Tim Scott’s marital status is none of America’s business

Major Republican donors have questions for presidential candidate Tim Scott’s campaign about a potential political liability, according to reporting by Axios: He doesn’t have a wife. The U.S., after all, hasn’t had a single president in 139 years.

These concerns are irrational and unreasonable. It’s time for American voters – who are increasingly single – to stop judging politicians by their marital status.

Today, Americans are more likely to be single than at almost any other time in history. In 2018, the marriage rate fell to its lowest since the federal government began keeping records of it in 1867. In 2022, the percentage of people who had never been married rose to 34%, up from 23% in 1950, according to Census Bureau data. So, it would be statistically unusual if one of our major presidential candidates weren’t single.

Of course, there’s no reason Scott should need a romantic partner to be president. True, marriage seems to make people happier – but it wouldn’t make him more likely to successfully strike deals with Congress or negotiate world peace.

But this antiquated expectation for politicians to trot out spouses (and children) on the campaign trail is especially unfair to women. That’s because, as we all know, women face greater social sanctions for being single. An unmarried woman is viewed as pathetic and somehow unfulfilled, whereas a single man can be celebrated as a “player.”

In my forthcoming book, “Over the Influence: Why Social Media is Toxic for Women and Girls – And How We Can Take It Back,” I explore some of the double standards single women are up against (and how they play out on social media). One 37-year-old physician in Florida told me that when she goes out to eat alone at a restaurant, she constantly gets strange looks and questions. “Is anyone joining you?” is a common one. On the surface, it might seem like an innocent query. Perhaps the waiter wants to know how many menus or silverware to leave on the table. But it’s the response to when she says no that underscores the issue: “Oh, so no one’s coming?”

When it comes to running for office, those implications are magnified – playing out at campaign rallies, fundraisers and on debate stages. Yet, that’s just the single side of the coin. If you flip it the other way, we see very clearly that women are also in an impossible situation if they’re married.

Research confirms that in heterosexual relationships, women do most of the household work, even when both spouses work full time. The imbalance is even more noticeable when you add kids into the mix. In households where a husband and wife earn about the same amount of money, wives devote about 2.5 hours more than their husbands to housework each week and two hours more than their husbands to caregiving, according to a Pew survey published in April. On the other hand, the husbands spend about 3.5 hours more on leisure time.

Carrying this extra load at home would make it harder for a married woman to have time to build a political career than it would be for a single woman (or a man, regardless of marital status) to do so. So it’s not surprising that, as Rebecca Traister reports in her book “All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation,” single women tend to be more politically active than married women.

This is why donors raising concerns over a politician’s marital status is one of the many factors that will make it harder for the country to ever elect a female president. Donors play an outsize role in American politics because candidates typically need to attract many of them to qualify to participate in debates and because campaigns have become so expensive. During the 2020 election, candidates shelled out a staggering nearly $14 billion (doubling 2016’s spending), according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

On a deeper level, concerns over whether Scott is married show how many in the country view the role of first lady: as a much-needed accessory.

Of course, they have done the country a lot of good by volunteering their time on behalf of causes and serving as powerful symbols of the nation. Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move campaign was instrumental in raising awareness of childhood obesity. Laura Bush founded the National Book Festival and encouraged Americans to read. But that’s free labor. And it’s unreasonable to expect any politician to have a spouse just so that the country can benefit from it.

There’s no reason politicians need spouses to lead. These expectations stand in the way of political power for a large percentage of American citizens – but especially women. It’s time for us to stop being wedded to this antiquated archetype of the American politician.

Kara Alaimo is an associate professor of communication at Fairleigh Dickinson University. Her book “Over the Influence: Why Social Media Is Toxic for Women and Girls – and How We Can Take It Back” will be published in 2024.