Changing Careers: Is It Different for Singles?

Recently, I received a book in the mail with a request that I review it for this blog. Hallie Crawford's Flying Solo: Career Transition Tips for Singles may be of interest to some singles for what it offers at face value. I'll describe that in Section I of this post.

What I find even more intriguing, though, is the worldview that is conveyed between the lines. Crawford is an author who wants to send a positive message to singles. She is not a deliberate practitioner of singlism. So I read the book closely to see what assumptions about single and married life were woven throughout her text. That's in Section II. As always, my hope is that from my analysis, you can get more than just a sense of the implicit messages in this particular book. I hope you can also hone your skills at recognizing and challenging implicit assumptions about singlehood and marriage, wherever you find them.

Finally, in Section III, I'll pose some bigger questions, at the societal level, about what it is like for single people to pursue major career changes, and what it could be like in a more idyllic world.

I. About the Book: Face Value

The book is what the subtitle says it is: a compendium of "career transition tips for singles." There are pieces of advice for all phases of the transition process, from figuring out whether it really is time to leave your current career, to coming up with your dream career, to marshalling the financial and emotional resources you will need along the way. There are sections on interviewing, networking, and writing a resume, as well as a list of resources.

The author, Hallie Crawford, is a career coach, and the book also functions as an advertisement for her services. Flying Solo is a quick and easy read, and I think you can get from it some sense of what it would be like to have Crawford as your coach.

Crawford strikes me as a motivated, talented, and gracious person who would be fun to work with, if having a coach is your thing. Personally, I don't agree with her general approach. She takes too seriously "The Secret" and "The Law of Attraction," whereby we become magnets for anything we want (health, wealth, and all the rest) by thinking positive thoughts. Here's a sample sentence from The Secret book: "Food cannot cause you to put on weight, unless you think it can." By my reckoning, that's not a secret, it's a hoax.

Millions of people are Secret fans, so I don't presume my own skepticism to be widely shared. More importantly, I don't think the magical thinking subtext of Crawford's book takes away from the potential usefulness of some of her tips.

I don't agree with all of the tips. Still, if I were considering a big career change right now, I think I'd appreciate the opportunity to read through a discussion of so many of the issues that come up, especially from someone who has coached many other people through the process.

I like Crawford's recognition that employers will sometimes expect single people to work longer and harder than everyone else, and her recommendation that singles be prepared to set boundaries. She also raises the issue of friends who are not supportive of your plans to make a big career change, and suggests that you don't bring up the topic with them until you are farther along in the process. I like that a lot better than what I've seen in some other self-help books - that is, if your friends don't like your goal, ditch them.

II. More about the Book: Between the Lines

Although Crawford's book is specifically about single people's career transitions, her assumptions about what single and married life are like are implicit throughout. That's what interests me most.

Here is a non-random sampling of quotes from the book. Consider what you think of each point.

• As a single person, you can "go anywhere and do anything you want because you have no personal obligations or responsibilities to anyone else."

• Being single "can be a lonely place."

• One of the emotional obstacles that singles face: "My friends aren't being supportive."

• As a single person, you might "start comparing yourself to your attached friends, wondering if and when you'll be on that path."

• For singles, when you are down, "there is no immediate partner who can pat you on the back and tell you everything will work out all right."

• Here's a quote from one of the author's clients: "As a single person, I feel that my friends and family support my career transitions. But that's not the same as a husband creating a life vision with me, or supporting me so I can take chances, or being there whether or not my risks pay off."

What these quotes add up to is a conventional view of what it means to be single or married: Single people have their independence, because they do not have any obligations or responsibilities to anyone else. Single life can be lonely, and friends can be unsupportive. Even when your friends are supportive, that's not the same as having a spouse who is always there for you. As a single person, you don't have a partner to pat you on the back and tell you everything will be okay. You start looking at your "attached" friends and wondering when you will be on that path.

Not all of these statements are untrue. Sure, single people can be lonely. Sometimes their friends are unsupportive. Sometimes married people have partners who share their vision and help and encourage them through their career transitions and everything else.

What's Missing from this Conventional View?

What's missing is the other side of the picture. Like so many other authors and journalists and scientists and pundits and people on the street, Crawford underscores what is potentially problematic about being single and what is potentially great about being married. The parallel advantages of being single and disadvantages of being married go mostly unacknowledged.

I say that even though some of her observations about single people were offered up as pros rather than cons. Take the first quote, for example: As a single person, you can "go anywhere and do anything you want because you have no personal obligations or responsibilities to anyone else."

A. The Missing Persons

This is the view of a single person as an untethered free agent, with no obligations to any other humans. (Never mind that there are nearly 13 million single parents.) It is true that with regard to other adults, single people do not have the legal obligations (or protections) that come with official marriage. In fact, though, they are often the ones doing the work of keeping families and friends and communities together. They maintain intergenerational ties, and provide plenty of care for aging or ill relatives and friends.

