NEWSBYCHRISTINA CAMPBELL

Facebook allows us to write whatever we want in our profile's "Religion" box -- even Peanut Butter Cups. So why, for our "Relationship," must we choose from a pre-set list of nine choices: single; in a relationship; engaged; married; it's complicated; in an open relationship; widowed; separated; and divorced?

Facebook needs to make the Relationship status a write-in field. I at least want the option of flaunting of my relationships with my cat or my hairdresser. But there are serious, bigger problems at stake here.

By forcing users to choose one "relationship" from a narrow range of options centering around marital status and sexual habits, Facebook perpetuates our society's entrenched mate-mania, which over-worships the sexual-couple-unit, and marriage in particular. This bias devalues other important relationships. It devalues platonic friends and non-spousal family members. And it devalues people for whom conventional coupling/marriage is either not appealing or not an option.

Many of us have experienced this mate-mania in common discourse, such as the single person who weathers comments like "You're so awesome, why are you still single?" But most people don't realize that this irritating cultural quirk is actually codified into government policy. In the U.S. legal code over 1300 laws mention marital status, favoring married couples by a wide margin. People seldom question this blatant discrimination because they're brainwashed by the myth of marriage-as-panacaea, a myth encouraged by casually couple-centric phenomena like the Facebook Relationship Drop Down Menu of Doom.

Have you ever visited a doctor for distressing but subjective symptoms -- maybe headaches or nausea -- and been told the problems would improve if you weren't so anxious/attention-seeking/over-achieving or otherwise emotionally off-balance? Did you think the doctor relied too little on science and too much on his psychic powers, but feel too intimidated to argue because of the embossed diplomas on the walls?

Well, imagine you do argue. No, you say, I'm not crazy, and I want proper care. The physician -- perhaps irritated or frustrated -- could then diagnose Munchausen Syndrome, the feigning of illness to get attention.

Now imagine your child is the sick one. The physician could diagnose Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy (MSBP) and bam, you're accused of faking your child's illness, perhaps even poisoning or beating him to instigate symptoms. While such abusive parents surely and sadly exist, MSBP may be dangerously overdiagnosed, often at the expense of "uppity" women who challenge the male-dominated medical or legal establishments. Studies indicate that doctors tend to take female patients' complaints less seriously than male patients'; presumably this unfortunate trend would apply to a woman's complaints on behalf of her child.

An MSBP diagnosis doesn't necessarily require extreme behavior. The guidelines for diagnosing MSBP include situations that could apply to any concerned parent whose child has a puzzling or treatment-resistant illness. Several of the guidelines devalue a parent's (particularly the mother's) agency and attempt to pigeonhole her into a prescribed, acceptable -- and sometimes contradictory -- range of behavior, with no regard to the extenuating circumstances of her child's illness. For example: "A parent who appears to be unusually calm in the face of serious difficulties in her child’s medical course while being highly supportive and encouraging of the physician, or one who is angry, devalues staff, and demands further intervention, more procedures, second opinions, and transfers to other more sophisticated facilities."

If you are an unmarried cohabitating American without children, chances are your neighbors don't regard you as having a family. This is according to a New York Times article, which cites a survey by Indiana University sociology professor Brian Powell. The 2003, 2006, and 2010 survey found that "the majority of Americans" would call a cohabitating couple "family" if they were same-sex with children but not married, or same-sex without children but married. Yet the majority of survey respondents would not — perish the thought! — define a cohabitating gay or hetero couple as "family" if they were unmarried with no children.

The article headline? "Study Finds Wider View of Family" (bolded text is mine). Yes, it's wider because it includes long-overdue recognition of gay couples as family — well, of some gay couples. Not the couples who choose not to (or cannot) pursue the "traditional" relationship solidification routes of marriage and babies. And hetero couples who don't sign on the dotted line? Well, they don't count either.

Okay, so they're not a "family." So what? Is this just another one of the many inane, but relatively harmless, preconceived notion people have about unmarrieds? (Other fun facts about singles not supported by solid data include: single people have shorter lives, tend to be celibate/virgins/shy, and want a partner above all else.)

No. This cultural prejudice against non-nuclear families is a big problem, because it is institutionalized (see here and here)  in federal and state laws, disadvantaging unmarried and gay people. Those laws will never change unless the populace's prejudices do.

