There have been a number of times over the past few months when either my wife or I referred to ourselves as “single.” Rather than some sort of Freudian slip, what we actually meant by this was that we are “childless.” Just as singles are not tied down by their relationships, the two of us are not tied down by the duties of parenting. From my experience, being single when your friends are single can be fun, but what we are experiencing is similar to being single when everybody you know is in a relationship. While we have met a number of people that we like on campus and beyond, those who do not live too far away to get together on a regular basis tend to have children that prevent them from doing things or, at the very least, necessitate early evenings.
Like those in relationships, the lives of those with children are perpetually preplanned. I think that this point was driven home by the combined arrival of summer and moving into a new neighborhood where our neighbors all have children of varying ages. I’m sure that when we eventually have children of our own we will meet lots of parents with similarly-aged children who may have been interested in hanging out in their pre-child days. For now, however, we are single and surrounded by couples who are too busy to hang out.
Memoirs of a SLACer 