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Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage

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Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas spent five years living with, working with and interviewing poor women from all races and age groups who live in the depressed and poverty stricken neighborhoods of Philadelphia and its poorest industrial suburb, Camden, New Jersey. Armed with the knowledge of intimate details from 162 single mothers' lives that could only be gained by spending years in their company, Edin and Kefalas wrote Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage.

The authors set out to disprove the commonly held stereotypes about poor young women who have children out of wedlock when they are still teenagers or in their early twenties. They assert that most middle class Americans assume that these women are either unable or unwilling to use birth control, or that they are using children as a way to gain access to more welfare benefits. However, in the course of their research, they found this conventional wisdom to be largely untrue. They discovered that these young women are having babies simply because they want to have babies. There are, of course, mitigating factors such as pressure to conceive from a boyfriend or rebellion against parents, but almost all of the single mothers interviewed make it clear that they were happy when they found out they were pregnant and happy to have children, even if the responsibility makes their lives considerably harder.

Edin and Kefalas give us some startling statistics which reveal how widespread the practice of having children out of wedlock has become. In Philadelphia, where the women they interviewed live, more than six out of ten births are now outside of marriage. Across the U.S., that number is one in three. While many of the young women they talked to admitted that they wished they waited to have children, most of them (even girls as young as 16) say they conceived only a year or two before they were "ready." When the authors gave the single mothers an opportunity to explain why they decided to have children so young and before marriage, a common response was that their boyfriends repeatedly whispered the words "I want to have a baby by you," which, in their culture of dating and romance, is the highest form of praise and proof of a willingness to commit. The heady significance of such a declaration is then paired with the high social value that the poor place on having children. Girls from poor neighborhoods often see motherhood as the one aspiration which they can achieve and at which they can excel. While their middle class counterparts assume that college and careers are in their future, poverty-stricken teenagers look for ways in which their lives in the inner city can be improved. Babies are often the answer.

Many of these young mothers actually claim that motherhood saved them from a life of drugs, partying or one in which they had no one to love them. In these neighborhoods, becoming a mother and taking good care of one's children elevates a young woman in the eyes of her peers and the rest of her community in terms of moral stature. It is seen as a sign of maturity and as a mother, she can now command respect. The authors believe that the high value the poor place on having children stems from two sources: fewer opportunities and resources, and stronger absolute preferences.

The authors take us into the lives of single mothers living in eight different neighborhoods and try to shed light on the fact that marriage is just not part of the equation for most of these women. Why not? Edin and Kefalas argue that it is not because there is a lack of marriageable men in the inner city, as some scholars have argued, but rather because these women are not interested in marriage just for the sake of marrying their children's father. They don't want to lose their independence, they don't want to commit to men who may have drug problems or who have beat or cheated on them. In their eyes, marriage has nothing to do with having children, even though many women have hopes that bearing a child will help mold their boyfriends into suitable marriage partners. In fact, we learn about many couples who enjoy a certain honeymoon period when their child is born, reuniting after time spent apart during the pregnancy. But statistically, chances are not good that their plans for the future will become a reality. The authors tell us that by the time their child is one year old, half of all couples have broken up, and by the child's third birthday, two-thirds of all mothers are on their own.

Edin and Kefalas learned from these women that contrary to popular public opinion, poor women who have children out of wedlock actually do value the institution of marriage just as much as middle class women. They dream of marrying good men who will treat them and their children with love and respect. But they differ from their middle class counterparts because they are not willing to wait to find those men in order to have children. However, the authors point out that many single mothers (70 percent) are in fact living with men - boyfriends, fiancés and/or the fathers of at least one of their children. Thus, they argue that the perception of single mothers isn't always accurate, in that these women aren't always heading a household on their own.

The authors argue that action must be taken on a policy level to slow down the rate at which young women are having children out of wedlock, mainly because the children of young mothers have significantly diminished life chances. Edin and Kefalas assert that promoting marriage in and of itself can actually be detrimental to disadvantaged women, as it can only encourage women to enter into or stay in bad relationships. Instead, they think programs aimed at improving the marriage pool for women (i.e., intervening in poor young men's lives before they can get into trouble and convincing them to postpone fatherhood until their late twenties) and at reducing pregnancy among at-risk teens are the surest way to get on the right track towards reducing this trend. They also advocate some form of relationship-skills training for young poor people. However, they believe that the economy needs to be the biggest consideration in the policy equation. Early childbearing is the one way in which the poor establish a sense of self-worth and meaning. If they had greater opportunities in terms of education and jobs and greater access to resources, they would not, in the authors' opinions, be so quick to jump into parenthood.