Happy Unmarried and Single Americans Week! This seven-day extravaganza honors singledom as a viable and respectable lifestyle. Although some pundits and dating websites try to co-opt the holiday into another excuse to "fix" singles by turning them into halves of couples, that was never the original purpose. So in honor of USA week, let's take on the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA).

FMLA privileges the conjugal heterosexual marital relationship, at the expense of not only gays but all unmarried and single people. If Martians read the Act, they would think that the only people who get sick in America are husbands, wives, children, and parents, because these are the people FMLA allows workers time off to care for, without risking their jobs.  (Here's what happens when non-nuclear loved ones fall ill.)

At the least, the FMLA should mirror the U.S. federal government's "care time," which says employees can leave their jobs temporarily to care for "any individual related by blood or affinity whose close association with the employee is the equivalent of a family relationship.”

After the 111th Congress starts in January 2011, you can join the Alternatives to Marriage Project (AtMP) in petitioning our lawmakers to expand FMLA. For now, AtMP asks readers to share your experiences dealing with FMLA or similar state-sponsored leave programs.

It's all over my news feed: young single women in urban areas now make more money than their single male counterparts. Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and numerous other outlets recently reported that unmarried, childfree women aged 22 to 30 earn eight percent more than men of equivalent status, according to the research firm Reach Advisors.

Partial yay!

Partial, because it would be nicer if the sexes earned the same amount. Young single women are more likely than the men to have attended college, putting them in a higher earning bracket, while at the same time less educated men are losing jobs due to the recession and associated "decimation of the manufacturing employment base" that previously provided them with well-paying jobs, according to USA Today.

So let's not break out the champagne yet. Single, young, childfree urban women, while an important demographic, are only one slice of the female populace, a populace that overall still earns far less than men. Single women -- not necessarily of the young, childfree, urban persuasion -- still earn less than married women. They still suffer particularly hard from the recession, as reported by Afro and The Huffington Post, in part because government and commerce perpetuate policies that force singles to subsidize married people, and also because the gender gap tends to hit harder on women of all ages who do not have a (normally higher-earning) male's income to fall back on. Women of color, who statistically and historically speaking start from a baseline of less privilege, feel the gap more acutely and have the most to gain from its obliteration.

Let's play see if you can spot the entrenched singlism and matrimania:

Mathematics Policy Research (MPR) reviewed the government-sponsored Building Strong Families initiative, which supported "eight voluntary programs that offer relationship skills education and other support services to unwed couples who are expecting a baby or have just had one."  MPR conducted their review because "studies have shown children fare best when raised by both their biological parents — particularly when their parents have a positive and healthy relationship.

Building Strong Families (BSF), the initiative being reviewed by MPR, is an effort to "develop and evaluate programs designed to help interested unwed parents" by teaching skills like "communication, conflict management, and building intimacy and trust," and providing, among other things, "individual support from a family support worker."

First, why do unwed couples need to be singled out for relationship skills education? I know several married couples with horrid interpersonal skills and several unmarried couples who appear to have wonderful techniques for making their relationships work.  Second, why limit services to couples with (or expecting) children? This perpetuates a narrow view of "family" that denigrates extended family relationships and implies that childfree couples somehow either don't need, deserve, or want to learn to strengthen their relationship.

MPR's main reason for studying BSF, that "studies have shown children fare best when raised by both their biological parents," is not accurate. Children raised by one, two, or more supportive adults do better than children raised in a strife-filled environment, regardless of whose parents are married or not. So children's welfare should not be used as an excuse to perpetuate the culture of marriage.

This is how entrenched singlism is in U.S. society: even a successful man raised by his grandmother lets loose a disparaging comment about single mothers without a second thought, only realizing his faux pas when shamed into awareness by a media backlash.

But I have no beef with Eastern Michigan University football coach Ron English. I respect his apology for what he said: "We wanted guys that had a father in their background. A guy that's raised by his mom all the time, and please don't take me wrong, but the reality is that you've got to teach that guy how to be taught by a man."

