Why don't they just get married? Barriers to marriage among the disadvantaged

Future of Children

Volumn 15, Issue 2, 2005, Pages 117-137

  Edin, Kathryn ^a   Reed, Joanna M ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA   (United States)

^b NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CHILD PARENT RELATION; DIVORCE; ECONOMICS; FAMILY; FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT; MARRIAGE; PREGNANCY; REVIEW; SOCIAL ASPECT; TAX;

ADULT; CHILD; DIVORCE; FEMALE; HUMANS; INCOME; MALE; MARRIAGE; POVERTY; SOCIOECONOMIC FACTORS; VULNERABLE POPULATIONS;

EID: 27944467217     PISSN: 10548289     EISSN: 15501558     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/foc.2005.0017     Document Type: Review

References (138)

1. These figures represent the likelihood of marriage within a given year. See Diane K. McLaughlin and Daniel T. Lichter, "Poverty and the Marital Behavior of Young Women," Journal of Marriage and the Family 59 (1997): 589.
2. Forty percent of poor men and 30 percent of poor women are married, compared with about two-thirds of men and women with incomes at three or more times the poverty level. Between 1999 and 2001 the figures for the poor declined from 48 percent to 41 percent for men and from 37 percent to 33 percent for women. See Tamara Halle, "Charting Parenthood: A Statistical Portrait of Fathers and Mothers in America" (Washington: Child Trends, 2002).
3. Amara Bachu, "Trends in Marital Status of U.S. Women at First Birth: 1930-1994," Population Division Working Paper 20 (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2003). This analysis excludes births to adolescents, almost all of which are nonmarital. Twenty-three percent of poor women aged twenty-five and older have had an adolescent birth, as against only 4 percent of nonpoor women.
4. See Saul D. Hoffman and E. Michael Foster, "Economic Correlates of Nonmarital Childbearing among Adult Women," Family Planning Perspectives 29, no. 3 (1997): 137-40, table 2.
5. "Quick Hit," Editorial, San Jose Mercury News, September 19, 2003.
6. Because the marriage behaviors of the poor have changed significantly over the past several decades, we exclude any study published before 1990. For example, Carol Stack's 1972 account of the coping strategies of the welfare poor is excluded, though it does include a discussion of marital views. See Carol B. Stack, All Our Kin: Strategies for Survival in a Black Community (New York: Harper and Row, 1974).
7. We also exclude ethnographic studies in which marriage is a peripheral, not a central, focus, such as Elijah Anderson's discussion of sex codes among inner-city African American teens. See Elijah Anderson, The Code of the Street: Decency, Violence, and the Moral Life of the Inner City (New York: Norton, 1999).
8. Martin Fishbein and Icek Ajzen, Belief, Attitude, Intention, and Behavior (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley 1975).
9. Marcia J. Carlson, Sara S. McLanahan, and Paula England, "Union Formation in Fragile Families," Demography 41 (2004): 237-61;
10. Daniel T. Lichter, Christine Batson, and J. Brian Brown, "Marriage Promotion: The Marital Expectations and Desires of Single and Cohabiting Mothers," Social Service Review 78, no. 1 (2004): 2-25. An analysis of data from the National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH) finds that African Americans' higher valuation of marriage relative to that of whites narrows the racial gap in marriage.
11. See Sharon Sassler and Robert Schoen, "The Effect of Attitudes and Economic Activity on Marriage," Journal of Marriage and the Family 61 (1999): 147-59. An analysis of new, unmarried parents confirms this as well.
12. See Kristen Harknett and Sara McLanahan, "Explaining Racial and Ethnic Differences in Marriage among New, Unwed Parents," American Sociological Review 69, no. 9 (2004): 790-811.
13. Scott J. South, "Racial and Ethnic Differences in the Desire to Marry," Journal of Marriage and the Family 55 (1993): 357-70.
14. Richard A. Bulcroft and Kris A. Bulcroft, "Race Differences in Attitudinal and Motivational Factors in the Decision to Marry," Journal of Marriage and the Family 55 (1993): 338-55.
15. Sassler and Schoen, "The Effect of Attitudes" (see note 7). This could be due to selection, as black women with positive attitudes toward marriage may have fewer partners to marry.
16. Lichter, Batson, and Brown, "Marriage Promotion" (see note 7).
17. See also Jane G. Mauldon and others, "What Do They Think? Welfare Recipients' Attitudes toward Marriage and Childbearing," Research Brief 2, Welfare Reform and Family Formation Project (Bethesda, Md.: Abt Associates, 2002).
