The conclusion revisits several interrelated theoretical questions, including whether our views of what constitutes the Black middle class needs to be redefined, and how traditional notions of family are challenged by the rise of the Love Jones Cohort. The conclusion restates the underlying impetus of the book: to interrogate the unique lifestyle of the Love Jones Cohort, and thereby continuing to understand how their intersecting identities of race, class, gender, and singleness shape their life decisions. The conclusion also argues the notion of a family (of one) or how based on the centrality of friendship networks to those in the Love Jones Cohort we should embrace and institutionalize augmented families, thereby allowing those in the Cohort to establish family units with friends (and themselves) in a legal manner – an approach I term “the SALA Family Plan.” The conclusion discusses the main implications arising from this study.

This sociological study reveals the ways in which the Love Jones Cohort live their lives. The Love Jones Cohort exposes community members, researchers, policy makers, and businesspeople to the Love Jones Cohort, in the hope that they substantively incorporate this demographic group into their conversations, researches, policies, and business plans. The Love Jones Cohort pushes people into considering how structural racism plays a role in individual dating and marriage outcomes, and challenges people into thinking twice before asking the Love Jones Cohort why they are not married and instead consider asking people why they are married. The Love Jones Cohort highlights the distinctiveness of the Love Jones Cohort relative to other Black middle-class families. The Love Jones Cohort improves our understanding of singlehood in general and Black middle-class SALAs in particular; provides a more nuanced picture of the Black middle class that includes the large and growing demographic of never-married individuals; and offers insight on how these experiences can influence social policy and future narratives about the Black middle class and Black America more broadly.

Chapter 4 argues that marriage as a social institution is changing in the United States. One consequence of this is the rise of Black never-married singles as a demographic and those who are also middle class : the Love Jones Cohort. Through the narratives of the Love Jones Cohort and discussion of the various theoretical assumptions that have been put forward to explain declining marriage rates among Black Americans – especially women – Chapter 4 introduces a framework for understanding how and why the Cohort has begun stepping into the limelight, and what the implications of this might be. This chapter also sets out some of the quantitative and theoretical rationalizations that have been put forward or may be relevant in explaining the rise of Black middle-class SALAs in the U.S., backed up by relevant narratives from interviewed members of the Love Jones Cohort.