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.

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.

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.

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.

There is so much good here I don't know where to start. Maybe by simply saying that this is probably the most important book ever written on understanding why low-income women value motherhood while putting marriage into an entirely different decision mode. Babies automatically elevate the mother into instant adulthood and, in their minds, a position of respect. The question of providing for their children to give them the best possible start in life is simply not relevant.

I will leave the book's details to several other reviewers who have covered the ground extremely well, but wish to emphasize that the authors dispel many myths concerning single mothers' attitudes toward marriage, and point out that 70% of low-income "single mothers" actually live with a boyfriend who may or may not take part in child-rearing and support. The public policy implications of the authors' statistics is simply too important to ignore. Children give the single mothers' lives meaning -- but note that it gives the mothers' lives meaning rather than give the children what they need to succeed or become well-adjusted as adults. In fact, as Ann Coulter pointed out in her much maligned book, "Guilty", the single mothers can't keep their promises. A mother's job is to prepare her children to leave home, and they rarely accomplish that.

Some sociologists will attack this book on the sample not being sufficiently broad, either racially or geographically, but those criticisms are small potatoes. Even if the authors' presentations are on point only seventy percent of the time (& I believe the percentage is much higher than that), the public policy and cultural implications are staggering. With the current trend toward bifurcating the American populace into two classes, the very rich and the poor, the rise in single mothers and their ensuing problems are far from peaking.

The authors use their technique of allowing the single mothers to speak for themselves truly brings home their situation, attitudes, and optimism (or lack thereof.) The book is almost exciting reading to anyone who cares about problems in American (or just Western) culture today. Even though the book was written (& researched) during the Bush 43 Administration, it is certainly even more timely now for Obama and subsequent administrations. I don't want to put my own spin on this review, but the State makes a very poor father and is getting worse.

I recommend this book to everyone as one of the most important books produced in this decade. The authors are to be commended. This work will enhance every reader's knowledge and understanding of a modern phenomenon that is rapidly changing our entire way of life.

I work as an attorney for legal services in a poor urban area, and the vast majority of my clients are poor, young mothers who had kids when they were too young and where the childrens' fathers are nowhere to be found. It has always irked me that these women come to me with four or five children they are raising on their own, and then seem surprised when the babydaddy won't pay support, or can't understand why it's so hard to pay the rent on their own. I could not understand this subculture, and so I snapped up this book to help me understand my clients better.

I will not give away the insights that the book provides, as to boil the whole book down to a few sentences is impossible and would be a great disservice. But "Promises" not only answered my questions, it helped me put the assumptions and worldview I had into context.

I always assumed that these impoverished clients "should" have held my middle-class values: schooling, a stable job, marriage, and then children. I assumed they were either too lazy or clueless or stubborn to conform to such an obvious progress. But what this book covers is truly a different subculture with extraordinarily different values. It's a culture where meaning is only found through being a mother, and abortion an ultimate sin. It's as foreign an idea to me and my ilk as Saudia Arabia's cultural treatment towards women.

Do I agree with these values? No; much like how I disagree with the subjugation of women in Saudai Arabia, I believe my value system makes more sense and leads to a better outcome. But I can now understand and appreciate the cultural mindset that these woman are raised in, and it makes their decisions a bit more logical (for a given value of "logic").

This also helped me understand a lot of the solutions I thought I knew were false. I thought throwing condoms and sex education at the poor would help stem the tide of teenage births. I was completely wrong; the kids already know how to use condoms, and they are aware of sexual dangers, but for reasons made clear in the book, they choose to ignore them for specific reasons. This is a brilliant template that social activists can work upon to try to bring more stability and wiser decisions to those in poverty.

This is a must read for sociologists, social workers, and really anyone who wants to learn about another culture right in their own backyards.

Not because they don't have access to birth control. These girls have children because it gives meaning to what they perceive as their otherwise meaningless lives. They need to be taught about self worth and self esteem at school that they don't receive at home. Then taught not what live will be like for them, but for the child they are bringing into the world for the own selfish needs. Until and unless this is done the cycle of poverty will continue to worsen no matter what the politicians do.

