Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas's book Promises I Can Keep explores why poor women have babies so young -- often as teenagers -- and why they don't get married beforehand (or, generally, for many years after).
Their answers were illuminating. It's not about contraceptive failures (these women know how to use contraception and mostly have decent access to condoms and pills, at least); it's not about wanting a bigger welfare check (both research data and interviewees' self-reports indicate this isn't a factor); it's not about devaluing marriage (to the contrary, marriage was a longed-for dream).
It's almost entirely cultural, and I was surprised at how conservative that culture felt to me, given that its most visible result is teenage girls dropping out of school and having kids, which conservatives generally rail against. But, in fact, the women's values and ideals seemed to me to be rooted in '80s culture warrior concepts, just transposed to a socioeconomic setting where it led to this result.
First, children are prized in these neighborhoods. They "are nearly always viewed as a gift, not a liability -- a source of both joy and fulfillment whenever they happen upon the scene. They bring a new sense of hope and a chance to start fresh. Thus, most women want the baby very much once the pregnancy occurs." Moreover, "the way in which a young woman reacts in the face of a pregnancy is viewed as a mark of her worth as a person. And as motherhood is the most important social role she believes she will play, a failure to respond positively is a blot on her sense of self."
Abortion is viewed as immoral and irresponsible (especially when it's for something "selfish" such as pursuing education); adoption is "giving away your own flesh and blood." The responsible choice, for which there is considerable social pressure, is to "deal with it" and keep the baby.
And most of these girls desperately want that baby. "In choosing to bring a pregnancy to term, a young woman can capitalize on an important and rare opportunity to demonstrate her capabilities to her kin and community. Her willingness and ability to [... rise] to the challenge of the most serious and consequential of all adult roles is clear evidence that she is no longer a 'trifling' teenager." Motherhood is viewed as the highest purpose of being a woman.
Thus, in this social context, the rewards of keeping the baby are far greater, and the opportunity costs of doing so are far lower. Keeping a baby is "the surest source of accomplishment within [the girls'] reach: becoming a mother." It's a source of pride and fulfillment. The baby represents having arrived into adult responsibility, and provides love and a strong relationship in a context where most women report little trust in their neighbors, no close friends, and weak kinship ties. The "choice to have a child despite the obstacles that lie ahead is a compelling demonstration of a young woman's maturity and high social stature," and is often the only source of meaning or purpose in the women's lives.
And they're not giving up much to get it. Edin and Kefalas note that "early childbearing is highly selective of girls whose other characteristics -- family background, cognitive ability, school performance, mental health status, and so on -- have already diminished their life chances so much that an early birth does little to reduce them farther." The research indicates that "[d]isadvantaged girls who bear children have about the same long-term earnings trajectories as similarly disadvantaged youth who wait until their mid or late twenties to have a child." In other words, they're really not losing anything.
The upshot is that these women live in a world where, unlike middle-class women, they have little opportunity to develop rewarding professional careers or identities, and no clear idea of how to get there. The only clear opportunity they have to adopt a meaningful social identity is as a mother, and because so many of them grow up raising siblings or neighborhood kids, parenting involves a familiar skillset that they're confident they can execute well. Further, the stress, loneliness, and anomie of a life that lacks direction "create a profound drive to make life more meaningful" by becoming a mother and thus having a purpose.
Take out women's ability to define themselves via education and career, emphasize motherhood as the pinnacle of femininity and the most rewarding part of a woman's life (not to mention the measure of her worth as a person), paint abortion as the choice of the selfish and immature, and what you get is a cultural context in which it makes a lot of sense for a teenage dropout seeking validation and meaning to find the purpose of her life in a baby.
So that's half the equation. The other half is why they don't get married. I'll summarize that part next time I feel like talking to myself on the internet for a while.
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