The Muthas
Great piece at WSJ about a new book on inner-city motherhood. Link. Excerpts:
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.
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."
