Do singles have scales under their clothes?

I haven't posted on here in a good while, but there's a great deal of valuable material out there relevant to this blog, and so I'll try and point people towards them more frequently from now on.  

Here's the opening of a piece about singles in the church, which I think is worth considering, especially considering the demographics. 

In the movie Bridget Jones, Bridget is having dinner with some pretentious married people. One of them says to her “Bridget, why do you think there are so many people over thirty and single these days?”  Bridget looks her straight in the face and says “Well, I guess it doesn’t hurt that we have scales under our clothes.”
We singles often feel like we have scales under our clothes in our churches. Not a gross disfigurement that makes everyone stare. Not an outward, in your face prejudice that is thrown at us. But something more subtle. Something that makes us feel like even though we look pretty normal on the outside, there is quite possibly something wrong with us underneath the surface.

Read the rest here - Singles and the Church: why it sucks to be unintentionally overlooked

Family and household projections to 2031

From Statistics NZ

The latest subnational family and household projections provide an indication of possible future changes in the number and composition of families and households.

Highlights of the latest release project that:

• All 16 of New Zealand's regions will have more couple-without-children families and one-person households in 2031 than in 2006.*

• There will be a continued decline in average household size for all regions and territorial authorities, between 2006 and 2031.

• The Auckland region will account for almost half (48 percent) of the national growth in the number of households by 2031.

*‘Couple-without-children’ include:

(a) couples who will never have children,
(b) couples who will have children in the future,
(c) couples whose children have left the parental home.

Note that first projection, that all 16 regions will have more one-person households.....but we keep focusing our ministry on families, married couples, youth, children.

Photo, David Salafia

PS: This year is Census Year - in just a month's time. It's a date I was looking forward to, in many ways, when all the 2006 Census figures that were becoming increasingly unuseful would be replaced. And now my role here as Research and Resource Assistant is coming to an end....pooh! :)