{"id":668,"date":"2009-04-06T07:42:46","date_gmt":"2009-04-06T13:42:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/crawler\/?p=668"},"modified":"2009-04-06T07:42:46","modified_gmt":"2009-04-06T13:42:46","slug":"my-baby-my-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/2009\/04\/06\/my-baby-my-life\/","title":{"rendered":"‘my baby, my life’"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Columbia Daily Tribune (Missouri)<\/a> ran a story on Friday about sociologist Maria Kefalas’ work on how “poor women find redemption in having a baby.”<\/p>\n

When Maria Kefalas started visiting low-income neighborhoods in Philadelphia to interview the young, single and often welfare-dependent mothers who lived there, many of the grandmothers were her age. When one mother heard Kefalas, at 32, had just become pregnant with her first child, she said, \u201cIsn\u2019t it wonderful that the doctors were proved wrong and you were able to get pregnant?\u201d<\/p>\n

The woman, who had her own first child in her teens, assumed Kefalas had been trying without success to have a baby since 19 or 20. This wasn\u2019t true, of course. In her early 20s, Kefalas had college to think about. Summer vacations spent traveling. Her future career. But this was still an assumption she encountered in these neighborhoods while conducting research with another sociologist. One 14-year-old told her, \u201cI\u2019ve been trying to have a baby ever since I could.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Kefalas puts it, childbirth has very little \u201ccompetition\u201d in these women\u2019s lives.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe stylish careers, fulfilling relationships and exceptional educations that will occupy middle- and upper class women\u2019s twenties and thirties are unattainable dreams to the women driving the non-marital childbearing trend,\u201d she writes on her blog on the Huffington Post. She sees children out of wedlock not as a decline in family values in poverty-stricken areas but as yet another symptom of the growing divide between the haves and the have-nots in the United States.<\/p>\n

In a phone interview, Kefalas said she believes talking to these women allowed her to dig past survey and statistical data that provide information but few answers. When the question \u201cWhy do poor women have children outside of marriage?\u201d comes up, society responds that individuals in low-income neighborhoods don\u2019t believe in marriage.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The innovative and important contribution of this work…<\/p>\n

Kefalas and Edin\u2019s research doesn\u2019t refute the notion that repairing family structures will help end welfare dependency by stabilizing homes. But it does challenge the assumption that the women living in Philadelphia\u2019s worst neighborhoods didn\u2019t care about marriage. In fact, the young women they met cared deeply about it.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone\u2019s notions of marriage have changed in society,\u201d Kefalas said. The difference is, \u201cupper-class young couples are able to achieve those raised\u201d expectations, although \u201camong low income couples you see the raised standards like everybody else, but actually more diminished opportunities to achieve those goals.\u201d<\/p>\n

For example, if the dream for marriage is a stable, dependable husband, these women had little hope of finding him. Many don\u2019t go to college and remain in the neighborhood where they grew up. The men around them are engaged in high-risk behavior and are often involved in the drug economy. Many spend some time in prison. Seen in this light, marriage is far from a stabilizer. The relationships are very \u201cvolatile,\u201d and the divorce rate for these low-income couples is significantly higher than the national rate.<\/p>\n

Having a child, however, does seem to provide new sense of purpose for the women Kefalas interviewed. It can act as a stabilizer in a neighborhood, family or financial situation that is otherwise chaos.<\/p>\n

\u201cHaving a child offers a source of redemption,\u201d Kefalas said. \u201cYou go from being this teenager who is wild and out of control to being this young woman with a baby, and if your baby\u2019s clean, people stop you on the street and say, \u2018You\u2019re such a wonderful mother.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cThese young women say, \u2018Having a baby saved my life.\u2019 \u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read more<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Columbia Daily Tribune (Missouri) ran a story on Friday about sociologist Maria Kefalas’ work on how “poor women find redemption in having a baby.” When Maria Kefalas started visiting low-income neighborhoods in Philadelphia to interview the young, single and often welfare-dependent mothers who lived there, many of the grandmothers were her age. When one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39074],"tags":[39112,70,39114,122,119],"class_list":["post-668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sightings","tag-culture","tag-family","tag-gender","tag-lifecourse","tag-poverty"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=668"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":670,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668\/revisions\/670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}