Day67_It’s time to ditch the stereotypes and look at the realities behind singledom

ditch 摆脱

stereotype 刻板印象

singledom (dom 处于某种状态, freedom)

As a society, we barely discuss the realities and implications of singledom. In pop culture singledom is almost invariably represented as an easily fixed unhappy state, a step along the way to getting happily hitched. We know little about the long-term singles: how many relish their freedom and independence, and how many feel burdened with loneliness and hope to meet the love of their life?

barely 几乎不

implication ...带来的影响

invariably == always eg. Inveariably he keeps the fridge well stored.

be represented as 被描述成

getting hitched 结婚

relish 喜欢/开胃菜

feel burdened with 对...有负担

The single stereotypes abound. For men, it’s the dysfunctional fortysomething still living with his parents. For women, the callous career woman—who could forget former Australian prime minister Julia Gillard being accused of being “deliberately barren”?

**abound **大量存在 eg.This river abounds with fish. **

dysfunctional 失调，翻唱

callous 冷酷无情的

be accused of 被指责为

barren 贫瘠，不育

Beyond the stereotypes, there’s been remarkably little robust research on singledom and social infertility. Love, family and relationships only feature in policy debates about how we live to the extent that they concern children’s lives. Our attitude has always been that—outside medical infertility—finding love and family life in the first place is an entirely private matter.

remarkably == superisedly 不同寻常的

robust (统计学的)可靠的

infertility 不育的

feature in == be part of 占有地位

to the extent that 达到某种程度

concern 影响

But social infertility exists, and we should be talking about it more, from whether there should be publicly funded fertility advice for women looking to conceive alone, to the realities of ageing without children, to whether we should be investing in research into how to extend women’s fertility spans in the first place.

publicly funded 政府资助的

conceive/fertility 怀孕

span 周期，一段时期

To do so, though, we need to be able to have healthy conversations about singledom that go beyond the painful, shaming stereotypes of the undateable, the unloveable and the “deliberately barren”.

undateable 不能约会的