Why Poor Women Don’t Marry

There has, in our society, been a recent spike in the number of couples cohabiting. Rather than marry, these folks prefer to live together without the benefit of clergy or a justice of the peace. It is as if they were husband and wife, but they do not have to worry about such troubling matters as a potential divorce.
At the same time, there has been a dramatic spike in the number of children born out of wedlock. Today, just about two out of every five American children arrive into the world in this condition. In these cases, their parents are frequently cohabiting—but sometimes not. Sometimes they merely had sex together.
While these figures are well known—at least among social scientists—there is a tendency to presume that the statistics apply equally up and down the social spectrum. Thus, it is often implied that the middle classes are as likely to be involved in extra-marital relations and births as are the poor. This, however, is not the case. There is a definite skew toward the lower end of the continuum.
In their book Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas document this trend. Drawing on years of ethnographic study in Philadelphia Pennsylvania and Camden New Jersey, they use their subjects own words to detail the reasons why so many poor women eschew marriage in favor of unwed parenthood.
Almost everyone, including Edin and Kefalas, considers this a disconcerting development; nevertheless there are substantial differences in explaining why it has occurred. Although some feminists dismiss the matter as evidence of diversity, they are in the minority. Most others look for an explanation in the hope this will provide clues as to a viable intervention.
Edin and Kefalas, as self-confessed liberals, disparage the monetary theories often favored by conservatives. They point out that the trend against marriage has escalated despite the reduction in welfare benefits given to poor women. Nevertheless, while the welfare safety net did not cause the problem, it does facilitate it. Poor women may not become pregnant in order to get welfare, but its availability means they do not have to worry about starvation for themselves or their children.
This may sound trivial, yet it contrasts markedly with the reaction of destitute women several centuries ago. One seldom hears Edin and Kefalas’s informants bewailing their fate as the impoverished did then. They do not issue heartfelt lamentations about what will become of them should they have a child. Nor do they wonder if they will need to support themselves through prostitution. Quite the contrary, most are pleased when they discover themselves pregnant. Indeed, they are convinced that it will validate their status as adult women.
What has occurred, although it is not explicitly identified as such by Edin and Kefalas, is a kind of role reversal. Nowadays most social scientists recognize that the Industrial Revolution undermined the traditional division of labor between men and women. The advent of the machine age transported men from the farm to the factory, whereas it left women behind at home with a shrinking role to play. As a result, because the latter’s contributions to the family well-being declined, they suffered from diminishing social respect.
To put the matter more succinctly, the male role was enhanced at the same time that the female role was devalued. –Only this turns out to be half the story. The familiar scenario applies more to the middle classes than others. More specifically, the poorest classes experienced the opposite of what occurred among their social superiors.
Within the lower orders the female role has been sustained, whereas the male role was diminished. Undereducated men nowadays have greater difficulty obtaining remunerative employment than their predecessors did during agricultural times. Meanwhile undereducated women are still able to maintain their roles as mothers. They continue to bear and raise children; with minimal support from sources such as the government.
Edin and Kefalas themselves claim that their subjects also continue to think of themselves as good mothers. As long as they can feed and clothe their youngsters, they cling to a self-image of social competence. The fathers of their children, however, do not. Their social role as providers and protectors is impossible to preserve when they cannot find dependable employment. As a consequence, parenthood tends to be far more threatening to them than their paramours.
Putting these two pieces of information together, the upshot is a rise in both unstable cohabitation and unwed parenthood. Mothers do not remain with the fathers of their children because these men can do little to make motherhood easier. If anything, they become a drag on the mother-child relationship. And so couples split up. And so motherhood tends to come before marriage.
In fact, as Edin and Kefalas authenticate, marriage is often thought of as a personal achievement; as a sort of “icing on the cake.” It is something that is nice to have, but not what life is about. Bearing and raising children is what counts. No matter that doing so as a single parent almost certainly produces children who are unable to rise out of poverty. The fate of these youngsters is deemed irrelevant. Rather it is validation of the female role that determines their mother’s actions.
If this is so, then the tragedy of unwed parenthood may be difficult to undo. It will entail reversing an entire culture rather than merely redistributing wealth. And this will certainly not be achieved overnight.
Melvyn L. Fein. Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology
Kennesaw State University