1877 when she spoke of an impending "epoch of single women" forged by true gender equality.
Higher educational attainment, economic concerns and increased acceptability of cohabitation and childbearing outside of marriage have all been contributing factors for women's rising marriage delay, Brower says. "Those trends are pretty powerful and they're at work."
BY THE NUMBERS
Median age at first marriage
1960: Women, 20.3; men, 22.8
2015: Women, 27.1; men, 29.2
U.S. women ages 25 to 34, never married
2005: 33.6 percent
2014: 46.3 percent
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey
Plus, Americans' attitude toward marriage is ambivalent. According to a Pew study, 46 percent of Americans say it's better for society if marriage and children are a priority; 50 percent say society is just as well off without such a priority. "There is a mixed assessment of marriage as an ideal," Brower says.
But society hasn't totally caught up with all the women who choose to be single -- at least not yet.
"A lot of forces conspire, often unconsciously, to tell people who are unmarried that aspiring to marriage is the solution to making them unlonely," says Rebecca Traister, a journalist whose new book, All the Single Ladies, looks at the rise of unmarried women in the United States.
Still, Traister says there is a backlash against negative stereotypes that have long plagued unmarried women.
Indeed, the idea of "spinsterhood" is being reclaimed in popular culture as the ranks of single women have risen to rival those who have tied the knot.
In her 2015 book Spinster: Making a Life of One's Own, Kate Bolick refers to her attraction to solitude as her "spinster wish." Empowering listicles, like "31 Famous Unmarried People Who Prove That Being Single Is [Awesome]," regularly make the rounds on social media.
"As [being single] becomes more of a mass behavior, all the messages in the world can't undo something that is becoming the norm -- to exist independently socially, economically and sexually, to not be tethered to a spouse," Traister says. "It's altering our perception of what adulthood means."
ALONE, NOT LONELY
Jacobson is among the growing number of women who would rather take her chances on happiness without the old ball and chain weighing her down.
She spent her 20s and early 30s trying -- "desperately," she says -- to find a soul mate, but inevitably, every relationship wound up disappointing her. There were too many expectations, too many commitments.
"It's when the relationships start becoming more serious and encroach on my personal life that I start getting really irritated and really frustrated," she says. "It took me a while to realize I don't want to share my life with another person. I want to be a part of other people's lives, but I don't want to be the main focus."
Friends and family, she says, are enough. "I had to come to the conclusion that it's OK to be that selfish."
Figuring that out wasn't easy. Jacobson, a transit control dispatcher from north Minneapolis, grew up believing in the "fairy tale" wedding and a marriage like her parents', who are going on 40 years together.
"That typical dream women are supposed to have faded away very, very slowly," she says, "and at some points, it was difficult to get rid of."
Going solo is something many people still don't understand. Once, when an unmarried colleague in his 50s referred to himself as a bachelor, Jacobson replied that she is a bachelor, too. "No," he told her, "you can't be a bachelor."
Still, she considers herself lucky to have come of age when attitudes about marriage are changing. Were she born decades ago, "I would either have to be a nun, a spinster, or perhaps an abolitionist," Jacobson says. "I don't know if I would ever have come to this conclusion living outside of this age."
CieJay Hanson, a 31-year-old single mother from Plymouth, Minn., says it took her last relationship, with a verbally abusive boyfriend, to make her see the light and stop pining for a partner.
"At my age, I'm just not going to settle in the hopes of working towards changing someone," she says. "And I'm not going to change me now."
Previously, she described herself as a serial monogamist. She wanted to marry her high school boyfriend, then her college boyfriend and get a house in the suburbs. Instead, she lives in the suburbs with her parents.
Hanson still dates, but she's done with making plans for the future.
"If I get married, awesome," she says. "If I don't -- awesome."
Family on 05/11/2016