Head of Household

Margaret Dredge
Volume 23, No. 2

I've checked the "Head of Household" box on my tax forms the past two years. The description is true; it fits the life that I am living. I am the independent, self-supporting individual that contributes to my household budget of one person: me. 

When I was a little girl, I always thought that I would be married at the age of twenty-four because my mother married my father at that age. It seemed to be a respectable age for matrimony – old enough to have graduated from college, perhaps even to have served a mission. I thought that at twenty-four I would be an adult, ready to marry a fellow adult, and start a life together with him. Having graduated from college over two years ago, I find myself in a place that I did not anticipate in my childhood dreams of the future. I must embark on the adventure of creating my life alone. 

I relish some of the challenges of my independent life. I love earning my own paycheck and making decisions on how I will and will not spend my money. I enjoy living alone, surrounded by personal belongings that I choose to decorate my apartment; coming and going as I please; being as messy or as neat, loud, or quiet as I want to be in any given moment. 

However, I loathe taking care of my car; learning about its mechanics has been one area of knowledge that I have lazily and almost adamantly resisted acquiring. Sometimes, I muse, it would be so wonderful to have a man around to shoulder his stereotypical responsibility of taking care of the !*@? car. 

I feel unsure about financial planning for the future and wonder when is the appropriate time to put money down on a condominium or even a house. Shouldn't someone else be involved in -this mammoth decision? It is both frightening and exhilarating to have the one and only unanimous vote in my life-decision making: How long will I stay in this job? How long will I live in this city? When will I go to graduate school? 

Independence is, at times, uncomfortable. 

After I graduated from Oberlin College in the spring of 1997, I quickly entered a professional training fellowship program partially to avoid, at least for one more year, having to decide where I would go and what I would do. The fellowship conveniently offered me no autonomy in making life-decisions; my home office in Washington, D.C., dictated which organizations I would work with, which cities I would live in, and when and where I was to report to seminars, conferences, and training sessions. The year was entirely mapped out for me from Day 1, and I took great comfort in the knowledge that on September 19, I was expected in the offices of the Indianapolis Symphony, and then would move on to a new residency in Newark, NJ, in January, and complete my year-long training in Chicago during the summer. The temporary nature of this life gave me a sense of detachedness, freedom and loneliness all at the same time. 

I began attending LDS "singles" wards for the first time in my life during that year. At Oberlin there were only seven active members on the campus, and we traveled together to a family ward located approximately twenty minutes away. In my new, transient life, the "Singles Scene" seemed to be my best bet for making friends quickly and finding activities to fill the long evenings and weekends after work. In these various wards and branches, I was introduced to the experiences and attitudes of the late twentieth century single Mormon woman. 

I found that most of the women my age had been on missions, and I had not. Some women had decided to become endowed regardless of impending missions or marriages, but based rather purely on their personal spiritual convictions. These women impressed me with their spiritual strength and unflinching leadership in the gospel. The men available to them always paled by comparison. 

Marriage and courtship were constant topics of concern, ridicule, or exasperation. I remember being appalled as one sister prayed for more available men to join the branch during the closing prayer of a Relief Society meeting. One friend had a teacher's certificate and her BA but refused to take any job other than substitute teaching because she felt she couldn't make a career commitment without being engaged first. Another woman who was approaching the age of thirty told me that if she had known she wouldn't be married at this stage in her life, she would had made very different life choices. She looks back with regret over her twenties, acknowledging that she had been waiting for a man to come into her life and make decisions for her. On the other end of the spectrum, I have met women who have embraced careers rather than just holding down jobs. The range of talent and career interests of the women in my current singles ward is impressive. There are medical students and Ph.D. candidates studying at the University of Utah. Many women have careers centered around the community: nurses, teachers, fundraisers, or public servants (such as social workers with the DSS and drug-prevention agencies). Our Relief Society president is an entrepreneur who has started her own business and recently began traveling around the world for various consulting jobs. 

The Relief Society in this ward has not had one Home, Personal, and Family Enrichment meeting that has taught us the art of crocheting an attractive toilet seat cover or how to use an empty laundry detergent bottle as a handy garden hoe. These classes have been on stress management and meditation, automobile winterizing, financial planning, and temple work. Sister Sheri Dew's calling in the General Relief Society Presidency has made for a very public acknowledgment of the existence and vital contributions of never-married women in LDS society. A successful businesswoman before her call, Sister Dew leads the women of the Church with unabashed confidence and intelligence. In a recent address to the women of my stake, Sister Dew urged the sisters not to get "hung up" over the marriage issue but rather to focus on developing a strong sense of self. Her own experiences, frustration, and uncertainty regarding marriage made her message that much more powerful and sincere. 

The fact is, not all of the single women in the church will get married in this life. The world gender ratio, to say nothing of the odds within the church, are squarely against many women who hope for temple marriages. Even after the grim statistics are faced, there remains the serious deficit in the area of what I consider to be "marriage material" men in our world's population. Often when I observe the behavior and maturity level of our single male counterparts in the church, I become truly indignant. How could the beautiful, smart, and talented single women of the church be dealt such an unfair hand? Given the lot we have to work with, it is no wonder that many women choose to remain single. 

I used to think that perhaps if I were a size 6 or gorgeous or not quite so outspoken that I would be married by now – or at least be entertaining offers. Given my dating track record, I must not be the type of woman that attracts men. Maybe I'm too picky; maybe my standards and expectations of men are set a little too high. But when I stand up in front of my Relief Society sisters, I look out over a room filled with many different types of individuals, each impressive in her own way: a petite ballerina, a fearless athlete, a ravishingly beautiful model, an extremely accomplished musician, a creative photographer, an inquisitive scientist, a wise-cracking comic. There is nothing wrong with them. There is nothing wrong with me. 

And there is nothing wrong with being single. 

Even though I long for intimacy in a romantic relationship and for a marriage partnership that includes the requisite dog and 2.5 children, I find that the longer I am single, the more content I am to be so. In fact, it is more challenging to put up with the stigma of singleness than to actually live the life of a single woman. When I find myself in a cultural hall for the wedding reception of a 19-year-old second cousin, once-removed who has just met (literally) and married the Missionary of her dreams, I dread the inescapable tradition that marks me as oh-so available. I'm inevitably pushed to the front of the group of single women by a well-meaning relative to fight for the bouquet that will dub me the lucky "next one to go."

Actually, now that I'm one of the only single women in my twenties in my family, the group of fighting femininity has had to be augmented by little nine-and ten-year-old girls. I usually let them catch the bouquet; they'll probably get married before I do, anyway. 

When I'm yakking with my hairdresser over the whir of the blow dryer, I tell her about how happy I am with my job, my ward, my gym, my book group, my recreational classes, my apartment, my neighborhood, my friends, my family, and travel during vacations. She smiles and says, "Oh, good for you!" but I know that she is waiting for news of a man. Men are always the juiciest pieces of gossip, and I couldn't possibly be that happy and content without one, could I? 

Margaret Dredge moved from Arlington, Massachusetts, to Salt Lake City a year ago. She is an Associate Director Of Development for the Utah Symphony.

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