Shock Horror: The “Crazy Cat Lady” Might Be a Happy Single Woman
Are we still afraid of her?
For years, the term “cat lady” was shorthand for a sad and lonely woman. A loser woman. A woman who didn’t get to marry or have kids. She might even be a bit crazy.
Poor her!
Urban legend would have it that she would fill her life with cats to mask its emptiness. She’d choose cats because no man had chosen her. “I don’t want people to think of me as some crazy cat lady,” single women would say.
The trope is less prevalent than it used to be, but single women still carry the burden of living in a society that sees marriage and motherhood as “completing” for women. It’s easy for single women even now to labor under the misapprehension that their married counterparts definitely would not have problems or, at least, that they would not feel lonely and sad.
It’s true that in a sense, a new mother is never alone. She has her baby. But this is not the same as not being lonely. It is not necessarily a good thing, never to be alone. A toddler demands a lot of attention. Motherhood is strenuous.
Living with a husband and children does not guarantee that a woman will not feel alone.
