Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood before

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

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.
Country USA
Manufacturer University of California Press
Binding Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate 2011-10-04
Format Kindle eBook

Country	USA
Manufacturer	University of California Press
Binding	Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate	2011-10-04
Format	Kindle eBook

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