Flying Solo: Single Women in Midlife - Softcover

Anderson Ph. D., Carol M.; Stewart Ph. D., Susan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0393313476 ISBN 13: 9780393313475

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 1995

Synopsis

A groundbreaking book portraying the new American lifestyle of single midlife women.

Unmarried at 40―could there be anything worse? Our culture dictates that women who have failed to catch or hold the golden ring of marriage are destined to be deprived and depressed, perhaps even dangerous. Add the burden of age and you have a woman headed for disaster. Not necessarily so, say the authors of Flying Solo, who talked with never-married, divorced, and widowed women in midlife across the country. These women's stories offer blueprints for living, as well as inspiration, for other women "flying solo."

Most of these women did not intend to be single at midlife. Yet they have given up the dream of "happily ever after" to create lives on their own that are rich and rewarding. The authors share these women's stories as well as their practical advice on managing the mechanics of being single, transforming loneliness, redefining the place of work, developing friendship and support networks, living with and without intimacy and sex with men, and choosing to have and raise children. In the process they define not just a new American lifestyle but a new American Dream.

About this title

About the Author:

Carol M. Anderson, Ph.D., is a professor at University of Pittsburgh Medical School.

Susan Stewart, Ph.D., has a therapy practice in Greensboro, North Carolina.

Sona Dimidjian, Ph.D, is a member of the faculty of the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2006.

From Booklist:

Family therapist Anderson and her coauthors chronicle the ups (mostly) and downs (minimized) of 40- to 45-year-old single women in a manner intended to evoke cheers. Based on a two-year study of 87 women, their book details, more objectively than existing self-help manuals, both the joys and the travails of living alone. Peppering their work with quotes from their subjects, the authors start and end by emphasizing the gift of going solo, and in the middle, they discuss destroying the myths of spinster-ship, overcoming divorce and the never-married syndrome, exchanging fantasies for real-life dreams, dealing with relationships, and managing the chores of everyday living. Their positive outlook is contagious and obliterates the Harvard-Yale-Newsweek contention that single women over 40 have less chance to marry than to be taken hostage by a terrorist. Even Gloria Steinem would approve. Barbara Jacobs

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0393313476
• ISBN 13: 9780393313475
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 309