Since Single at Heart: The Power, Freedom, and Heart-Filling Joy of Single Life was published on December 5, I’ve been asked hundreds of questions by readers, reporters, scholars, podcasters, and TV hosts. Most relevant to the concerns of people who care about fairness to single people was the question posed by sociologist Kris Marsh, author of The Love Jones Cohort: Single and Living Alone in the Black Middle Class, who was one of my conversation partners at a reading hosted by the Washington DC bookstore, Busboys and Poets. Marsh asked what I would change if I could change just one thing about how singles are treated. Was there a particularly unfair policy, for example?

Because we had been talking about how singles are mistreated by the medical establishment, I turned the question over to another conversation partner, Joan DelFattore, of the University of Delaware. She said that she would expand the Family and Medical Leave Act. As it stands, employees in eligible workplaces can take leave to care for a parent, child, or spouse. However, single people, who do not have a spouse, cannot take time off to care for someone important to them such as a close friend or sibling, nor can people such as close friends or siblings take time off to care for them. (Hear DelFattore’s other ideas.)

If I were to answer........

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