I just learned about The Book Inscription Project: “We collect personal messages written in ink (or pen or marker or crayon or grape jelly) inside books. Pictures count. So do poems. So do notes on paper found in a book. The more heartfelt the better.”

I think the project is a wonderful idea, maybe because I have a favorite inscription of my own. When I first started collecting books about single life, I learned about a 1936 book by Marjorie Hillis called Live Alone and Like It. I would have forked over the money for a new copy but at the time, there were only used copies available.

When the beaten-up copy arrived, with its orange hardcover and yellowed pages coming unglued from the spine, I found a hand-written note on the inside.

What, in Mexico, was long considered the worst possible fate for a woman? If you guessed staying single, you win! Now, happily, the singles are winning, as attitudes are changing there in ways that may well qualify as revolutionary.

In 2011, a group of authors analyzed the results of 18 long-term studies of the implications of getting married for happiness. They wanted to know whether getting married makes people lastingly happier. The answer was no.

I described those findings in detail here, so I’ll just offer a brief overview before telling you about how social scientists tried to salvage the case for marriage in a subsequent paper.

I can’t seem to turn on the television, open a magazine or a newspaper, or peruse a blog without finding a discussion of Sheryl Sandberg’s new book, Lean in: Women, work, and the will to lead.

In the New York Times, Anne-Marie Slaughter (who whipped up plenty of controversy herself by arguing in an Atlantic cover story that women can’t have it all) described Sandberg’s message to women as:

“…believe in yourself, give it your all, “lean in” and “don’t leave before you leave” — which is to say, don’t doubt your ability to combine work and family and thus edge yourself out of plum assignments before you even have a baby.”

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Perhaps you know of that dreaded penalty on people who travel solo called the “single supplement.” A person traveling on their own is charged about twice as much – sometimes even more than that – for a hotel room or tour or cruise.

It makes some sort of sense for travel companies focusing solely on short-term profits. They want to get as much for a room from one person as they could if two people shared it. But of course, solo travelers are not too happy with it. As the number of single people (and non-single people who sometimes travel on their own) continues to grow, the travel industry is beginning to realize that they had better pay attention and do something to appeal to the solo traveler.

I think the most powerful indication of the growing appeal of single life is what can’t be faked – the numbers. For decades, every big new Census report has shown that the number and percentage of unmarried Americans is growing. (The trend is not specific to the U.S.)

Clearly, marriage is no longer obligatory and more and more people are choosing not to join The Married Couples Club.

Alongside those hard numbers are some intriguing stories of how some people who do choose to marry are feeling about their decision. Apparently, they are embarrassed. They want their engagement rings, but they don’t want those rings to look too much like an engagement ring. The brides want the dress, but if it is white, they feel all apologetic about that. If they do the whole diet and workout routine before the wedding, they try to reframe their actions as not really about the wedding.

I have no idea how many people truly are single-at-heart – and neither does anyone else. The concept has never been fully developed, recognized, or tested. (I’m working on that now.) Without a way to measure it, we cannot count the number of people who fit the category. Without any relevant cultural conversations, many people never consider the possibility that living single could be, for them, the most meaningful and most authentic way to live.

There may also be an important component of age or maturity. In the early adult years, when so many people are preoccupied with dating and mating, it can be difficult to realize that the coupled life is not for you. Maybe that’s an insight that is more likely to be developed later in life.

A high school student writing a paper on single parents and their children was stunned and hurt by the many sweeping and scientifically-unfounded criticisms she discovered during the course of her research. She is a child of a single mother, and wanted to know what was behind all of the stereotyping and stigmatizing.

There’s a lot of baby angst going around these days. The concern is that women no longer feel compelled to have kids, and growing numbers are deciding not to. The purveyors of panic believe that America is doomed if this continues. That’s not my exaggerated gloss. They really do say that women’s decisions not to procreate “may spell disaster for the country.”

Previously, I pointed to the critics who used data to show that the sky is not actually falling. Then I dissected the approaches the panic-perpetrators used to try to coax women to do their baby-making duty. (Mocking, shaming, threatening, and bribing were the primary tactics.)

Here I want to address a different question that seems to have gotten lost in all of the discussion of the so-called fertility crisis that is part of a global post-familialism. Supposed those who are urging women to go forth and multiply actually succeed?

Did you see the media headlines this past week proclaiming the superiority of married couples over singles? On Valentine’s Day, the Huffington Post featured a story under this heading: “Married couples healthier than single people, study finds.” This headline was totally, completely, flat-out false, and it wasn’t only the Huffington Post that published something like that.