“Unmarried With Children”: Article Summary Essay

This article sets out to investigate why women in poor neighborhoods seem to be comfortable having children while they are still too young and out of wedlock. The underlying thesis of the article is that economic challenges, shifts in marital roles, and the setting of a high financial bar for marriage have led to a situation whereby most poor women continue to have children far sooner than the national average of childbearing age, while still deferring marriage.

The authors of the article interview single mothers to demonstrate a multiplicity of key points, including

1. lack of economic prospects have led the poor to demonstrate little motivation or focus in timing their births as accurately as their middle-class counterparts do,
2. poor young girls in impoverished urban neighborhoods value children highly, anticipate them highly, and have a strong conviction that they are up to the task of mothering,
3. children provide poor youth a compelling sense of purpose,
4. disadvantaged women have not given up on the idea of marriage, but set a high financial bar as they are not content to rely on a man’s earnings,
5. relationships among poor couples are often filled with mistrust, hence the need for poor women to first become financially independent before entering into marriage.

The points above can be generalized to represent some of the factors that continue to influence American families in general and single mothers in particular. It is important to underscore how the need for economic independence pervades all the other considerations for marriage as demonstrated by single mothers, and also the changing role of the man as the sole breadwinner in the family.

Poor single mothers from impoverished urban neighborhoods in America have expressed a desire to get married; however, they want to be certain of their independence and equality in the partnerships that often become shaky due to reasons such as chronic violence, infidelity, drug and alcohol abuse, criminal activity as well as the threat of imprisonment. In the context of the poor single mothers, therefore, financial independence is of paramount importance since it shields them from the disgrace of a failed marriage, which according to them is far worse than an out of wedlock birth.