The Meaning Of
Their Motherhood
Marriage is key to improving the life chances of the inner-city poor.
BY KAY HYMOWITZ
Tuesday, May 17, 2005 12:01 a.m.
Poor, unmarried women with children may have receded from the public alarm list thanks to increasing numbers of them leaving welfare for work, but that doesn't mean that they are yesterday's problem. In some respects, little has changed: A third of all children are still born to husbandless women; and those children are far more likely to grow up poor than the children of two-parent families--and to become impoverished single parents themselves.
If anything can revive interest in this vexing subject, it is "Promises I Can Keep" by Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas. The book is the product of five years of interviews with black, white and Latino women in the poorest neighborhoods of Camden, N.J., and Philadelphia, where the authors are professors of sociology. Ms. Edin and Ms. Kefalas decisively rescue the young welfare mother from the policy wonks and feminist professors who have held her hostage until recently, and in so doing overthrow decades of conventional wisdom.
That wisdom had it that unmarried poor women got pregnant either because they were unable to get hold of birth control or ignorant of its use or because they viewed a welfare check as a substitute for an in-house father. Not so, find Ms. Edin and Ms. Kefalas: Young women, even those pregnant as young as 14, simply want to have babies. True, many wish that they had waited. But by and large these young women speak in hidebound terms about the "joys of motherhood," as do their young boyfriends, who often whisper "I want to have a baby by you" as part of courtship. Far more than their middle-class counterparts, low-income women are likely to see abortion as wrong and childlessness as a tragedy. It's not a fabulous career or sexual and romantic adventure that endows life with purpose; it's having a baby.
According to the authors, motherhood promises an enduring human connection in a world where trusting relationships are rare, and it gives women a social role whose value is only heightened by their difficult circumstances. In the minds of female ghetto dwellers, "the choice to have a child despite the obstacles that lie ahead is a compelling demonstration of a young woman's maturity and high moral stature." Many say that the birth of their child persuaded them to give up drugs or to stop "running the streets."
Motherhood also seems to offer a rare chance for respectability in a squalid world. The women interviewed by Ms. Edin and Ms. Kefalas set themselves apart from mothers who "don't take care of their kids"--that is, who fail to keep them clean, fed and supervised--and try to display their maternal worth by using Huggies rather than supermarket-brand diapers or by putting their toddlers in Nikes even if they themselves are reduced to Payless specials.
And where does marriage fit into all this? It doesn't. One of the most striking findings of "Promises I Can Keep" is the way that the past decades' deconstruction of marriage has affected the poor. In their minds, marriage has nothing to do with children--understandably, argue the authors, given that most Americans seem to believe this as well--and everything to do with material comfort. Marriage symbolizes stable, middle-class life and "ought to be reserved for couples who've already 'made it' economically."
Poor women believe that the best age to have children is late teens or 20s--they find incomprehensible the middle-class penchant for putting off motherhood until 30. Marriage itself can wait until the late 20s and 30s. In fact, 70% of women who give birth outside of marriage marry by 40, though seldom to their first child's father and, one presumes, rarely accompanied by the material ease they dreamed of.
Scholars generally argue that the ghostly state of ghetto marriage is the result of marriageable men disappearing from the inner city along with manufacturing jobs. But Ms. Edin and Ms. Kefalas find that the scarcity of eligible men has as much to do with character as with economics. Women are understandably reluctant to marry men with a prison record, a drug addiction, a wandering eye or a quick temper. They often dream that a child will tame their boyfriends and, in fact, the birth of a baby sometimes leads to a "hospital-bed conversion." It rarely lasts. Twelve months after a baby is born, half of the couples have broken up; by the time the child is three, two-thirds of the mothers are on their own.
Unlike the old guard of researchers, Ms. Edin and Ms. Kefalas believe that marriage is key to improving the life chances of the inner-city poor. Still, they have not entirely escaped the old trap of over-identifying with their subjects. Poor women aspire toward marriage just as much as middle-class women do, they claim; it's just that poor women value children so highly that they are unwilling to wait for a chimerical Mr. Right.
This is a vain, though commonplace, attempt to soften the ghetto's destructive decoupling of marriage and childrearing. In opinion polls, the authors observe, higher-income women share their poorer sisters' attitudes toward premarital sex, cohabitation and even out-of-wedlock childbearing. But the truth is that the vast majority of middle-class women--and the same can be said for poor immigrants--arrive at maternity wards with husbands in tow. They know that an orderly domestic life is the stage set for upwardly mobile children and the cue to America to keep its promise.
Ms. Hymowitz is a contributing editor of the Manhattan Institute's City Journal. You can buy "Promises I Can Keep" from the OpinionJournal bookstore.
