The new singletons: Not so young, but free and single

Singletons came in for a hard time last week. First, news broke that one in three women is still single at the age of 35, compared with only 10 per cent in 1990. One conservative writer called it "an incredible collapse". Then, singles were blamed for the lack of housing. But is it all women's fault?

For some commentators it is - and it is a disaster. A generation of women will be left on the shelf, friendless and unloved. Right-wing newspapers invoked desperate Bridget Jones, weeping into her chardonnay. Robert Whelan of the Civitas think tank said: " If it goes on, we will soon see a majority of women unmarried in their mid-thirties." Horror!

So is the world as we know it ending? Will all singletons die fat and alone, eaten to death by Alsatians as Bridget feared?

Not exactly, says a spokeswoman from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), who explains that the statistic is taken from legal marital status alone. "It's not looking at household circumstances or people's relationships," she says. "If you have three kids but no ring, you're single."

Ditto couples who "live apart together": they are committed but don't share a house. And we won't know the percentage of "single" women who are actually in gay relationships until the next census in 2011, when we'll have statistics on civil partnerships.

So how do we define a grown-up uncoupled human being in the 21st century? If you have just started a tentative new relationship, do you still call yourself single? What if you've just been through a painful divorce or bereavement? Can the word "single" really cover such diversity of experiences?

"There is no precise definition any longer of how to live a single life," says psychotherapist Carol Martin-Sperry, a fellow of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. "It's helpful for people not to be labelled with a word when no one quite knows what it means."

It is a myth that single people are young: 85 per cent are over 35, 50 per cent are over 45. Lots of "singles" have grown-up children. People don't have to stay in bad relationships any more, and women are relishing their new economic independence.

"I'm seeing a growing empty-nest syndrome," says Martin-Sperry. "After 25 to 30 years, marriages are collapsing because there's no common purpose after the children have left. A lot of women are full of energy and want to make the most of being free and the men just want to curl up by the fire."

So is being a "spinny" - modern parlance for spinsterhood - such a bad thing?

"The definition of who's single and who's attached now is very fluid," says Imogen Lloyd Webber, who has written The Single Girl's Guide, a practical manual on life management for women who are not prepared to sit around waiting for Mr Darcy. "You could be Denise Van Outen, who's gorgeous, single and happy in her thirties, or Cilla Black in her sixties, who told me 'I'm a single girl.'" For Lloyd Webber, the decision to stay single is actually a very responsible one. "Society needs to face facts: there's now a divorce rate of one in two. It's actually OK to be careful."

These days, single is a state of mind, modern women change relationships like we change careers, and marriage is no longer the be-all-and-end-all.

Amanda Christie, who, with Sarah Beeny, founded mysinglefriend.com, the online dating site, says: "Our site is full of gorgeous, game-for-a-laugh people who want to get out there. You might only want the odd date, just to go out to dinner or have a flirt. I've got a good statistic for you," she adds: "Forty-one per cent of our active users are aged between 31 and 40, and 80 per cent of people who left the site last week because they had met someone were over 30." So being 35 doesn't mean you have missed the boat.

American researchers have seen a similar trend away from marriage. According to the 2006 US census, the number of never-marrieds aged 18 and over has hit 55 million (up from 45 million 10 years ago). No wonder Quirkyalone, the US grassroots movement where singles resist coupledom, is flourishing.

A New York University sociologist, Kathleen Gerson, is studying 120 men and women aged 18 to 32. Across social classes, women are less likely than in the past to see marriage as an economic benefit and are raising their standards for a long-term relationship, she says. Last week, she told USA Today that women who felt left out when friends were getting married in their twenties and thirties now think they made a wise choice.

British women agree. "In 46 years I've just not met anyone I would want to marry," says UK single Diane, an arts administrator. "But I don't see this as poor little me. I love my lifestyle: it's busy, positive and happy. I do what I want when I want and I pay my own way. It would have to be someone pretty fabulous to make me want to change. Perhaps the Government needs to look at classes to teach most young men not be such losers."

If one in three women is single at 35, what about all the single men? According to the ONS, there are actually more of them than women. "I know for a fact all my single, platonic, male friends have a biological clock ticking," says Lloyd Webber.

