Reddit reviews Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage

I am with you - I don't understand how having kids with someone is less of a commitment than marriage. But a sociologist did a book on this trend and I keep meaning to read it:

https://www.amazon.com/Promises-Can-Keep-Motherhood-Marriage/dp/0520241134

Given my understanding of how "TANF" and other programs for the low-income work in the USA, it sounds like the odds are decent that you may be causing a lot of grief for people in extremely precarious and difficult situations. People with kids in extremely precarious and difficult situations. If you're a single parent struggling to get by and your BF or GF comes by with groceries, and you sell my food aid so you can buy kids' winter boots that year, and then you have to deal with an interruption to your meagre aid, and punishment that affects the kids' well-being, all for just trying to get by...

...yeah, I don't know; I think I'd find a different hobby, outside of incidents where you're 100% sure you are in possession of all of the facts and there is unquestionably abuse of the system rather than doing what one can manage to do to squeak by.

Alternatively: write your congressperson, tell them you're tired of your tax dollars being wasted on administering an alphabet soup of different programs, and you'd rather see the $ being spent there simply being given to the poor, so they don't resort to this.

(Observing this from Canada, where we don't have "food stamps," and thus, no underground trade in ditto...)

> probably get a bunch for it because you have multiple kids (common here anyways)

If you're genuinely interested in this and would like to learn something about it instead of just making knee-jerk assumptions, the book
Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage is riveting reading and explains a lot about an issue people like to complain about without thinking much about.

(Here is the quickest thing I could Google vis-a-vis "a bunch," a [PDF table showing max amounts for food stamps in one state in 2014]. "Each additional HH member will increase by $146." $146/mo to feed a person for a month is not exactly luxury.)

I read this book quite some time ago: http://www.amazon.com/Promises-Can-Keep-Motherhood-Marriage/dp/0520241134

Some people see motherhood as the only way they can contribute to society or feel important and respected.

I think American society makes 3 huge mistakes that lead to this. We glorify motherhood, we keep the myth of the American dream on life support, and we don't talk enough about the cost of having children. Too many people think that they will birth the child that will go on to cure cancer or strike oil when the rule is that children born into poverty usually stay impoverished and they keep their parents impoverished.

People usually overstate the incidence of unintended pregnancy among the poor, which is less than 15%. I imagine that the slightly higher rate of unintended pregnancy among the poor is mostly due to not being able to afford birth control.

They are not unplanned. It's a misconception. Poor women have children because it gives their lives some fulfillment/meaning and raise their social status in community.

Here's a good book about single motherhood among the poor: https://www.amazon.com/Promises-Can-Keep-Motherhood-Marriage/dp/0520241134

You'd probably want to read Edin's Promises I Can Keep. Here's a summary.

Her basic thesis is that there's been a disconnect between marriage and childbirth in the last 40 years (post birth control). Marriage is now less about starting a family, and is more about the wedding as a symbol of economic status.

This broad social change has a differential effect based on class. As such, you see more high income people marry without the intention of starting a family right away, and more low income people start families before getting married.

Kathryn Edin wrote a book about this. The tl;dr I got from it is that in general, the women she interviewed wanted to have kids, that they thought having kids would be a motivation to adapt to the responsibility, and that many thought their fathers could and would straighten out.

https://www.amazon.com/Promises-Can-Keep-Motherhood-Marriage/dp/0520241134

There's some fascinating sociology on this topic, actually. Why people of low income choose to have children even when it would strike people like us as financially ruinous or irresponsible or whatever. It is interesting to see it from their perspective, because how they see it breaks pretty much all standard left/right narratives. Book rec: https://www.amazon.com/Promises-Can-Keep-Motherhood-Marriage/dp/0520241134

>Occasionally I've seen it followed by some kind of incredibly patronizing excuse which is that while they know it's technically irrational and irresponsible, they cannot really be blamed because having 'a family' is pretty much all the fulfillment that the dumb peasants are ever going to get out of life since everything else for them is so awful.

I wonder if people who have this perspective have heard of books like Promises I Can Keep, and then boil it down to this oversimplified and patronizing point of view?

Link: https://www.amazon.com/Promises-Can-Keep-Motherhood-Marriage/dp/0520241134

I'd strongly recommend you read Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage.

It's not a simple question. Here's an excellent book on the subject

Long story short there are barriers to marriage. Motherhood is a pathway to fulfillment for people who are deprived of opportunities to upward social mobility.