Unmarried To Each Other

Unmarried to Each Other is a smart, practical guide for unmarried couples, based on the more than 100 stories and real-life experiences of unmarried partners around the country. This book was written by a couple who, themselves, are in a committed nine-year unmarried relationship. For people who are unmarried now or forever, the book is filled with information about the joys and the common challenges to love without wedding rings, including answers to questions like: Is living together right for us? How can we explain our relationship to our grandmothers? How can I get my workplace to provide health benefits to my domestic partner? Are there problems for couples who have kids without being married? How can we plan a wedding or ceremony without getting legally married? Filled with dozens of funny, real-life stories and savvy insights, Unmarried to Each Other is the definitive resource for couples bound by love, if not by marriage, for one of the fastest-growing household types in the U.S. today.

"Today, only twenty percent of Americans are wed by age twenty-nine, compared to nearly sixty percent in 1960. The Population Reference Bureau calls it a 'dramatic reversal.' [This book presents a] portrait of contemporary American life and how we got here, through the lens of the single American woman, covering class, race, [and] sexual orientation, and filled with ... anecdotes from ... contemporary and historical figures"--

The authors provide financial planning tools and strategies that enable unmarried couples to solve the financial, legal, and discriminatory dilemmas inherent in their living situation.

Today, a third of American children are born outside of marriage, up from one child in twenty in the 1950s, and rates are even higher among low-income Americans. Many herald this trend as one of the most troubling of our time. But the decline in marriage does not necessarily signal the demise of the two parent family—over 80 percent of unmarried couples are still romantically involved when their child is born and nearly half are living together. Most claim they plan to marry eventually. Yet half have broken up by their child's third birthday. What keeps some couples together and what tears others apart? After a breakup, how do fathers so often disappear from their children's lives? An intimate portrait of the challenges of partnering and parenting in these families, Unmarried Couples with Children presents a variety of unique findings. Most of the pregnancies were not explicitly planned, but some couples feel having a child is the natural course of a serious relationship. Many of the parents are living with their child plus the mother's child from a previous relationship. When the father also has children from a previous relationship, his visits to see them at their mother's house often cause his current partner to be jealous. Breakups are more often driven by sexual infidelity or conflict than economic problems. After couples break up, many fathers complain they are shut out, especially when the mother has a new partner. For their part, mothers claim to limit dads' access to their children because of their involvement with crime, drugs, or other dangers. For couples living together with their child several years after the birth, marriage remains an aspiration, but something couples are resolutely unwilling to enter without the financial stability they see as a sine qua non of marriage. They also hold marriage to a high relational standard, and not enough emotional attention from their partners is women's number one complaint. Unmarried Couples with Children is a landmark study of the family lives of nearly fifty American children born outside of a marital union at the dawn of the twenty-first century. Based on personal narratives gathered from both mothers and fathers over the first four years of their children's lives, and told partly in the couples' own words, the story begins before the child is conceived, takes the reader through the tumultuous months of pregnancy to the moment of birth, and on through the child's fourth birthday. It captures in rich detail the complex relationship dynamics and powerful social forces that derail the plans of so many unmarried parents. The volume injects some much-needed reality into the national discussion about family values, and reveals that the issues are more complex than our political discourse suggests.

"Single women can sometimes be magnets for awkward questions, especially within the church community. What do you do with your life if you're not married? With an emphasis on strong marriages and biblical childrearing, unmarried women in the church can begin to think that they are somehow on the sidelines. But this is not the case. In this helpful volume, Nancy Wilson provides straightforward counsel and encouragement for those struggling with "the wait." She addresses practical concerns like building a career but focuses more specifically on important relational issues such as interacting with competitive women, respecting your parents even after you've left their home, establishing standards for male friends, and keeping the right outlook on your life. Whether a woman is called to singleness for a short time or for her whole life, she is called to be fruitful in God's kingdom"--

“First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes a baby in the baby carriage.”That's how the story goes, right? We all grow up hearing the same fairy tales, and imagining the same futures. But what happens when the future you have always pictured for yourself, is ripped away before you ever even get the chance to pursue it?Single Infertile Female tells the story of a girl, still young and looking for love, who is hit with a medical diagnosis that threatens to destroy the future she always believed she would have. Faced with a choice between now or never, she has to decide if love and marriage should always have to come first. And if they don't, can you still keep looking for them, even while actively pursuing that baby in the baby carriage?

As unmarried parents, you face many unique legal, financial, and child-rearing challenges that married couples do not. How do I explain this situation to my child? Can I leave the paternity or maternity section blank on a birth certificate? How much do I need to tell my child's teacher? Award-winning author and attorney Brette McWhorter Sember provides real-life scenarios and resources to help guide you through the myriad issues that face unmarried singles and couples today. This first-of-its-kind parenting manual covers these and other important topics, including: Custody concerns Paternity issues Adoption laws Children's rights Unmarried with Children has answers to all your questions that have gone unanswered-until now. Brette McWhorter Sember, J.D. is an award-winning author, mother of two, former attorney, and freelancer whose writing career began eight years ago when she left her law practice to stay home after the birth of her second child. The recipient of the Mothers at Home 1999 Media Award, she has written more than twenty books, including The Everything Pregnancy over 35 Book, How to Parent with Your Ex, and Gay and Lesbian Parenting Choices. Her freelance work has appeared in more than 130 publications, including American Baby, Child, ePregnancy, Writer's Digest, Personal Journaling, Divorce Magazine, Home Business Journal, Pregnancy and Conceive. Technical Reviewer:Dr. Phil S. Hall, Ph.D. is a licensed psychologist and licensed school psychologist, and is the principal author of two nonfiction books on children, Educating Oppositional and Defiant Children and the upcoming Parenting Your Defiant Child. He holds a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Montana. Dr. Hall currently specializes in working with behaviorally challenged children and adults on American Indian Reservations and for various Plains States school systems.

An eye-opening, funny, painful, and always truthful in-depth examination of modern relationships and a wake-up call for single women about getting real about Mr. Right. You have a fulfilling job, great friends, and the perfect apartment. So what if you haven’t found “The One” just yet. He’ll come along someday, right? But what if he doesn’t? Or what if Mr. Right had been, well, Mr. Right in Front of You—but you passed him by? Nearing forty and still single, journalist Lori Gottlieb started to wonder: What makes for lasting romantic fulfillment, and are we looking for those qualities when we’re dating? Are we too picky about trivial things that don’t matter, and not picky enough about the often overlooked things that do? In Marry Him, Gottlieb explores an all-too-common dilemma—how to reconcile the desire for a happy marriage with a list of must-haves and deal-breakers so long and complicated that many great guys get misguidedly eliminated. On a quest to find the answer, Gottlieb sets out on her own journey in search of love, discovering wisdom and surprising insights from sociologists and neurobiologists, marital researchers and behavioral economists—as well as single and married men and women of all generations.