Could it really be true that unmarried childless women are happier?

“You are 37 and single?” Friends will say, eyeing me with pity, as though the worst fate known to womankind has befallen me and I may have to freeze my eggs if I want children or resign myself to marrying some boring homunculus civil servant in his mid to late forties with about as much charisma and charm as a desiccated lettuce leaf before I reach the big 4-0, or end up gathering dust on the shelf for ‘mental’ divorcees who never find the stars align enough so that they can remarry and procreate as a geriatric mother.

“So how did your date go?”, is a constant query from kindly friends. “Awful. I think he had a hair transplant, a paunch and hideous taste in clothes, plus he doesn’t support Jeremy Corbyn or raising the minimum wage and is militantly vegan. Nobody wants to date a Tory and I don’t like tofu. Plus he looked like he was four foot 11, had size five feet and apparently has a penchant for Wagner which is seriously off-putting. Who in their right mind listens to the sodding Ring Cycle? But, in any case, he didn’t call, he liked Trump into the bargain, he’s anti-immigration and could be into the National Front, and I’m reminded once again that even Hitler had Eva Braun, which makes me less dateable than Satan in human form, right? Pass the fried chicken wings and the Ben & Jerry’s or maybe I’ll just weep while eating an entire block of cheese and necking gin from the bottle for the third night on the trot.”

But...Despite all the multifarious ways our culture has characterised coupledom as the holy grail and singledom as the equivalent of social leprosy, a source of sorrow and dismay, implying that you are covered in scales beneath your clothes and are deeply unworthy of wine and roses, the science actually paints a very different picture: that unmarried and childless women are the happiest subgroup in the population. No way! I hear you say. Surely love and marriage are the ultimate goal in the quest for human, and particularly female, happiness? Doesn’t every woman secretly hanker for the happy-ever-after and the pitter patter of tiny feet? Which woman doesn’t want the dashing and devoted husband and the cherubic babies with heart-melting smiles cooing up at you in adorable babygrows with abiding love from their cots?

Well, actually, according to research undertaken by professor Paul Dolan, an expert in behavioural science at the London School of Economics, the data shows unmarried women are - rather unexpectedly - the happiest.

Dolan’s latest book, Happy Ever After, cites evidence from the American Time Use Survey (ATUS), which compared levels of pleasure and misery in unmarried, married, divorced, separated and widowed individuals.

Not only are unmarried and childless women in the happiest subgroup, but they are also more likely to live longer than their married and child-rearing peers, according to this leading expert in happiness.

Dolan says the traditional markers used to measure success did not correlate with happiness – particularly marriage and raising children.

Part of this has to be because single and childless women have more time to prioritise self-care, Sex and The City style brunches and get-togethers over drinks, and climbing to the top of a career ladder without all the responsibilities of child rearing.

But conversely, and because they aren’t as good as marshalling networks of girlfriends to share their deepest and darkest feelings, men don’t cope as well as women when they fly solo.

“If you’re a man, you should probably get married; if you’re a woman, don’t bother,” Dolan told The Guardian.

Men benefited from marriage because they “calmed down”, he said. “You take less risks, you earn more money at work, and you live a little longer. She, on the other hand, has to put up with that, and dies sooner than if she never married. The healthiest and happiest population subgroup are women who never married or had children,”

Women’s health was mostly unaffected by marriage, with middle-aged married women even being at higher risk of physical and mental conditions than their single counterparts.

Despite the benefits of a single, childless lifestyle for women, Dolan said that the existing narrative that marriage and children were signs of success meant that the stigma could lead some single women to feel unhappy. This is to put it lightly.

“You see a single woman of 40, who has never had children – ‘Bless, that’s a shame, isn’t it? Maybe one day you’ll meet the right guy and that’ll change.’ No, maybe she’ll meet the wrong guy and that’ll change. Maybe she’ll meet a guy who makes her less happy and healthy, and die sooner.”

“I’ll just say: if you’re a man, you should probably get married; if you’re a woman, don’t bother.”

Retail analysts Mintel undertook a study about happiness and relationships which actually revealed that while under half of single men said they were happy without a partner, nearly two thirds of single women said they felt the same way.

Their study also found that 70 per cent of singles on average have not even bothered trying to find a partner in the past 12 months.

Among women, this rises to 75 per cent, with ladies more likely to prioritise other aspects of their life, career, friendships, the aforementioned SATC brunches and boozy visits to nightclubs with a gaggle of girl chums, for example.

So there’s consolation in being left on the shelf. Certainly it is preferable to being married to some terrible cretin who makes a hell of your existence or to find yourself deprived of any ‘me’ time while raising a brood of difficult children who sink your finances and destroy your figure before flying the coop, leaving you in penury to spend each day staring at a man you have not infrequently thought about clouting with a spade and burying under the patio.

But can it really be true that singledom and childlessness is the happiest lot for the fairer sex?

Wasn’t Bridget Jones happy in the end in no small part because she had finally married her Mr Darcy and given birth?

What of Jane Austen? Have we been sold the beautiful lie that our problems will be solved once we marry and have children?

Does it not indeed seem like smug marrieds are the real victors in a world that regards spinsterhood as so infinitely undesirable and taboo that Marks & Spencer only ever do ‘dine in’ deals for two (which makes me wonder as a singleton- what to do? Eat both portions? Write a letter of complaint to customer services?)

Doesn’t being unmarried and childless still sound like the path to a sad and lonely existence, especially in older age when your married peers are devoted grannies surrounded by family?

But perhaps happiness is not dependent on singledom or coupledom or parenthood. Perhaps it’s a state that all of us can access, fleetingly, and whatever our personal circumstances, so that it doesn’t matter who we have in our beds, or whether we reproduce or not, find the perfect man or instead adopt several cats and take-up knitting and gin-swilling with friends.

Maybe happiness is simply a transitory state of mind, one equally accessible to all of us regardless of marital status. Maybe years after her marriage, when the honeymoon phase ended and the mundanity of shared existence is more fully understood, Bridget realises she was just as happy before Mr Darcy arrived on the scene, only in a different way, involving cosmopolitans and dancing until dawn rather than homemaking and night feeds. Putting a ring on it and a pram in the hallway isn’t the only path to contentment.

Happiness takes numerous forms, not all of which are in keeping with convention, and this is to do with finding joy in life in so many unexpected places and in celebrating the drunkenness of things being various.