Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage |  | Authors: Kathryn Edin, Maria Kefalas
Publisher: University of California Press
Category: Book
List Price: $21.95
Buy Used: $8.67
as of 9/9/2010 20:39 CDT details
You Save: $13.28 (61%)
New (15) Used (51) from $8.67
Seller: Goodwill of Southern New Jersey
Rating:  20 reviews
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Pages: 298
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 5.9 x 1
ISBN: 0520248198
Dewey Decimal Number: 306.874320869420974811
EAN: 9780520248199
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
| |
| Features:
| • | ISBN13: 9780520248199 | | • | Condition: New | | • | Notes: BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed |
|
| Also Available In:
|
| Similar Items:
| |
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Millie Acevedo bore her first child before the age of 16 and dropped out of high school to care for her newborn. Now 27, she is the unmarried mother of three and is raising her kids in one of Philadelphia's poorest neighborhoods. Would she and her children be better off if she had waited to have them and had married their father first? Why do so many poor American youth like Millie continue to have children before they can afford to take care of them?
Over a span of five years, sociologists Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas talked in-depth with 162 low-income single moms like Millie to learn how they think about marriage and family. Promises I Can Keep offers an intimate look at what marriage and motherhood mean to these women and provides the most extensive on-the-ground study to date of why they put children before marriage despite the daunting challenges they know lie ahead.
|
| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 20
 Keep this book to get real answers about youth pregnancy in the inner cities August 25, 2005
Robin Orlowski (United States)
37 out of 41 found this review helpful
The qualitative research in this book explains why so many young women in inner city communities are getting pregnant--and at increasingly younger ages than previous generations of their peers.
1996's welfare reform was driven by the specter of 'lazy' and unmarried teens having litters of children, but this book asks us to consider what responsibility means in neighborhoods with fading and non-existent infrastructure (p. 32).
In these communities having children provides a form of tangible belonging. The kids are not the means to a monthly check, but a way to show the world that 'I had this many strikes against me and I became an adult'. Coming from a middle class background myself, I was particularly struck that these young men are telling women that they want to have a baby with HER eyes (p. 31) because I then realized that a baby would in fact be a representation of the two people having been together at one point.
Ideally they would continue to stay together and raise the kid, but the authors (who previously wrote on urban poverty and welfare issues) also harbor no illusions about the young men who leave during a pregnancy and after a baby is born. Yet they also avoid finger-pointing and moralizing in favor of then examining the role which American society plays in encouraging these young teens to have sex and babies.
Again we go back to the community infrastructure arguments and a disturbing but cognizant picture of complicity develops. Public figures restricting both reproductive and social services in these communities are ironically doing more to encourage subsequent generations to keep having sex. When the women become pregnant, the public figures (like some of the men in this book) develop selective amnesia and refuse to support policies which would help these kids ...etc.
This book is an excellent read for students of welfare/welfare reform. It is also highly recommended for politicians because this group of pre-teens/teenagers is so maligned in American public policy (from abortion access to welfare). Finally, this book is an informative but exciting read for the average person needing to find out what goes on beyond their own little back yard.
Why Put Motherhood Before Marriage? November 5, 2006
J. Akil (Midwest, USA)
11 out of 11 found this review helpful
Often when the question is posed as to why do poor women continue to have children before they are obviously -at least to the majority of Americans it is obvious-in the most opportune position to accomplish the task of parenting successfully, several common responses are usually offered. The most common retort may be that poor women don't have access to low-cost or free contraception and/or abortion providers, followed by claims that these women are just irresponsible and possess low ( or completely lack) moral values. Nothing could be further from the truth. Yes, poor women have less access to inexpensive contraceptive supplies and behavior that may be common in the ghettoes of America can be starkly contrasted against what is deemed acceptable in middle and upper-class communities. Yet it turns out that these differences have surprisingly little to do with why poor women consistently put motherhood before marriage.
