46 pages • 1 hour read
Kathryn J. Edin, Maria J. KefalasPromises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2005A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter 6-ConclusionChapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 6 Summary
The American middle-class views unwed, low-income pregnancies as tragic “barriers” to a woman’s “future achievement, short-circuiting her chances for what might have been a better life” (170). Yet study participants view young motherhood as their salvation that bestows meaning on their troubled lives. Fifteen-year-old Zeyora, for example, reports that having a baby provided her with a new challenge, while Allison, who used to have a heroin addiction, explains that her pregnancy turned her life around and gave it a new, positive meaning. Twenty-three-year-old Amanda notes that motherhood motivates her to better herself for her son’s sake. Many women also report a lack of friends or supportive family to Edin and Kefalas, a situation known as relational poverty. Their children counter this loneliness. Sonia, a young mother, says she had a baby to fill an emotional void in her life, and Jennifer reports that her son provides her with company and happiness. Motherhood also provides these women with a “source of validation, for they believe that childrearing is something they can be good at” (176).
However, these women must demonstrate good motherhood to fully attain this validation. When their community sees them with “a clean, healthy, and well-behaved child” (177), these women garner respect. This perception means that these mothers will occasionally splurge on name-brand clothing for their children but not for themselves. They also celebrate their children’s successes because these accomplishments provide evidence of good mothering. They can correct the failures of their own youth through their children and hope for a “second change at social mobility that has slipped out of their grasp” (179).
The middle class mistakenly perceives these young mothers’ trajectories as tragic. Rather, study participants often report their lives were “out of control” before becoming mothers; the lived with depression, did poorly in school, used drugs or drank alcohol, and spent time partying. Others lived in abusive situations. These circumstances changed with their children’s arrival since the demands of motherhood brought stability and structure to their daily lives. Zeyora, for example, wonders if her child was God’s gift to bring calm to her life. Eighteen-year-old Denise says her son is the reason she stopped using drugs and alcohol, and Champagne describes her son’s arrival as healing. These women, however, are not selfishly motivated: “In reality, the motivation to mother among women of all social classes is a mix of self-sacrifice and expected reward” (182).
Middle-class women don’t feel the need to fill the void left by relational poverty the way these women do, and they often report having children brings chaos to their lives. Some low-income mothers interviewed, in contrast, believe they would be dead or imprisoned without their children. They do not believe their lives would be better if they had waited to have children, even if delaying pregnancy for a few years might have helped their financial circumstances, “and it is this perception, rather than reality, that guides their actions” (184). They therefore pursue motherhood and seek loving relationships with their children before marriage.
Conclusion Summary
Several years after the study’s conclusion, some of the participants were flourishing in new careers and had new relationships. Mahkiya Washington, for example, split up with Mike, her child’s father, and became involved with Andre, also a single parent. She also enrolled in community college with plans to continue her education at a four-year institution.
Scholars have offered competing theories for declining marriage rates, including women’s rising financial freedom, the welfare state, and the shrinking number of urban men suitable for marriage. The women’s economic independence theory, for example, holds that as women became independent earners, they retreated from marriage because they could afford to do so. Conservative Charles Murray, in contrast, suggested a link between “nonmarital childbearing” and more generous welfare distribution (198). Since the government gave more support to unwed mothers, low-income couples chose not to marry. Finally, William Julius Wilson argued that women in the United States’ inner cities faced an “impossible dilemma” because declining industrialism left men unemployed and thus less desirable as husbands.
The welfare theory does not account for the fact that states do not adjust for inflation, so the value of this support is low. Likewise, research demonstrates that high-earning women do not marry less often. Wilson’s theory partly explains the decline in marriage, but he makes the “assumption that employment, even at a menial job, pays enough to make a man marriageable” (199). Promises I Can Keep shows, in contrast, that men who have good jobs like Mike are not “automatically deemed marriageable” (199).
The poor and middle class have redefined marriage since the 1950s: “[M]arriage is much less about sex, coresidence, and raising children than it used to be” (200). Many in the US now consider these things acceptable outside of marriage, and second-wave feminism also shifted attitudes toward unmarried mothers in a positive direction. The practical reasons for marriage are less important than its “symbolic significance” (201). The poor do not reject marriage; instead, they elevate it. Financial distinctions between the middle and lower classes contribute to their “radically different family adaptations to the new cultural norm about marriage” (202). Both groups have a “high standard” when it comes to marriage, but low-income individuals are less likely to achieve this standard, which includes economic security.
Poor women do not depend on men to achieve financial success, and marriage means a relationship is secure, a true partnership, and insulated from the threat of divorce. Edin and Kefalas observe that low-income families value having children more than the middle-class and see “childlessness as one of the greatest tragedies in life” (204). Furthermore, early childbearing brings high “opportunity costs” for middle-class women that are less significant for poor women (205). Middle-class women are also less likely to seek fulfillment through childbearing, while low-income women’s lives are often given meaning when they become mothers. Many research participants eschew the middle-class idea that a career is more important than motherhood. Data shows these women do believe children reared within marriage do better than those who are not; however, they also believe that it takes years to ensure a relationship’s stability: “Poor women instead treat the search for the ideal marital partner as a lifelong quest and the bearing and raising of children as tasks they will accomplish along the way” (210).