18. Lichter, Batson, and Brown, "Marriage Promotion" (see note 7).
19. Wendy D. Manning and Pamela J. Smock, "First Comes Cohabitation and Then Comes Marriage? A Research Note," Journal of Family Issues 23, no. 8 (2002): 1065-87.
20. Carlson, McLanahan, and England, "Union Formation in Fragile Families" (see note 7). Figures from 1994 showed that 40 percent of nonmarital births were to cohabiters, though the rate could be higher now.
21. See Larry L. Bumpass and Hsien-Hen Lu, "Trends in Cohabitation and Implications for Children's Family Contexts," Population Studies 54 (2000): 29-41.
22. The response rate for fathers was somewhat lower than for mothers, but for mothers with a father interviewed, 85 percent said their chances for marriage were at least 50-50. Sara S. McLanahan and others, The Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study: Baseline National Report (Princeton: Center for Research on Child Wellbeing, Princeton University, 2003).
23. Ibid.
24. These couples are a subsample of respondents in the Fragile Families Survey. The respondents are a stratified random sample of parents of new babies delivered in three of the seventy-five hospitals the Fragile Families Survey used to construct its sample-one hospital in each of three major U.S. cities (Chicago, Milwaukee, and New York). See Christina Gibson-Davis, Kathryn Edin, and Sara McLanahan, "High Hopes, But Even Higher Expectations: The Retreat from Marriage among Low-Income Couples, "Journal of Marriage and the Family (forthcoming).
25. Ibid.
26. Lichter, Batson, and Brown, "Marriage Promotion" (see note 7). The likelihood of marriage is unaffected by family background, education, employment, and the receipt of public assistance, but is reduced among stigmatized racial and ethnic minority groups and among single mothers.
27. Author calculation using Fragile Family data.
28. Lichter, Batson, and Brown, "Marriage Promotion" (see note 7), pp. 17-18.
29. Larry L. Bumpass and James A. Sweet, "Marriage, Divorce, and Intergenerational Relationships," in The Well-Being of Children and Families: Research and Data Needs, edited by Arland Thorton (University of Michigan Press, 2001): 295-313;
30. Andrew J. Cherlin, "The Deinstitutionalization of American Marriage," Journal of Marriage and the Family 66 (2004): 848-61;
31. Kathryn Edin and Maria J. Kefalas, Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood before Marriage (University of California Press, 2005);
32. Judith A. Seltzer, "Families Formed outside of Marriage," Journal of Marriage and the Family 55 (2000): 408-14;
33. Megan M. Sweeney "Two Decades of Family Change: The Shifting Economic Foundations of Marriage," American Sociological Review 67 (2002): 132-47;
34. Arland Thorton and Linda Young-DeMarco, "Four Decades of Trends in Attitudes toward Family Issues in the United States: The 1960s through the 1990s," Journal of Marriage and the Family 63 (2001): 1009-37.
35. William G. Axinn and Arland Thorton, "The Transformation in the Meaning of Marriage," in The Ties That Bind: Perspectives on Marriage and Cohabitation, edited by Linda J. Waite (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 2000): 147-65;
36. Thorton and Young-Demarco, "Four Decades of Trends" (see note 23).
37. Joanna Reed, "The Meanings of Marriage and Cohabitation for Unmarried Couples with Children," paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, Atlanta, 2003.
38. Cherlin, "The Deinstitutionalization of American Marriage" (see note 23);
39. Edin and Kefalas, Promises I Can Keep (see note 23);
40. Kathryn Edin, Maria J. Kefalas, and Joanna M. Reed, "A Peek inside the Black Box: What Marriage Means for Poor Unmarried Parents," Journal of Marriage and the Family 67 (2004): 1007-14.
41. Edin and Kefalas, Promises I Can Keep (see note 23).
42. Ibid.
43. Sayer, Wright, and Edin find no educational differences in women's general acceptance of nonmarital childbearing or in their odds of disapproving of women who have children outside marriage. There are also no educational differences in men's general acceptance, though less educated men have greater odds of disapproving of women who bear children outside marriage. See Liana Sayer, Nathan Wright, and Kathryn Edin, "Class Differences in Family Values: A 30-Year Exploration of Americans' Attitudes toward the Family," paper presented at the annual meeting of the Population Association of America, Minneapolis, May 2003.