He later claimed temporary insanity, saying, "I don't know how you could say that. It doesn't even make sense." (I assume that's "you" as in "me.") No, it doesn't make sense. His first remark was so outrageous and obviously -- if accidentally -- sexist and singlist that everyone jumped on him. But ironically, one of the very people chastising English for his blunder actually committed arguably worse singlism and sexism than English. And it was a lot more subtle, as are many of the "isms" we deal with today, which makes them all the more destructive. Detroit Crockett coach Rod Oden described English's statement as follows: "That's insane. What he's asking for, we don't have. A lot of the kids are from broken homes. We kind of fill that void for a lot of these guys as far as being a father figure. It's disheartening to know that he said something like that."

Well-known conservative activist and anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly didn't actually say the words, "Women are like children," but she appears to believe as much. She embarrassed Republican congressional candidate Rocky Raczkowski at his fundraiser in Troy, Michigan by saying, "Unmarried women, 70 percent of unmarried women, voted for Obama, and this is because when you kick your husband out, you've got to have big brother government to be your provider."

I doubt many of us feel shocked that someone who opposed the Equal Rights Amendment thinks women need patriarchal figures to take care of them. But I wanted to protest in particular her slam against unmarried people. All too often -- even in liberal circles -- singles are stereotyped as  immature, dependent, and less complete than married people. Schlafly's statement implies not only that women need a provider, but that unmarried people (women in particular) need a provider, or another prop to complete their desperate, half-empty lives.

Single moms get the brunt of this stereotyping. Just days after the Raczkowski convention, Schlafly -- she's on a roll -- told Talking Points Memo, "All welfare goes to unmarried moms."

Does a declining population necessarily correspond with decreased economic clout? Governments around the world are encouraging women to have more babies in order to boost falling birthrates and ensure that the aging populations will have a robust younger generation to support them economically. Lately, the governments of Taiwan and Korea are pushing childbearing, but many other societies have their own More Baby Movements as well. When I read such stories, I wonder if these initiatives make real economic sense, or whether they are sociologically and environmentally harmful knee-jerk reactions to declining populations.

My own reaction is that childbirth campaigns are sexist and matrimaniacal.  Sexist, because these campaigns place undue and disproportionate pressure on women, who still bear not only the largest burden when it comes to childbearing, but childrearing as well. Matrimaniacal, because some of the campaigns focus on encouraging people to marry, as if children are an inherent byproduct of marriage and as if marriage is meant mainly for producing children.

So when I read that Taiwan's Interior Ministry, to increase the country's low birth rate, is organizing yearly matchmaking events for the staff of "every agency under its control" and also seeking a slogan that will "make everybody want to have children," my instinctive reaction was, "Eeek."

Having lived in Taiwan, I remember it as a country of gorgeous rocky and sandy beaches, with river valleys running through high green hills, the coastline peppered with occasional cities that are currently, shall we say, a tad congested -- but which do fuel the country's powerful economic engines. Yet I'm not sure a large, young population is necessary to maintain this growth. Does it really make sense to produce more twenty-somethings to work eighty-something hour work weeks, or could sheer manpower be replaced by more efficient social and governmental policies?

Even though Michigan is the best state in the U.S. (I know this because I'm from there), it seems to have ethically dysfunctional elements in its appellate court system — namely, Judges Karen Fort Hood, Christopher Murray, and Michael Talbot. They recently ruled that lesbian Renee Harmon, who for almost a decade had acted as half of a parenting couple to three children, does not have the right to joint custody of those children. Harmon has been denied access to her daughter and sons in an acrimonious breakup with her partner of nineteen years, Tammy Davis, whom the couple jointly chose to be the children's biological mother because she was younger than Harmon.

It's Harmon's own fault, really. Because she wasn't the children's biological mother, she should have at least adopted them officially in order to protect her access, right? After all, according to the Appeals Court judges, the infallible Child Custody Act tells us that only proper way to be a parent is "through procreation, or through adoption or the presumption ... arising from a child born in a legal marriage."  What's that? Oh, right, Harmon and Davis weren't allowed to get married — that whole "gay couple" thing. And Michigan only allows adoptions to married couples — or single parents. Because apparently it's better for a child to have one mom than two.

So Harmon's nineteen years together with Davis, her ten years with her daughter, and seven years with her twin boys, don't count because the Appeals Court has bought into the federally sanctioned obsession with marriage certificates.