Their Motherhood
Marriage is key to improving the life chances of the inner-city poor.
BY KAY HYMOWITZ
Tuesday, May 17, 2005 12:01 a.m.
Poor, unmarried women with children may have receded from the public alarm list thanks to increasing numbers of them leaving welfare for work, but that doesn't mean that they are yesterday's problem. In some respects, little has changed: A third of all children are still born to husbandless women; and those children are far more likely to grow up poor than the children of two-parent families--and to become impoverished single parents themselves.
If anything can revive interest in this vexing subject, it is "Promises I Can Keep" by Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas. The book is the product of five years of interviews with black, white and Latino women in the poorest neighborhoods of Camden, N.J., and Philadelphia, where the authors are professors of sociology. Ms. Edin and Ms. Kefalas decisively rescue the young welfare mother from the policy wonks and feminist professors who have held her hostage until recently, and in so doing overthrow decades of conventional wisdom.
That wisdom had it that unmarried poor women got pregnant either because they were unable to get hold of birth control or ignorant of its use or because they viewed a welfare check as a substitute for an in-house father. Not so, find Ms. Edin and Ms. Kefalas: Young women, even those pregnant as young as 14, simply want to have babies. True, many wish that they had waited. But by and large these young women speak in hidebound terms about the "joys of motherhood," as do their young boyfriends, who often whisper "I want to have a baby by you" as part of courtship. Far more than their middle-class counterparts, low-income women are likely to see abortion as wrong and childlessness as a tragedy. It's not a fabulous career or sexual and romantic adventure that endows life with purpose; it's having a baby.
According to the authors, motherhood promises an enduring human connection in a world where trusting relationships are rare, and it gives women a social role whose value is only heightened by their difficult circumstances. In the minds of female ghetto dwellers, "the choice to have a child despite the obstacles that lie ahead is a compelling demonstration of a young woman's maturity and high moral stature." Many say that the birth of their child persuaded them to give up drugs or to stop "running the streets."
Motherhood also seems to offer a rare chance for respectability in a squalid world. The women interviewed by Ms. Edin and Ms. Kefalas set themselves apart from mothers who "don't take care of their kids"--that is, who fail to keep them clean, fed and supervised--and try to display their maternal worth by using Huggies rather than supermarket-brand diapers or by putting their toddlers in Nikes even if they themselves are reduced to Payless specials.
And where does marriage fit into all this? It doesn't. One of the most striking findings of "Promises I Can Keep" is the way that the past decades' deconstruction of marriage has affected the poor. In their minds, marriage has nothing to do with children--understandably, argue the authors, given that most Americans seem to believe this as well--and everything to do with material comfort. Marriage symbolizes stable, middle-class life and "ought to be reserved for couples who've already 'made it' economically."
Poor women believe that the best age to have children is late teens or 20s--they find incomprehensible the middle-class penchant for putting off motherhood until 30. Marriage itself can wait until the late 20s and 30s. In fact, 70% of women who give birth outside of marriage marry by 40, though seldom to their first child's father and, one presumes, rarely accompanied by the material ease they dreamed of.
Scholars generally argue that the ghostly state of ghetto marriage is the result of marriageable men disappearing from the inner city along with manufacturing jobs. But Ms. Edin and Ms. Kefalas find that the scarcity of eligible men has as much to do with character as with economics. Women are understandably reluctant to marry men with a prison record, a drug addiction, a wandering eye or a quick temper. They often dream that a child will tame their boyfriends and, in fact, the birth of a baby sometimes leads to a "hospital-bed conversion." It rarely lasts. Twelve months after a baby is born, half of the couples have broken up; by the time the child is three, two-thirds of the mothers are on their own.
Unlike the old guard of researchers, Ms. Edin and Ms. Kefalas believe that marriage is key to improving the life chances of the inner-city poor. Still, they have not entirely escaped the old trap of over-identifying with their subjects. Poor women aspire toward marriage just as much as middle-class women do, they claim; it's just that poor women value children so highly that they are unwilling to wait for a chimerical Mr. Right.
This is a vain, though commonplace, attempt to soften the ghetto's destructive decoupling of marriage and childrearing. In opinion polls, the authors observe, higher-income women share their poorer sisters' attitudes toward premarital sex, cohabitation and even out-of-wedlock childbearing. But the truth is that the vast majority of middle-class women--and the same can be said for poor immigrants--arrive at maternity wards with husbands in tow. They know that an orderly domestic life is the stage set for upwardly mobile children and the cue to America to keep its promise.
Ms. Hymowitz is a contributing editor of the Manhattan Institute's City Journal. You can buy "Promises I Can Keep" from the OpinionJournal bookstore.