44. For trends in such attitudes over time and for racial-ethic differences in these attitudes, see Axinn and Thorton, "The Transformation" (see note 24);
45. Thorton and Young-DeMarco, "Four Decades" (see note 23).
46. Edin and Kefalas, Promises I Can Keep (see note 23);
47. Frank F. Furstenberg Jr., "Fading Dream: Prospects for Marriage in the Inner City," in Problem of the Century, edited by Douglas Massey and Elijah Anderson (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2001);
48. Gibson-Davis, Edin, and McLanahan, "High Hopes" (see note 18);
49. Maureen J. Waller, "Meaning and Motives in New Family Stories: The Separation of Reproduction and Marriage among Low Income Black and White Parents," in The Cultural Territories of Race: Black and White Boundaries, edited by Michelle Lamont (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1999): 182-218.
50. Joanna M. Reed, "A Closer Look at the Relationships of Unmarried Parents: Relationship Trajectories, Meanings and Implications for Processes of Cultural Change," unpublished, Northwestern University, 2005.
51. Whether the difference is due to their socioeconomic status or their parental status cannot be assessed.
52. Edin and Kefalas, Promises I Can Keep (see note 23).
53. Sassler and Schoen, "The Effect of Attitudes" (see note 7).
54. Bulcroft and Bulcroft ("Race Differences in Attitudinal and Motivational Factors in the Decision to Marry" [see note 9]) show that African Americans place the most emphasis on economic prerequisites for marriage. They argue that this emphasis exacerbates the effects of poor economic circumstances.
55. Edin and Kefalas, Promises I Can Keep (see note 23).
56. In fact, they bear striking similarity to the standards held by their working- and lower-middle-class counterparts. For a description of working- and middle-class conceptions of marriage, see Pamela J. Smock, Wendy K. Manning, and Meredith Porter, "Everything's There Except Money: How Money Shapes Decisions to Marry among Cohabiters," Journal of Marriage and the Family (forthcoming).
57. Kathryn Edin, "How Low-Income Single Mothers Talk about Marriage," Social Problems 47 (2000): 112-33.
58. Gibson-Davis, Edin, and McLanahan, "High Hopes" (see note 18). Though TLC3 did not select couples based on their cohabitation status, this is a higher rate of cohabitation than for the romantically involved portion of the Fragile Families Survey.
59. Reed, "A Closer Look" (see note 31).
60. Because the numbers are small-nine of the forty-nine couples both met their economic goals and married-these results should be interpreted with caution. However, demographers project that 72 percent of all women with a nonmarital birth can still expect to marry eventually. See Deborah R. Graefe and Daniel T. Lichter, "Marriage among Unwed Mothers: Whites, Blacks and Hispanics Compared," Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health 34, no. 6 (2002): 286-93.
61. Theodora T. Ooms, "Strengthening Couples and Marriage in Low-Income Communities," in Revitalising the Institution of Marriage for the Twenty-First Century: An Agenda for Strengthening Marriage, edited by Alan J. Hawkins, Lynn D. Wardle, and David O. Coolidge (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2002): 79-99.
62. Susan Brown, "Union Transitions among Cohabiters: The Significance of Relationship Assessments and Expectations," Journal of Marriage and the Family 62 (2000): 833-46.
63. Carlson, McLanahan, and England, "Union Formation" (see note 7).
64. Lisa A. Neff and Benjamin R. Karney "The Dynamic Structure of Relationship Perceptions: Differential Importance as a Strategy of Relationship Maintenance," Personal Social Psychology Bulletin 29 (2003): 1433-46;
65. Abraham Tesser and Steven R. H. Beach, "Life Events, Relationship Quality, and Depression: An Investigation of Judgment Discontinuity in Vivo," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 74, no. 1 (1998): 36-52.
66. McLanahan and others, The Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (see note 16);
67. Center for Research on Child Wellbeing, "Incarceration and the Bonds among Fragile Families," Research Brief 12 (Princeton University, 2002).
68. Marcia J. Carlson and Frank F. Furstenberg Jr., "Complex Families: Documenting the Prevalence and Correlates of Multiple Partnered Fertility in the United States," Working Paper 03-14-FF (Center for Research on Child Wellbeing, Princeton University, 2004).
69. Edin and Kefalas, Promises I Can Keep (see note 23), p. 81.
70. Paula England, Kathryn Edin, and Kathryn Linnenberg, "Love and Distrust among Unmarried Partners," paper presented at the National Poverty Center conference "Marriage and Family Formation among Low-Income Couples: What Do We Know from Research," Georgetown University, September 2003;
71. Heather Hill, "Steppin" Out: Sexual Jealousy and Infidelity among Unmarried Parents," paper presented at the annual meeting of the Population Association of America, Philadelphia, March 2005.
72. See also Andrew J. Cherlin and others, "The Influence of Child Sexual Abuse on Marriage and Cohabitation," American Journal of Sociology (forthcoming). Violence, infidelity, and drug and alcohol use within marriage are associated with low marital quality and with divorce.
