Joanna Gray
Joanna Gray is a writer and confidence coach
Exciting times for young women as the latest movement is on the march to further immiserate their reproductive years: it is now deemed an ‘ick’ to have a boyfriend. A recent essay in Vogue by Chanté Joseph elucidated clearly how including a boyfriend on social media posts is simply not done any more.
On the Delusional Diaries podcast, fronted by two New York-based influencers, Halley and Jaz, they discuss whether having a boyfriend is “lame” now. … “Even partnered women will lament men and heterosexuality – partly in solidarity with other women, but also because it is now fundamentally uncool to be a boyfriend-girl. … From my conversations, one thing is certain: the script is shifting. Being partnered doesn’t affirm your womanhood anymore; it is no longer considered an achievement, and, if anything, it’s become more of a flex to pronounce yourself single.
Stories are shared about women cropping out their boyfriend’s heads on holiday posts or unfollowing people who include boyfriends in their stories. The article went viral with the general response being a loud: ‘Yes, having a boyfriend is lame or right-wing: if you have one, be embarrassed.’ The article prompted a 45-minute episode of BBC Radio 4’s Antisocial with a breathless Adam Fleming asking female social media influencers their experiences of ‘photoshopping out’ their boyfriends or not seeking one at all.
So far, so 2025. And yet, the whole thing is so existentially sad. I was hoping for a glimmer of real honesty about the deep unsurpassed soul-enhancing joy that comes from partnering up and creating a family. There came none.
Perhaps some older women can persuasively convey to younger women why it’s worth the social media ick-factor of having a boyfriend, in order to participate in a committed relationship and create a family? Alas, the current vibes are not having this either. A rash of books are being published by older women about the benefits and pleasures of being single. It’s known in the publishing world as ‘single-positive literature’.
Lucy Meggeson was recently interview by an enthusiastic Jeremy Vine about her book Shiny Happy Singles, Celebrating the Joy of Childfree Lives. The usual lines were shared about how being single and child-free allowed her to travel, see friends, enjoy lie-ins. Again, it was a deeply unsettling listen, not least because I didn’t believe her. When describing an ‘all single female trip to Iceland’ she emitted that compulsory verbal uptick that people do when discussing something ghastly. None of this of course is to condemn people who are single against their will, but I do wish to question the idea that a single life is something of a summum bonum.
I teach a workshop for older teenagers on ‘Transitioning to adult life’. We start with what they love, their priorities in life, painting a picture of where they want to live, how they want to contribute to society. We then work backwards to see how this might be achieved. When I first ran the course, I found it was the boys who were surprisingly clear-eyed about what they want to achieve: some would say straight-forwardly: ‘I want to play golf’, others would say ‘I want to travel’ or ‘I want to study econ at Cambridge’. The girls were a little more hesitant. I changed my introduction and now say: “There is no need to be specific: ideas or desires can be vague – anything from ‘I would like to live by the sea, or I fancy a flat big enough for parties, or I want to get married and have children’.” Once I had given permission for girls to say this, their hesitancy retreated and many girls have articulated, at the age of 16, 17 or 18, that they would like to get married and have children. And why should anyone grimace at this, particularly given the acknowledged declining happiness of Western women?
Now that London primary schools are closing because of the collapsing birth-rate, perhaps this new ‘all the single ladies’ narrative won’t take off. Instead, the trad wife influencers, gorgeous women in ruched blouses who make raw milk panna cottas to feed their eight children, will win the hearts and minds of Generation Alpha. I worry though that this glamorous version of mating will appear as out of reach as the trend in the 2000s that celebrities had for adopting a string of Bennetton babies.
Instead, if there is to be a vibe shift towards celebrating the elemental joy of mating for life and raising children, more weight needs to be given to the joys of raising children across a lifespan, rather than fixating on the possible negatives of the baby years. Our eldest son (18) has recently left home to work on an Australian cattle farm and I cannot convey the pride and deep love I have for him, his father and his brothers – it surpasses anything else I have experienced in my life. The everyday pleasures of mating for life and creating from pure love a family, of watching new humans grow into their own splendid adulthoods, is surely worthy of its own publishing branding, influencer label or solitary article in Vogue.
“No,” my husband shouts, “The girls have got to study STEM. They love it.”
This article was originally published by the Daily Sceptic.
