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.

What is it like to become an adult in twenty-first-century America? This book takes us to four very different places - New York City, San Diego, rural Iowa, and Saint Paul, Minnesota - to explore the dramatic shifts in coming-of-age experiences across the country. Drawing from in-depth interviews with people in their twenties and early thirties, it probes experiences and decisions surrounding education, work, marriage, parenthood, and housing. The first study to systematically explore this phenomenon from a qualitative perspective, "Coming of Age in America" offers a clear view of how traditional patterns and expectations are changing, of the range of forces that are shaping these changes, and of how young people themselves view their lives.

What is it like to become an adult in twenty-first-century America? This book takes us to four very different places - New York City, San Diego, rural Iowa, and Saint Paul, Minnesota - to explore the dramatic shifts in coming-of-age experiences across the country. Drawing from in-depth interviews with people in their twenties and early thirties, it probes experiences and decisions surrounding education, work, marriage, parenthood, and housing. The first study to systematically explore this phenomenon from a qualitative perspective, "Coming of Age in America" offers a clear view of how traditional patterns and expectations are changing, of the range of forces that are shaping these changes, and of how young people themselves view their lives.

"Scrubbing behind their refrigerators, manicuring their lawns, reciting the pledge of allegiance in rainy parking lots, the people of Beltway mold their community with precision and grace. Firm in their convictions about what makes up a decent place to live, and fierce in their efforts to protect this place from the forces that threaten it, Beltway's residents have found in Kefalas a sharp-eyed yet sympathetic interpreter of their behavior, their homes, and their dreams. Ethnography rarely penetrates this deeply."--Wendy Griswold, author of "Bearing Witness

"The perspective of working or lower-middle class whites on issues of race and culture is often ignored, misunderstood or treated with contempt by social scientists. Kefalas's perceptive portrayal and penetrating analysis of a white working-class neighborhood in Chicago provides an important and much needed contrast. In this well-written book, Kefalas advances our understanding of the socioeconomic insecurities of ordinary white Americans in a changing urban world and shows how these insecurities influence their world views and efforts to provide meaning and order in their daily lives."--William Julius Wilson, author of "The Bridge over the Racial Divide

"Not since Jonathan Rieder's "Canarsie has an urban ethnographer presented as nuanced an examination of the defended working-class neighborhood and its inhabitants. Kefalas's meticulous Chicago fieldwork argues that her subjects rise above the old racial order as they fight against crime and other threats. "Working-Class Heroes will provoke endless seminar discussion and debate, and ongoing research. It establishes its author as an important new voice in urbanethnography."--Mitchell Duneier, author of "Sidewalk and "Slim's Table

""Working Class Heroes is an important and original contribution because it demonstrates very convincingly how the stable white lower-middle class defines its identity and its status through its environment and how group boundaries are shaped by ecological factors. As defenders of civilization living in an imperiled world, the workers Kefalas studied believe an immaculate household, a well-maintained property, a clean and safe neighborhood, and a righteous nation are worth living and fighting for. Her skillful ethnography truly captures the complexity of their cultural world and clarifies neglected aspects of the cultural dimension of inequality."--Michele Lamont, author of "The Dignity of Working Men: Morality and the Boundaries of Race, Class, and Immigration

"This is the most important study ever written on motherhood and marriage among low-income urban women. Edin and Kefalas's timely, engaging, and well-written book is a careful ethnographic study that paints an indelible portrait of family life in poor communities and, in the process, provides incredible insights on the explosion of mother-only families within these communities."--William Julius Wilson, author of "The Bridge Over the Racial Divide"This book provides the most insightful and comprehensive account I have read of the reasons why many low-income women postpone marriage but don't postpone childbearing. Edin and Kefalas do an excellent job of illuminating the changing meaning of marriage in American society."--Andrew Cherlin, author of "Public and Private Families"Edin and Kefalas provide an original and convincing argument for why low-income women continue to embrace motherhood while postponing and raising the bar on marriage. This book is a must read for students of the family as well as for policy makers and practitioners who hope to rebuild marriage in low-income communities."--Sara McLanahan, author of "Growing Up with a Single Parent""Promises I Can Keep is the best kind of exploration: honest, incisive and ever-so-original. It'll make you squirm, and that's a good thing, especially since Edin and Kefalas try to make sense of the biggest demographic shift in the last half century. This is a must read for anyone interested in the tangled intersection of family and public policy."--Alex Kotlowitz, author of "There Are No Children Here