> These all may seem like small annoyances, but in practice they are regular reminders that American society still assumes that the default adult has a partner

> These all may seem like small annoyances, but in practice they are regular reminders that American society still assumes that the default adult has a partner and that the default household contains multiple people. Well, it is the default, so it's completely reasonable for society to assume that. It's the default for historical reasons, but it's also currently reflective of the vast majority of people's experiences. If the options are "single household or not single household" and only 28% of households are single, that's not even close to parity. Also, check my math, but: if 28% of households are occupied by people living alone, doesn't that mean that closer to 20% of people are living alone? That's assuming all non-single households have exactly 2 people, which of course is wrong: on average they have more.