Edin and Kefalas’s study shows that the poor define good mothering by different standards, too. Poor mothers facilitate their children’s “natural growth” by providing for their physical needs, while middle-class mothers focus on their children’s achievements as a measure of success. These lower-class standards cross racial and ethnic boundaries, though African American mothers identify marriage as a goal more than their white or Puerto Rican counterparts. These findings suggest that conservative public policy, like marriage training programs as an antidote for poverty, are doomed to fail in the face of the problems that permeate these urban neighborhoods, including drug and alcohol use, violence, and infidelity. Similarly, liberal job training programs will not solve the problem of low marriage rates, though they may help.
Edin and Kefalas assert that the true problem is “marriageability” (217). Investment in social programs that target at-risk youth in inner cities is one method of addressing this issue. Moreover, “more access to stable, living-wage employment for both men and women should […] be a key policy objective” since poor women say they want financial independence before they marry (219). New labor opportunities are essential because one’s work can “establish a sense of self-worth and meaning” so that young women do not look to childbearing to fulfill this need (219). The researchers conclude that policy changes are imperative if the state wishes to promote marriage and prevent unwed pregnancies.
Chapter 6-Conclusion Analysis
The final chapter of Promises I Can Keep emphasizes the transformative power of motherhood for low-income women and counters the narrative that young, unwed pregnancies are tragedies that derail a young mother’s life. The book’s conclusion summarizes the study’s overall findings and encourages policymakers to consider these findings when producing social programming that addresses poverty, marriage, and childbearing.
The Socioeconomic Determinants of Family Formation lead young mothers to delay marriage but do not leave them emotionally unfulfilled, according to Edin and Kefalas. Motherhood brings order and meaning to a young woman’s life by offering her “a valid role and meaningful set of challenges” (172). Twenty-year-old mother Amanda, for example, reports that her son’s birth encouraged her to change her life, while TJ says motherhood completes her. Jen Burke says her son’s birth provided new goals and a reason to go home each day. Good Mothering and “Being There” is an accomplishment in which these women take pride and that generates social rewards: “There is no greater proof of a young woman’s merit than the spontaneous praise of her mothering from a stranger on the street. The well-dressed child transforms the shabbily dressed mother” (177). These mothers may not be well-educated and may not hold high-paying jobs or own homes, but they take pride in their skills as mothers, which exists separately from these factors. Motherhood thus plays a prominent role in shaping their identities and generating a positive sense of self.
Motherhood is also emotionally fulfilling for women who “cannot name one person they would consider a friend” and who distrust men because of negative experiences (174). Study participant Brielle reports that young women do not have children to hold onto to boyfriends or collect welfare as many stereotypes assert. Instead, they have children “just to have somebody…to take care of, or somebody to love or whatever” (174-75). Relational poverty is a pervasive problem in the neighborhoods Edin and Kefalas studied, and childbearing fills this void. Good mothering also allows women to make up for their past failures as their children’s successes become their successes: “Women at the bottom of the American class ladder hope their children will give them a vicarious second chance at the social mobility that has slipped out of their grasp” (179). In the same way that children symbolize new beginnings as new lives, they also provide new opportunities and perspectives for mothers to feel fulfilled and purposeful.
These findings have important policy implications. Edin and Kefalas argue that the social programs available at the time their book was published (2005) failed to do enough to prevent young, unwed pregnancies because they ignored the root causes, namely the lack of marriageable men and fulfilling opportunities that bring meaning to low-income women’s lives. Both the lower and middle classes have redefined marriage in the United States; its symbolic significance is more important than ever, yet marriage rates have fallen because, for the poor, it is often an unachievable goal due to the problems outlined in this study. Social programs that encourage healthy marriages are not enough, and Edin and Kefalas provide alternative possible policies. The lack of suitable husbands is a significant problem. Policy programs must address issues like intimate partner violence, infidelity, and drug and alcohol abuse among low-income men early, “before these troubles have had a chance to take root” (217). Job training programs for men are also important, but “it is not enough to focus solely on male employment” (216). Punishing single mothers by cutting welfare benefits is also not a solution because these women do not have children to accumulate welfare, contrary to the “welfare queen” myth.
Programs that encourage young people to delay childbearing are important, too. These may include service-learning programs, which are particularly effective at filling a void in young people’s lives by celebrating their achievements. Service learning can facilitate a sense of belonging and community that enriches young lives, especially when these elements are absent from their home lives. When a young woman is emotionally fulfilled and does not experience relational poverty, the researchers assert, she will not look to pregnancy as a solution to her needs. Edin and Kefalas’s study thus provides answers to questions about the increase in unwed motherhood since the 1950s and constructive solutions that can enrich the lives of at-risk, low-income youth.