73. See Paul R. Amato and Stacy J. Rogers, "Do Attitudes toward Divorce Affect Marital Quality?" Journal of Family Issues 20 (1999): 69-86;
74. Demie Kurz, For Richer, for Poorer: Mothers Confront Divorce (New York: Routledge, 1995);
75. Liana C. Sayer and Suzanne M. Bianchi, "Women's Economic Independence and the Probability of Divorce," Journal of Family Issues 21 (2000): 906-43.
76. Edin and Kefalas, Promises I Can Keep (see note 23);
77. Edin, "How Low-Income Single Mothers Talk about Marriage" (see note 37).
78. Gibson-Davis, Edin, and McLanahan, "High Hopes" (see note 18).
79. England, Edin, and Linnenberg, "Love and Distrust" (see note 48).
80. Kathryn Edin, Paula England, and Joanna M. Reed, "Planned, Accidental, or Somewhere in Hetween: Pregnancy Intentionality among Unmarried Couples," in Unmarried Couples with Children, edited by Paula England and Kathryn Edin (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, forthcoming).
81. Gibson-Davis, Edin, and McLanahan, "High Hopes" (see note 18).
82. Furstenberg, "Fading Dream" (see note 30).
83. Edin and Kefalas, Promises I Can Keep (see note 23);
84. Edin, "How Low-Income Single Mothers Talk" (see note 37).
85. Sayer, Wright, and Edin, "Class Differences" (see note 29).
86. Steven P. Martin, "Delayed Marriage and Childbearing: Implications and Measurement of Diverging Trends in Family Timing," Russell Sage Foundation Discussion Paper (New York, 2002).
87. Maureen R. Waller and H. Elizabeth Peters, "The Risk of Divorce as a Barrier to Marriage," Working Paper 2005-03-FF (Center for Research on Child Wellbeing, Princeton University, 2005), p. 2.
88. Edin and Kefalas, Promises I Can Keep (see note 23).
89. Edin, "How Low-Income Single Mothers Talk" (see note 37).
90. Gibson-Davis, Edin, and McLanahan, "High Hopes" (see note 18).
91. Carlson and Furstenberg, "Complex Families" (see note 46).
92. Carlson, McLanahan, and England, "Union Formation in Fragile Families" (see note 7).
93. Erin Metz, "Making Child Support Meaning-Full: The Social Meaning of Child Support Arrangements for Low Income Parents," unpublished, Northwestern University, 2004;
94. England, Edin, and Linnenberg, "Love and Distrust" (see note 48).
95. Hill, "Steppin' Out" (see note 48).
96. William J. Wilson, The Truly Disadvantaged (University of Chicago Press, 1987).
97. Valerie K. Oppenheimer, "Cohabiting and Marriage during Young Men's Career Development Process," Demography 40, no. 1 (2003): 127-49;
98. Valerie K. Oppenheimer, Matthijs Kalmijn, and Nelson Lim, "Men's Career Development and Marriage Timing during a Period of Rising Inequality," Demography 34, no. 3 (1997): 311-30. A variant of this argument is that for subgroups with high male incarceration and death rates, imbalanced sex ratios create a dearth of marriageable men.
99. David Ellwood and Christopher Jencks, "The Spread of Single-Parent Families in the United States since 1960," Working Paper RWP04-008 (Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2004).
100. Marin Clarkberg, "The Price of Partnering: The Role of Economic Well-Being in Young Adults' First Union Experiences," Social Forces 77 (1999): 609-34;
101. Heather Koball, "Have African American Men Become Less Committed to Marriage? Explaining the Twentieth Century Racial Cross-Over in Men's Marriage Timing," Demography 35, no. 2 (1998): 251-58;
102. Steven L. Nock, "The Consequences of Premarital Fatherhood," American Sociological Review 62, no. 2 (1998): 250-63;
103. Oppenheimer, Kalmijn, and Lim, "Men's Career Development" (see note 68);
104. Brown, "Union Transitions" (see note 42).
105. Smock and Manning find that cohabiting men's earnings are positively associated with marriage, though Sassler and McNally Oppenheimer, and Brines and Joyner find that cohabiting men's earnings have a negative or insignificant effect on transitions to marriage. See Pamela J. Smock and Wendy K. Manning, "Cohabiting Partners' Economic Circumstances and Marriage," Demography 34 (1997): 331-41;
106. Sharon Sassler and James McNally "Cohabiting Couples' Economic Circumstances and Union Transitions: A Re-Examination Using Multiple Imputation Techniques," Social Science Research (forthcoming);
107. Oppenheimer, "Cohabiting and Marriage" (see note 68);
108. Julie Brines and Kara Joyner, "The Ties That Bind: Principles of Cohesion in Cohabitation and Marriage," American Sociological Review 64, no. 3 (1999): 333-56.
