Promises I Can Stay Book Review

The article began with the relationship between 17 year old Jen and her 20 year old boyfriend Rick. Jen became pregnant with their son at the age of 15. She said she chose to get pregnant because Rick wanted her to have his baby shortly after they met. In low income cities becoming pregnant is almost like a badge of honor. It is honorable to be chosen, out of many other girls, to be the one the guy

One of the most useful lessons learned in the seminar class was that of what it means to shift the center. In her article “Shifting the Center: Race, Class, and Feminist Theorizing About Motherhood”, Patricia Hill Collins discusses the importance of looking at issues from the context of people of different racial, social, economic, and political backgrounds. She writes that “varying placement in systems of privilege, whether race, class, sexuality, or age, generate divergent experiences,” which allows to engage in “theorizing that embraces differences as an essential part of commonality.” Only when we are able to look at an issue or policy from different perspectives and contexts can we understand its implications on

How does a person come to decide if they want to be a parent or not? The formation of procreative identities in men and women is a complex topic with many influencing factors. Tamara G. Coon Sells set out to distinguish what some of these factors were in her study of 14 unmarried, childfree graduate students (2013, p. 133). Analyzing the narrative submissions of her sample, she was able to pinpoint 5 different themes impacting the development of both men’s and women’s procreative identity: biological, deterrents, fear, hesitation, and pressure (p. 144).

There was laws made up to ban birth control because the government did not want women to be able to not to become a mother. Then this woman, Margaret Sanger, who wanted to share about birth control that was part of the new feminism. Shen decided to advertise birth control because women have rights to be able to become a mother or not to become a mother. There are a lot of jobs for a mother to do like taking care of the baby, working, cooking and other house chores. The only freedom of women has choices and decisions to have in their like earning a decision or having a baby. This document is expressing how women who become mothers sacrifice a lot to be able to have a family. (Foner,

The introduction begins with quotes from people who mention that fathers get women pregnant and then leave the woman and the child; they mention that men need to realize their responsibilities do not end with conception. The book summarizes these quotes as unwed fatherhood is one of the leading social problems, and these men are irresponsible and “hit and run.” A CBS special report, The Vanishing Family, was an interview of McSeed, a father of six from four different women. In the interview, he says the responsibility of raising the child is on the mother, not him.

Often condemned as one of the primary societal problems of today, non-marital childbirth has been the subject of many sociologist’s explorations in an attempt to understand its rapid increase and growth in desirability. In their book Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage, Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas delve into the underlying reasons for the increase in non-martial child bearing, especially among women in low-socioeconomic communities. Through their two-and-a-half-year study, in which they conducted by interviewing over one hundred single mothers living in Philadelphia and Camden, Edin and Kefalas strove to understand why poor, single women were purposefully getting pregnant. Nearly eight years after Promises

Seeks Pity for Teenage Mothers and Abstinent Couples,” is that the woman’s inability to be decisive in whether or not she will assume the role of motherhood is symbolic of slavery. Furthermore, Sanger maintains that denying women the freedom of choice essentially impedes their constitutional rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. These assertions are substantiated through a series of letters that are written to Sanger by mothers who are overwhelmed with anguish and dismay due to their prominent rate of unplanned pregnancies and the complications that ensue as a result. The common thread indicated in all of the letters is the pursuit of relief in the form of prevention. The series of correspondences also addresses the invariable plight of poverty, illness, fear, physiological defects, sexual servitude, and the lack of social enterprise, which all seem to be exacerbated by the immense number of unplanned pregnancies. Sanger subscribes to the belief that the woman’s right to control her body is the foundation of her human rights; and the freedom of choice is the stimulus to safer, healthier and happier lives. One writer discloses her struggle to efficiently care for her eight children on her husband’s minimal income of $1.oo per day. Her failure to adequately nurture her eight children and ensure their normal development is created by her inability to work outside of the home to

Roberts attempts to convince readers that reproduction is an important topic, especially for black individuals. She addresses it important because certain policies that are set to keep black women from having children but also because these same policies persuade people in believing that racial inequality is perpetuated by Black people themselves. Roberts wants readers to think about reproduction in a new way and realize that these policies not only affect Black Americans but also the very meaning of reproductive freedom.

The U.S. government turns a blind eye to the problems of singlism towards single mothers. “Discrimination will end whenever women can get their cases into the formal courts, where judges will use the constitutions, statutes and the common law to defeat custom” (Zorn,146). Meaning, that until women are noticed, discrimination towards the single mother will never come to an end. “An unmarried friend of Klinenberg’s with a high-power job at a social-justice organization was informed in no

Being a mother in this dystopian world is seen as a shameful act and something to be ridiculed because of. As being John the Savage’s

The fact that “poverty disproportionately affects children who live in mother-headed households” (Gestwicki, Page 33) frightens me because having chances of ending up as a divorced mother would give me higher chances of living in poverty with my children. Knowing how my mother raised me, I know that I want the best for my children just how my mother wanted the best for me. Fourth, mothers in the 1960’s got to spend more time with their children. Mothers stayed home, which meant that they didn’t have to look for child care or for anyone to look after their children.

The next minor claim Willis presents is that the life of an unborn child is less valuable than that of a woman who already has a history and has experienced life. According to Willis, a woman has more worth because she has “feelings, self-consciousness, a history, social ties” (2005, p. 515). By having to carry a baby, all of these important parts of her life are in jeopardy of being harmed (Willis, 2005). The concern Willis expresses for a woman’s life changing

Author Catherine Newman is an unwed mother, who in this piece of writing explains why she won’t get married. Newman states in her article I Do Not. Why I Won’t Marry, “Because marriage is about handing the woman off, like a baton, from her father to her husband. Also known as “traffic in women,” this is how men have historically solidified their economic connections to other men…”(61) I have to disagree with this statement. This symbolism in American culture represents, in my experiences, the father handing the woman off to the groom entrusting him to love and protect the bride as he has her whole life. This statement from Newman gives me the sense that she is a feminist, only seeing that the man “has control” and not taking marriage for its intended meaning.

Not only are woman subjected to society norms based on their personality characteristics, but also on their life choices and “domestic responsibilities” questions arise for woman like “who will care for you children and husband”. Montague Kern and Paige P. Edley state that women will continue to be “criticized for abandoning their traditional family roles” (1). This topic is not something that is brought up to their male counterparts. I don’t believe I have ever heard a man be questioned on who was going to assume the responsibility of raising their children. So until society genuinely accepts that raising children and other domestic issues are shared endeavors, then women will continue to face this barrier. (Robson, 208)

There has been a multitude of assumptions as to why there have been a soaring number of teens living in poverty becoming pregnant. Younger women experiencing poverty, institutional