I was very interested to learn of this book, because I want to understand a mindset that is so foreign to how I was raised and what I believe in. When I saw people on shows like Maury, Jerry Springer, and season two of MTV's 'Sixteen and Pregnant,' who seemed to just shrug and accept it when they found out they had an unplanned pregnancy when they could barely support themselves, and who talk of having multiple children with someone, being together for many years, and yet still only being boyfriend and girlfriend, I couldn't fathom what was driving them to do that. I assumed that these people didn't use or care about birth control and had no concept of shame, morals, or respectability. And while there are still some things that just don't compute or which seem contradictory after reading the book, it did help to make what I thought was a simple subject into something more complex.

Because the girls and women profiled in this book are poor and many times unmotivated or not exactly star students, they feel that having kids is the one thing they can be good at, and that parenthood is the one thing they can look forward to and which can motivate them to tone down a wild lifestyle. Many of the girls and women also reported that having kids made them want to do better for themselves, though unfortunately the odds are stacked against them for something like going to college on a normal schedule or getting a high-paying job when they have several kids already and don't have a lot of financial resources. Many of them were actually using birth control, but then stopped taking it, got more sporadic, or gave in to a male partner who didn't want to use condoms. A lot of these children weren't accidents or planned, but somewhere in between. However, these girls and women believe that being young is the best time to have kids, that there might not be another chance, that a man worth marrying won't come along when they're young, and that they usually got pregnant "only" a year or two before they thought they were ready. They can't fathom why so many women who aren't poor purposely wait until they're in their thirties or even forties to have babies. Marriage is viewed as an adult activity, something you do when you're more mature and settled, with a man who's proven his worth over at least 5 or 6 years, and the guys they deem good enough to have kids with aren't always the same guys they deem marriage material. It does seem contradictory, though, how they feel that marriage is a huge step, as though bringing multiple children into the world isn't an even bigger step and as though living with a man for years and doing everything married people do, including raising kids together, isn't a marriage in all but name.

Many of these courtships proceeded at lightning speed, with men telling the girl they wanted to have a baby by her after only a handful of dates. Many of these women got pregnant within only a couple of months, when they barely knew one another. (A lot of these couplings also disturbed me because they began when the women were very young, in their teens, and their partners were legal adult men or at least inappropriately older. The very thought of a man in his late teens or even twenties or thirties hitting on me when I was that age would have given me the creeps, but then again, I don't live in a poor neighborhood and amn't lacking a father figure.) Then when this fantasy pregnancy and baby became realities, the men often had a much different reaction, like denying paternity or jumping ship. Often there's a brief reconciliation after the birth, but more often than not, these relationships don't last. But it's not humiliating or embarrassing for them to get pregnant out of wedlock and to have all of their kids without benefit of marriage and at a very young age, because almost everyone does it in their communities. They also by and large reject abortion and adoption, even though either choice would greatly improve their chances of getting an education, finding a good job, and moving out of the slums. Adoption is simplistically (and, to me, selfishly) looked on as "giving away your own flesh and blood" instead of being a selfless act of giving your baby the chance at a better life with people who can provide for him or her. They take the attitude I've heard so often among people like this, "If you're gonna have sex, accept the responsibility," even though in my non-poor community, taking responsibility means using birth control religiously if you can't afford a kid and don't want or need your life interrupted by unwanted parenthood before you're ready, or having an abortion or doing adoption if the worst happens. Although, as it's pointed out, people in the upper classes also have divorced marriage from these adult activities; gone are the days of the shotgun wedding and literally needing to be married to be a respectable part of the community, to live with a man, to have kids, and to have sex without being a pariah.

The authors don't have any definitive solutions to this problem, but they do posit some ideas. The rate of out of wedlock births to underage girls might go down if the men themselves were helped with things like job training and education, so that these girls and women have better partners to pick from in the first place, instead of feeling they have no choice but to wait until they're in their thirties and already have three children. They all also need economic help and more resources put into their schools and local job markets, so that they can aim higher than a low-wage dead-end job and being a highschool dropout. Relationship training would also help, so that these girls wouldn't be so quick to hop into bed with guys they barely know and to view the line "I wanna have a baby by you" as a pickup line or a goofy sentiment when it's used so early in a relationship and when they haven't even discussed marriage yet. With all of these things in place, they might start to value their futures and respect themselves enough to postpone sexual activity and childbearing until they're in a position to support a family and mature enough to handle adult relationships.

I thought this book was an excellent insight into the women of the poor; their values, their reasoning behind their early pregnancies and the world in which they live. It's well written and I would recommend that all mothers, including myself, encourage their young daughters to read this novel. My daughter thought it was a real "eye opener". I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this book to my friends.