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.
