Impoverished young women more likely to be unwed mothers

Updated 10:00 AM March 07, 2005

Impoverished young women more likely to be unwed mothers

By Jared Wadley
News Service

Until poor young women have more access to jobs that lead to financial independence, they will continue to have children sooner than most Americans think they should, while still deferring marriage, according to two sociologists.

This is among several points expected to be discussed by sociologists Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas, co-authors of "Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage."

Their lecture will be 3 p.m. March 11 in Rackham Amphitheatre. It is sponsored by the National Poverty Center, part of the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy and the U-M Population Studies Center.

Edin is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, while Kefalas works as an assistant professor of sociology at Saint Joseph's University.

In their new book, they focused on the lives of 162 white, African American and Puerto Rican, low-income, single mothers living in eight destitute neighborhoods throughout Philadelphia and its poorest industrial suburb, Camden, N.J.

The authors spent five years with the women, who ranged in age from 14 to 60, to speak to the question many affluent Americans ask: Why do they have children while still young and unmarried when they will face such an uphill struggle to support them?

The poor have little motivation to time their births as precisely as their middle-class counterparts do, the authors said. Poor girls coming of age in the inner city value children highly, anticipate them eagerly, and believe strongly that they are up to the job of mothering—even in difficult circumstances, according to the book.

When the authors asked mothers what their lives would be like if they had not had children, the responses were unexpected, they say. Rather than express regret over forgone opportunities for school and careers, most women believed their children "saved" them. They described their lives as spinning out of control before becoming pregnant—struggles with parents and peers, "wild," risky behavior, depression and school failure.

"Life was so bad for them before the children," Edin says. "It served as a powerful motivation to have children, who bring purpose and order to otherwise directionless and chaotic lives."

Kefalas said marriage has become an elusive goal for the poor—one they feel ought to be reserved for those who can support a "white picket fence" lifestyle: a mortgage on a modest row home, a car, savings and enough money left over to pay for a "decent" wedding.

Unlike the women of their mothers' and grandmothers' generations, young women are not content to rely on a man's earnings, the authors noted. They insist on being economically "set" in their own right before taking marriage vows, in part, because they want a partnership of equals. They believe money buys a "say-so" in a relationship, Kefalas says.

"Economic independence is also insurance against a marriage gone badly," Kefalas says.

The authors said poor women do not reject marriage; they revere it.

"It is the conviction that marriage is forever that makes them think that divorce is worse than having a baby outside of marriage," Edin explains. Their children, far from being liabilities, provide crucial social-psychological resources—a strong sense of purpose and a profound source of intimacy, the authors say.

Impoverished young women more likely to be unwed mothers

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