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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
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