Reading Presents Research Data Promises I Can Ke
answer these questions(at least one page):
This is an excerpt from the authors’ book with the same title. The reading presents research data gathered for over three years in inner city neighborhoods of Philadelphia, PA and Camden, NJ during the early-2000s. The reading is very rich in description – exactly how great ethnographic research should be done. The authors talk about the concepts of marriage and motherhood in these low income areas. They noticed a disjoint. If middle class women get married but can’t have kids, low income women don’t get married but have kids. How can we account for the decoupling of marriage and motherhood among low income women?
- What kind of response does a middle class woman elicit; one who gets educated, becomes established in a career, gets married, wants to have kids, but realizes she can’t have any?
- What kind of response does a low income woman who has kids out of wedlock elicit?
- What are some reasons why poor women choose to have kids without being married? Do you believe the stories women tell?
- If having a kid as a single parent has negative consequences (this is a very big assumption by the way so feel free to dispute it), what can we do to prevent the intergenerational cycle?
reply my classmate’s post:
1. What kind of response does a middle-class woman elicit; one who gets educated, becomes established in a career, gets married, wants to have kids, but realizes she can’t have any?
Most professional women believe that they can put off kids until after they turn forty. In actuality, the cut off age to having kids is twenty-seven, after then female fertility begins to decline. Because of this misunderstanding, there is a really large number of high-achieving women who are without a child. Some responses the middle-class woman makes include: Having a baby “was supposed to be the easy part, right?” quips the Tivle cover story and “Not like getting into Harvard. Not like making partner. The baby was to be Mother Nature’s gift. Anyone can do it; high school dropouts stroll through the mall with their babies in CI Snugli. What can be so hard. . . ?”
2. What kind of response does a low-income woman who has kids out of wedlock elicit?
For low-income women, the tragedy is unintended pregnancy and childbirth before a basic education has been completed, while they are still poor and unmarried. Times Magazine finds it ironic that that so many “Mistresses of the Universe” make all the right moves yet find they cannot have children, while those at the bottom of the American class ladder seem to have more children than they know what to do with. This generates not pity, but outrage from society. They are usually twenty-one years old on average.
3. What are some reasons why poor women choose to have kids without being married? Do you believe the stories women tell?
Studies suggest that the rise in women’s employment that presumably allows them to more easily live apart from men, the decline of marriageable men in disadvantaged groups, or the expansion of the welfare state account for a small part as to why poor women choose to have kids without being married. Antonia Rodriguez said that birth control was abandoned because men use the lines “I want to have a baby with you” to woo women. Mahkiya Washington illustrated how an expectant mother uses pregnancy to test the strength of her bond with her man and take a measure of his moral worth. Deena Vallas was in a steady relationship with her baby’s father, yet was not married to him. This showed that the retreat from marriage among the poor flows out of a radical redefinition of what marriage means.
4. If having a kid as a single parent has negative consequences (this is a very big assumption by the way so feel free to dispute it), what can we do to prevent the intergenerational cycle?
I do not think being a single parent has negative consequences. I do believe that sone single parents are better off than others so the process with money is a little easier. There should be reform for single-parent families to reduce child poverty. I believe that poverty-stricken communities should be developed in such a way that education, infrastructure, work opportunities, and living opportunities are better.