When my mother was gravely ill, she was in Dunmore, Pennsylvania, and I was living in Charlottesville, Virginia, the university town where I taught. Ever chance I could get, I made the 377 mile trip to see her. A few years later, I made my big career transition and moved to the West Coast. I would not have done so while she was so sick - not because she would have guilted me into staying, or because I had an official legal obligation to stay. It was what I wanted to do.

To say that single people have no obligations or responsibilities to others also dismisses or devalues or simply fails to recognize all of the important people in their lives. Again, it is true that single people have no official requirements to care for friends or siblings or any other category of person who has no standing in the law. But they may value deeply their relationships with those people, and that can be an emotional constraint to moving, though one that is rarely acknowledged or accommodated.

In Virginia, I had friends who had a significant place in my life. I had what I thought of as concentric circles of friends, some very close, others not as close, but all geographically accessible. It took me years, if not decades, to develop that network. I wasn't legally "responsible" for any of those people, but moving 3,000 miles away from them was one of the few serious downsides of making my life-changing transition. They are still emotionally important to me, but I no longer get to meet them regularly for dinner at an outdoor table on the downtown mall.

B. The Missing Marriages

Consider again how the author's single client described the picture in her mind of what it means to be married. Having supportive friends, she said, is "not the same as a husband creating a life vision with me, or supporting me so I can take chances, or being there whether or not my risks pay off."

To her, getting married is like stepping into a fairy tale, where the handsome prince is forever holding you, carrying you over rough waters and rocky streams and toward the rainbow. I think there really are some princely and princessly spouses, but if they were all that way, the divorce rate would not be so high.

I would have liked the book better if it seemed to instill a more balanced view of single and married life. It is fine to acknowledge that some single people are lonely, but not without cautioning that marriage can be lonely, too. It is fine to list unsupportive friends as a possible emotional obstacle, but not without admitting that spouses can also be unsupportive. The tip that Crawford offered about unsupportive friends - just don't bring up the topic of your big move - may be harder to implement if the nagging naysayer is sharing your home and your bed.

My concern is that readers could come away from this book thinking that they need career tips because they are single, and if only they got married, many of the apparent challenges of making a big move would simply vanish. I don't think the author actually believes that, and I know she is trying to be encouraging to singles. But there's just too much talk, for my tastes, of the lonely, free-standing single people and the comforted and cushioned married people.

C. The Missing Perspectives

When I made my big career change, it was true (as Crawford notes) that as a single person I did not have the salary of a spouse to fall back on if my big plans did not turn out so great. I was taking a financial risk, and I was taking it myself. For me, though, that made it easier to go ahead with my move than if I had been married. Even with a supportive spouse, I would have been uncomfortable contributing less than my share to our collective finances, and taking an economic risk that would make my partner vulnerable, too. I liked the fact that the risk was my own.

As for having no one to encourage me all through my career transition because I was single - that wasn't my experience. I still remember the friend who first suggested that I try to create a career as an independent scholar, at a time when that seemed far too fanciful a possibility. I have a flashbulb memory of walking along the beach with another friend, at a time when I was due to pack up and return back to the East Coast after a 1-year sabbatical; she suggested that I try to extend my sabbatical for another year. A third friend was creating her own career out of the aspects of her training and expertise that she enjoyed the most; we exchanged stories all along the way. Still do.

III. Thoughts toward a Fantasy World for Singles Making Career Changes

The world of work, like so much of the rest of society, has not yet caught up with how we actually live our lives in the 21st century. Couples and nuclear families are still at the center of policies and procedures, but they are no longer the actual demographic center of American life. There are now more single-person households than nuclear family households. Most of those people who are living alone are not emotionally or socially isolated; there are important people in their lives - they just don't live under the same roof.

Now consider how employers treat their new recruits or the employees they are asking to make major moves. Do they offer to pay more in moving expenses if the employee is married than if the employee is single? Do they pull out all the stops to find employment for the spouse of the person they are hiring, without making any comparable efforts on behalf of the single worker? If so, maybe that should change.

My suggestions are motivated in part by simple fairness. A company hiring two workers, one married and one single, for the same position should not compensate one of them more than the other. That's the same reason I think that employers should offer all employees a menu of benefits from which each worker can choose the benefits they need most, adding up to the same dollar amount.

The other motivation behind my suggestion is the more radical notion that it is time to recognize the most important people in everyone's lives. If a company is willing to pay to move a spouse, why not do the same for a sibling or a close friend? (I know, it costs more - but the benefit is shared by all employees, and not just the married ones.) If a company is willing to look for employment opportunities for a spouse, why not also help find living arrangements for an aging parent?

Those are just a few of my fantasies. What are yours?