109. Carlson, McLanahan, and England, "Union Formation" (see note 7).
110. Oppenheimer, "Cohabiting and Marriage" (see note 68).
111. Carlson, McLanahan, and England, "Union Formation" (see note 7). After adjusting income upward, men were then reassigned to the appropriate dichotomous category, more than $25,000 for 73 percent of cases and $10,000-$24,999 for the remaining 27 percent.
112. Daniel Lichter and Rukmalie Jayakody, "Welfare Reform: How Do We Measure Success?" Annual Review of Sociology 28 (2002): 117-41.
113. Gary S. Becker, A Treatise on the Family (Harvard University Press, 1991).
114. Sara McLanahan and Lynn Casper, "Growing Diversity and Inequality in the American Family," in State of the Union, America in the 1990s, vol. 2, Social Trends, edited by Reynolds J. Farley (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1995): 1-43.
115. Francine D. Blau, Lawrence M. Kahn, and Jane Waldfogel, "Understanding Young Women's Marriage Decisions: The Role of Labor and Marriage Market Conditions," Industrial and Labor Relations Review 53, no. 4 (2000): 624-47;
116. Cynthia Cready Mark A. Fossett, and Jill K. Kiecolt, "Mate Availability and African American Family Structure in the U.S. Nonmetropolitan South, 1960-1990," Journal of Marriage and the Family 59 (1997): 192-203;
117. Kim M. Lloyd and Scott J. South, "Contextual Influences on Young Men's Transition to First Marriage," Social Forces 74 (1996): 1097-2119.
118. Wendy D. Manning and Pamela J. Smock, "Why Marry: Race and the Transition to Marriage among Cohabiters," Demography 32 (1995): 509-20;
119. McLaughlin and Lichter, "Poverty and the Marital Behavior" (see note 1);
120. R. Kelly Raley "A Shortage of Marriageable Men: A Note on the Role of Cohabitation in Black-White Differences in Marriage Rates," American Sociological Review 61 (1996): 973-83;
121. Sweeney, "Two Decades of Family Change" (see note 23).
122. McLaughlin and Lichter, "Poverty and Marital Behavior" (see note 1);
123. Daniel T. Lichter and others, "Race and the Retreat from Marriage: A Shortage of Marriageable Men?" American Sociological Review 57 (1992): 781-99;
124. Carlson, McLanahan, and England, "Union Formation" (see note 7). The hourly wage results are restricted to those women who were employed.
125. Edin and Kefalas, Promises I Can Keep (see note 23).
126. This reflects the findings of qualitative interviews with a group of 292 racially and ethnically diverse single mothers in three cities; see Edin, "How Low-Income Single Mothers Talk" (see note 37).
127. The theme of financial independence is much less evident among a qualitative study of working and lower-middle class Toledo respondents; see Smock, Manning, and Porter, "Everything's There Except Money" (see note 36).
128. South finds that men prefer wives with strong economic prospects. See Scott J. South, "Sociodemographic Differentials in Mate Selection Preferences, "Journal of Marriage and the Family 53 (1991): 928-40.
129. Charles Murray, Losing Ground (New York: Basic Books, 1984).
130. Robert Moffitt, "Incentive Effects in the U.S. Welfare System," Journal of Economic Literature 30, no. 1 (2002): 56-57. The studies Moffitt reviewed were conducted before welfare benefits became time limited and work conditioned. These changes reduced the value of welfare, which presumably means that transfers play an even smaller role in reducing marriage rates now.
131. Edin, "How Low-Income Single Mothers Talk" (see note 37);
132. Edin and Kefalas, Promises I Can Keep (see note 23);
133. Gibson-Davis, Edin, and McLanahan, "High Hopes" (see note 18).
134. This figure is by state of residence. Nevada is the state that grants the most divorces. Jerry Regier, Cabinet Secretary, Oklahoma Health and Human Services, and Acting Director, Oklahoma Department of Health, Testimony before the Subcommittee on Human Resources of the House Committee on Ways and Means, Hearing on Welfare and Marriage Issues, May 22, 2001.
135. Carlson and Furstenberg, "Complex Families" (see note 46).
136. Sara S. McLanahan and Gary Sandefur, Growing Up with a Single Parent: What Helps, What Hurts (Harvard University Press, 1994).
137. Carlson and Furstenberg, "Complex Families" (see note 46).
138. Edin and Kefalas, Promises I Can Keep (see note 23), p. 218.