Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood before MarriageMillie 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. |
Contents
1 | |
I Before We Had a Baby | 27 |
2 When I Got Pregnant | 50 |
3 How Does the Dream Die? | 71 |
4 What Marriage Means | 104 |
5 Labor of Love | 138 |
6 How Motherhood Changed My Life | 168 |
Making Sense of Single Motherhood | 187 |
Other editions - View all
Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage Kathryn Edin,Maria Kefalas Limited preview - 2011 |
Common terms and phrases
abortion abuse addiction adult African American mother Antonia baby baby's father behavior believe birth control boyfriend Camden chil child's father children's father Cohabitation couples daughter Deena divorce Dominique dream dren drugs earnings East Camden economic Edin eighteen-year-old Emilio everything feel Fragile Families FREDDY ADAMS friends girls gonna high school Hispanic hope Jen Burke kids living low-income Mahkiya male marital marriage married McLanahan mean middle-class Mike Millie months mother of three motherhood neighborhoods nonmarital childbearing parents partners Patrick PennsPort Pepper Ann percent Philadelphia planned poor women poverty poverty line preg pregnancy Puerto Rican mother relationship riage Rick role says Shelley Shannon single mothers social South Philadelphia stay story Strawberry Mansion street stuff talk teens tells things two-year-old unmarried wait wanna wedding welfare West Kensington white mother woman year-old young mother young women youth