Promises I Can Keep

This is a book by two sociologists. Yea for sociology books that the general public can read! This one is an ethnographic study about what poor women are so much more likely to bear children as single mothers than middle class and wealthy women.


The chapters are organized by topic, and are filled with evidence from the 150+ women's lives that they follow in poor Philadelphia neighborhoods.




This is what they find:

For poor women, there is a lower opportunity cost to bearing children young--don't consciously choose to have children, but at the same time, not viewed as accident

Changing values towards sex, marriage, and child-raising exist among rich and poor alike; There really aren't a lot of differences in these values between poor and rich; Standards for marriage have increased--for rich, means delays in age at marriage and common co-habitation; for poor, delaying marriage too.

So, why are unmarried poor having children ?

The poor hold a higher value on children, due to both fewer foregone opportunities and stronger absolute preferences;

Poor women put children, rather than marriage, education, or career, at center of their identity and personal meaning--find meaning in children; with neighborhoods full of social disorder, children are seen as a necessity while marriage is a luxury

One interesting finding: the earnings trajectory for poor women does not change depending on whether she has a child as a teenager--the same characteristics that are associated with early childbearing are also associated with other negative outcomes; so, having children early isn't the causal effect for diminished opportunities.

"Early childbearing is highly selective of girls whose other characteristics--family background, cognitive ability, school performance, mental health status, and so on--have already diminished their life chances so much that an early birth does little to reduce them further"

Here are some of the problems I saw with it:
1. As a fan of survey research and statistical methodolgy, I would love to see the quantitative complement to this study.

2. I wondered about a generational effect. The researchers lump all single mothers together, but their theory and explanation seem to favor changing attitudes over time. It doesn't follow that young mothers in teen age years and older mothers--in their 40's--would hold same ideologies about marriage and child bearing. It would be useful to seperate out experiences of young girls from others; They also seem to conflate single motherhood and young motherhood (teen ager child bearing).

3. They explain how having babies and young children structure poor women's lives, shape their identity, and give meaning to them. But, what about as their children grow older? How do these women change? For example, when they see their children start to get into trouble? how do they feel? Edin's theory seems to be mostly about caring for young children--providing for their physical needs, making sure they are clean, teaching them basics