“I heard a lot of people stressing about getting married,” Beamon said. “I heard a lot of people feeling pressure by their family to get married. But I hadn’t heard a lot of people saying, ‘You know what, I’m happy with my single life.’ And so I wanted to give voice to those people who are happily single.”
The study also found single Black women are often the product of single-parent families, and may be following models they saw their own mother, aunts and grandmothers live out.
“It’s not that these women don’t have fears of growing old alone, it’s not that these women didn’t picture their lives turning out differently,” Beamon said. “It’s accepting the lives they have and carving out a happy life. They’re now looking for a man to complement their life rather than to complete their life.”
