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Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage 1st Edition

by Kathryn Edin (Author), Maria J. Kefalas (Author)

4.6 265 ratings

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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.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"This is the most important study ever written on motherhood and marriage among low-income urban women. Edin and Kefalas's timely, engaging, and well-written book is a careful ethnographic study that paints an indelible portrait of family life in poor communities and, in the process, provides incredible insights on the explosion of mother-only families within these communities."

From the Inside Flap

"This is the most important study ever written on motherhood and marriage among low-income urban women. Edin and Kefalas's timely, engaging, and well-written book is a careful ethnographic study that paints an indelible portrait of family life in poor communities and, in the process, provides incredible insights on the explosion of mother-only families within these communities."William Julius Wilson, author of The Bridge over the Racial Divide

"This book provides the most insightful and comprehensive account I have read of the reasons why many low-income women postpone marriage but don't postpone childbearing. Edin and Kefalas do an excellent job of illuminating the changing meaning of marriage in American society."Andrew Cherlin, author of Public and Private Families

Edin and Kefalas provide an original and convincing argument for why low-income women continue to embrace motherhood while postponing and raising the bar on marriage. This book is a must read for students of the family as well as for policy makers and practitioners who hope to rebuild marriage in low-income communities.”Sara McLanahan, author of Growing Up with a Single Parent

"Promises I Can Keep is the best kind of exploration: honest, incisive and ever-so-original. It'll make you squirm, and that's a good thing, especially since Edin and Kefalas try to make sense of the biggest demographic shift in the last half century. This is a must read for anyone interested in the tangled intersection of family and public policy."Alex Kotlowitz, author of There Are No Children Here

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ University of California Press; 1st edition (March 8, 2005)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 300 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0520241134
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0520241138
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.35 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.32 x 1.14 x 9.2 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #371,396 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #235 in Poverty
- #299 in Sociology of Marriage & Family (Books)
- #710 in General Gender Studies

Customer Reviews:
4.6 265 ratings

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Maria Kefalas
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Maria Kefalas earned degrees at Wellesley College and the University of Chicago, completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania and worked at the Brookings Institution and Barnard College (at Columbia University) before joining the faculty of Saint Joseph's University in Philadelphia. She has received grants from the Department of Justice, the MacArthur Foundation, and the William T. Grant Foundation. Her writings have appeared in The Washington Post, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Slate, The Huffington Post and The Root and she is the author/co-author of four books. In 2012, her life took an unexpected turn when her youngest child, Calliope, was diagnosed with a fatal, degenerative, neurological disease called metachromatic leukodystrophy or MLD. That experience led Kefalas to become an advocate and philanthropist when she and her late husband Pat Carr to established the Calliope Joy Foundation and helped launch the Leukodystrophy Center of Excellence at the world-renowned Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Her newest book - Harnessing Grief - is a memoir about her life caring for her daughter and how she acquired the "superpower of grief" to champion gene therapy and save other people's children when Cal would not be helped. Learn more at www.mariakefalas.com
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Kathryn J. Edin
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KATHRYN J. EDIN is the William Church Osborn Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton University. The
author of nine books, Edin is widely recognized for using direct, in-depth observation to illuminate key mysteries about poverty: “In a field of poverty experts who rarely meet the poor, Edin usefully defies convention” (New York Times).
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Customers find the book easy to read and interesting. They appreciate the insightful information and research on economic status that enhances their knowledge. The book provides facts, statistics, and comparisons of different families.

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Readability Insight

28 customers mention "Readability"25 positive3 negative

Customers find the book easy to read and enlightening. They find it interesting and well-written, with no jargon. Many readers say it's a great sociology book for teenagers to understand the complexity of becoming a young mother.

"This book is an excellent read. Very interesting and gives you an understanding of the way SOME women think." Read more

"...Maybe by simply saying that this is probably the most important book ever written on understanding why low-income women value motherhood while..." Read more

"...It's a sociological study, but it doesn't read like a study. It's easy to follow and easy to read - there isn't a ton of jargon...." Read more

"...Overall, a good book if you are interested in the subject but its a little too dry to read for entertainment purposes (but I think that's the point)." Read more

22 customers mention "Insight"22 positive0 negative

Customers find the book insightful and a great source of information on how economic status plays a huge role. They appreciate the extensive research and analysis, describing it as an eye-opener from a social perspective. The book is considered a must-read for sociologists, social workers, and anyone interested in a sociological study.

"...The authors are to be commended. This work will enhance every reader's knowledge and understanding of a modern phenomenon that is rapidly changing..." Read more

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

"This book is the most informative and factual resource I have found for explaining the horrific rate of children growing up in poor communities..." Read more

"...about marriage, upward mobility, and how women in poverty should prioritize marriage and family - with statistics to back it up...." Read more

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Happy Shopper
Excellent read
Reviewed in the United States on October 6, 2024
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This book is an excellent read. Very interesting and gives you an understanding of the way SOME women think.

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Arkansaw Traveler
Required Reading for All Politicians -- Actually, Maybe Everyone
Reviewed in the United States on July 5, 2009
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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.

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29 people found this helpful

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E. Fields
Fascinating sociological exploration
Reviewed in the United States on January 13, 2011
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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.

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57 people found this helpful

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Mark MacGuidwin
Assuring the Dismal Treadmill Will Continue to Turn
Reviewed in the United States on June 19, 2005
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This book is the most informative and factual resource I have found for explaining the horrific rate of children growing up in poor communities without fathers in the home. It confirms what I have seen and heard about in my own experiences. And it completely puts the lie to most of what Planned Parenthood and sex education advocates claim--namely, "they have children because they don't have access to birth control". What pap!! These girls have children because it gives meaning to what they perceive as their otherwise meaningless lives.

My only problem with the book is that the authors decry the lack of marriable men in the communities in which these women live, yet seem blinded to (or choose not to acknowledge) the fact that what these young women do ensures the perpetuation of these dismal prospects. Despite the best intentions of these young mothers to provide the material necessities of life to their young children, all of the empirical evidence shows that growing up without the biological father in the home increases dramatically the chance that their children (both boys and girls) will fail to succeed in life. Until we change the value system that these young people grow up with, hope for improving the conditions of the next generation are doomed to failure.

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13 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Izzy
One of the hardest books I've ever read
Reviewed in Canada on May 17, 2024
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Very informative but incredibly frustrating. Page after page of people being stupid and men being awful. I actually had to put the book down several times because I couldn't take the stupid anymore.

Don't read this if you want to keep your sympathy and faith in humanity.

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Dana
Fantastic book
Reviewed in Canada on July 26, 2020
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I read this book in one day - could not put it down. Very informative, easy-to-read, and interesting.

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