000/year. It'd be real difficult to find that.
www.nytimes.com