But men are not tarred with the dread word "spinster". Back in the 14th century it meant a woman who spun thread for a living. But by the 17th century it had come to mean a woman regarded as being beyond the age of marriage. Historically, a spinster was a woman whom love had passed by.

It was only in 2005, as a result of the Civil Partnership Act, that the word spinster was officially replaced on the marriage licence by the term single for both men and women. And yet the backlash won't go away. The ONS last week released its Social Trends report, painting a picture of an angry, overcrowded, fragmented Britain. Nearly a quarter of children now live in one-parent families and 43 per cent of babies are born outside marriage. Guess who got the blame? Yes, poor old singles.

The accusation of skewing the property market is one that Rachel, 36, finds bewildering. "I wonder how it can be that I as a single person am increasing property prices. On my income I certainly can't afford to buy in London, unlike a couple with a dual income."

Researchers focusing on the growing numbers of unmarried Americans are finding social benefits to singlehood. One study finds singles more connected to family and friends than married peers. Another says unmarried offspring help their parents more than those who are married. Marriage reduces social ties, suggests analyses by the American Sociological Association. And what singles lack in money, they may make up for in contentment.

Psychology professor Richard Lucas of Michigan State University has analysed 20 years of data from 70,000 households in Britain and Germany. He found that singles who never married report the highest rate of well-being. In fact he found that the boost in happiness associated with marriage returns to pre-marriage levels over time.

It doesn't surprise Helen, 35. "When the old social and moral certainties change, and society gives birth to new ways of living and new freedoms, there are bound to be birth pangs," she says. "Sometime we're alone and lonely; sometimes we're skint, and sometimes afraid. But the trade-off is more than worth it. Now I am single but going out with someone who makes me laugh like my husband never did. So I am glad to be single in my thirties, however hard it is to square with my bank and my mother."

A whirl of dates

Generation Y woman: Sienna Miller, Scarlett Johansson and Lindsay Lohan. In a fast-turnover dating whirl, often with several men at once. Not for these twentysomethings marrying an older man and joining the golf and barbecue set, like Catherine Zeta-Jones. When Sienna ended her engagement to Jude Law, she described monogamy as an "overrated virtue".

Life afresh after marriage

Flirty, forty and fabulous: alpha mothers such as Sadie Frost and Kristin Scott Thomas are kicking over the traces. They've done the whole marriage thing and are now enjoying single life with the occasional toy boy in tow. At 46, with children aged 18, 15 and six, Scott Thomas is at an age when few women relish re-entering the dating game. But she's looking damn good on it.

Happy mother, dropped father

After years of feeling broody, eternal single Geri Halliwell gave birth to daughter Bluebell Madonna last year, but the father scriptwriter, Sacha Gervasi, was ruthlessly edited from the picture. Asked if there is a man in her life, Geri replied "No, and to be honest I don't really care."

Not married, not bovvered

Am I bovvered? At 32, Essex girl Denise Van Outen isn't panicking about being solo. She embodies the up-for-it single making the best of a dating drought. Out every night with friends, many of whom are gay, she reveals she has a marriage pact with man-about-town David Walliams: if they're still alone in old age, they'll get together. Other recent converts to the "not married, not bovvered" set include Cameron Diaz and Drew Barrymore.

A partner but not a husband

Smug unmarrieds: modern grown-ups such as Susan Sarandon, Jessica Lange and Goldie Hawn see no need for a ring. Sarandon, 60, has been with Tim Robbins for 19 years. "I still like waking up every morning and thinking, "I choose to be with Tim",' she insists. But beware: the redoutable Gillian Taylforth describes herself as a fiancée of 18 years. Can that really be a good thing?

Panic marriage and then single

And then, of course, there will always be Bridget Jones (aka Renée Zellweger): the desperate single who defined the form. So closely was Zellweger identified with her fictional character that when she got hitched to country music star Kenny Chesney, the headlines read "Bridget Jones gets married!" Four months later, the marriage was all over. Now 38, she is single again and repenting at being panicked into marriage.