Sociologists Edin and Kefalas spent 5 years interviewing, studying and interacting with a group consisting of one-hundred and sixty-two women from eight impoverished communities to find the real answer to this perturbing question. Along the way Edin and Kefalas dispell the myths and stereotypes pertaining to poor men and women and their attitudes regarding motherhood and marriage. It turns out that rather than viewing marriage as an inconsequential and outdated institution, the interviewies revered marriage. What the authors discovered was that the women held marriage to such a high-standard and erected so many hurdles to be jumped before they would consider getting married that they effectively placed the hallowed institution outside of their reach in the near future. While the middle and upper-class follow the line of thinking that says "first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes the baby in the baby carriage", poor women women more often than not say "first comes infatuation, then comes the baby, then you move in together and plan for the wedding to take place in 5 or 6 years once the two of you are satisfied that you really know each other". Many of the things that these single-mothers say and do appear inexplicably contradictory, and at times, almost absurd. Yet to the women it all makes perfect sense. This book has numerous examples of "you have to read it to believe it" moments: for instance, there are the single mothers of two or three children who say that they don't want to get married just yet because marriage is such "hard work," as if raising several children in the heart of the ghetto while seemingly mired in abject poverty is a far easier task.
The differences between the attitudes and behavior of poor and upper-class women is as stark as night and day when it comes to marriage and motherhood. Anyone genuinely interested in exploring these differences and crafting real responses to teen pregnancy and the high rates of out-of-wedlock childbearing in ostensibly dire circumstances should begin their exploration by reading this book.
Making sense of teen pregnancy May 2, 2007
A. Mark (Boston, MA)
10 out of 10 found this review helpful
As a physician in an urban health center, I am often frustrated by my patients who are 16, out of school, pregnant and elated. I often probe into the available support for the future child and despite the dismal job prospects, chaotic families and low educational attainment, abortion doesn't seem to be an option. I have been called to task by the patients and their equally young mothers for even mentioning that there may be an option in this situation.
This book through its in depth interviews with poor women gets to the heart of why a pregnancy at 16 though unplanned is often desirable. It answers the questions I have as an upper middle class care provider as to why a moment that would have been devastating for me is seen as an opportunity for them. I can see it will be a valuable resource in interacting with these patients of mine in the future by shedding light on how pregnancy and parenting are not an obstruction to a brighter future but the future itself.
For a less "clinical" assessment of poverty and its effect on the family, I would recommend "Random Family" by Adrien Leblanc. This is another intriguing look at adolescents who also grow up in impoverished environments and the toll it takes on their pregnancies, relationships and families.
Fantastic book about a not-so-fantastic phenomenon March 27, 2008
A. Stiteler (L.A., CA)
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
As a social worker who deals with the population portrayed in this book day in and day out, I was very interested in reading a book that I hoped would help me understand a phenomenon that has intrigued me since the day I started my job. I was very pleased when I read this book as I thought that it did address its stated purpose in a factual but still thoughtful way. I enjoyed this book because the authors were able to keep away from giving the book a judgmental feel while still not appearing to condone the choices that these women made.
Although the book was a fantastic read, especially for those interested in the subject...beware. That is, the book itself is good but the subject matter is all too real and therefore all too disheartening. I say that because there is nothing in the book that I didn't already have a sneaking suspicion about: the selfishness that exists when so many people in this country, be them male/female, rich/poor, black/white, see no problem with creating and bringing a new life in to this world solely to serve their own unfulfilled needs....be them relational, monetary, social, personal, to get their "act" together, and the like.
Why do we have a 40% illegitimacy rate? September 4, 2009
Jeri Nevermind (Idaho)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
There has never been a country in world history with an illegitimacy rate this high. Yet it new seems standard for all western democracies. Why? And should we do anything about it, and if so, what?
Edin and Kefalas spent many years researching this excellent book. And the results are enough to make you weep.
They place the greatest emphasis for the decline in marriage on "the profound cultural changes America has undergone over the last thirty years" (p 200).
Illegitimacy is now the definition of the new lower class. Yes, there are some university professors and the like, who, at the age of 35, finally decide to have a child. But most of the illegitimate children today come from poor mothers. Mothers with only high school educations. Mothers who frequently already have problems such as addiction, or mothers who came from single family households themselves.
These single mothers will raise children who will have a 200% greater chance of ending up in prison than those parents, even those coming from the same economic backgrounds, who have the biological mother and father living with their own children.
The result is a class of poor people that seems likely to become entrenched, unless we can do something to change the culture these women grow up in.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 20
|
|
|
|
