Tag Archives: Class

“Boob Wars”: reflections of a new father on breastfeeding, class, and feminism

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In the thirty years or so since I entered puberty during the Carter Administration, I’ve spent quite a bit of time contemplating women’s breasts — and my own (not to mention other men’s) fascination with them. But in the last few months, as a first-time father and partner to a breast-feeding mother, that fascination has morphed into a new kind of reverence. And I’ve become aware of what might, for lack of a better term, be called the “boob war” — a sub-conflict within the larger “Mommy War” that continues to rage, exasperating and frightening and dividing women. And into this fight comes a bombshell article in the new Atlantic Monthly: Hanna Rosin’s The Case Against Breastfeeding. More on the article later. (Cap taps, belatedly and with apologies, to Rod Dreher and to Scott.)

The term “Mommy Wars” generally refers to the public and private debates, common among the middle and upper-middle classes of the developed world, about what makes a “good” mother. For years, the chief front in these wars has been the battle over daycare and work outside the home, though other conflicts rage in areas like nutrition and natural childbirth. As a women’s studies professor, I of course had a professional acquaintance with these battles — but as a first-time father these past few months, I’ve gotten an entirely different perspective. As a man, my cultural and physiological privilege immunizes me from attack; yet as a devoted partner and father and feminist, I cannot help but be involved.

When we first announced to people that we were expecting a child, we got (along with the hugs of congratulation) many queries and unsolicited nuggets of advice. In particular, my wife was regularly asked about her plans for nourishing the baby; whether she intended to breastfeed, and if so, for how long. The merits of “pumping” versus “not pumping” were presented with bewildering detail; and, at least in our social circle, the evils of infant formula were repeatedly stressed.

We chose a midwifery team and a pediatrician based on recommendations from friends and a series of interviews (trust me, we were thorough in the latter). The pediatrician we ended up choosing is a delightful man, a fellow vegan with a prominent reputation as an opponent of a slavish adherence to the vaccine schedule and a proponent of both breastfeeding and attachment parenting. He charmed us with his attention and his devotion and his irreverance, as well as his conviction that child health and animal rights can be entirely compatible commitments. When we first met with Dr. G. weeks before our daughter was born, we also met with his professional lactation consultant, who promised to come in the hours after the delivery to help my wife breastfeed. It was clear that in this practice, formula at any time in the first six months — even the first year — was considered tantamount to child abuse. Continue reading →

“People like you should be parents”: of Nadya Suleman, Alfie Patten, and well-meaning but problematic classism

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The octuplets born to Nadya Suleman came into the world on January 26, 22 days ago — and just three hours or so after our daughter was born. (And in Bellflower, a working-class Los Angeles County community some twenty miles away from us.) Our first child shares a birthday with the world’s first surviving group of eight babies born at once, and in the midst of all the hubbub and upheaval that goes with having a new addition, I’ve paid at least some attention to the coverage of Suleman and her (now) fourteen children. I’ve also noticed, more than I might otherwise, the coverage of the birth earlier this month of little Maisie in London — a girl whose father is apparently Alfie Patten, age 13.

Maisie and the Suleman octuplets have been welcomed into the world in the harsh light of the media glare and nearly-universal censure. The mental state of Nadya Suleman (a single woman who recently reported she has been celibate for eight years) and the foolhardiness of her fertility doctor have been much decried; Maisie’s arrival has been greeted with the not-particularly-original lamentation about how awful it is for “babies to have babies”. In the Suleman case, it’s that she’s had too many babies without a husband or the obvious means with which to provide for all of these children. In both the Patten and Suleman case, we’re dealing with folks who have been labelled “unfit” to be parents, and the orgy of hand-wringing commenceth.

I contrast these infamous stories with the reaction to the birth of baby Cerys, born as she is to a well-off, heterosexual married couple (husband in his early forties, wife in her mid-thirties). Baby Cerys was longed for and planned for and wished for, not only by her now-doting (if exhausted) mother and father, but also by an army of grandmothers and aunts and uncles and friends and cousins and even acquaintances. (One of our chinchillas, Ninotchka, regularly expressed enthusiasm by allowing my wife to hold her while she was pregnant, but only near the growing belly.) My growing family has been showered with love and with gifts and with warm words of praise, as if we have done something new and surprising and wonderful. Admittedly, many in my family “never thought they’d see the day” when the inconstant black sheep of his generation became such a devoted papa, but that surprise and delight at this change in me is only partly a reason for such enthusiasm.

My wife and I have been given a compliment many times in the past three weeks, sometimes with direct reference to the Suleman case. Both friends and family members have said to us: “You two are the sort of people who should be parents.” It’s a sentence loaded with meanings, only some of which may be intended by the many who have spoken and written it to us. What’s meant, at least by most, is that my wife and I are “ready” to be parents. We are in a stable relationship (married three and a half years, together for more than six). We are homeowners, employed, insured. We are certainly not young parents, but not so old that folks start to question whether we will be physically up to the challenges of raising small children. We are in good health physically, and at least for the past decade, mentally. We are planted in a strong and supportive spiritual community, and so on and so forth. And we’re feminists, which at least to a great many people is an encouraging sign in the parents of a newborn daughter.

It’s true that all of these things are helpful, though in and of themselves none of them are guarantors that we will be great parents. But I can’t help but hear a tinge of classism in at least some of the voices that have proffered this well-meaning phrase in one form or another. Though it is true that my wife and I are, of course, delightful human beings, I’m troubled by the implied comparison between us and the likes not only of Nadya Suleman or Alfie Patten, but all of the vast army of new parents who lack our educational background and financial good fortune. It’s hard to say “Hugo and Eira are the sort of people who should be parents” (the emphasis is generally the speaker’s) without wondering who it is that the person offering this insight thinks ought not to have reproduced.

Most of us think there’s something just a bit odd about Nadya Suleman. Most of us think having eight embryos implanted after having had six children is a bit unusual at best. And most of us think a thirteen year-old boy and fifteen year-old girl are woefully unready to be parents. But it’s not as if our sense of outrage and judgment is limited to the likes of these. The praise and encouragement lavished upon my wife and me is sometimes explicitly linked to a sense that we will have the resources to provide comfortably for Cerys and any other children whom we might have. Continue reading →

“Backwoods Barbie” and white rural feminism: of Dolly Parton, 9 to 5, and Sarah Palin

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Last night, my wife and I took some friends of ours to see the new musical 9 to 5, written by Dolly Parton and based on the iconic 1980 film of the same name. Just last Tuesday, the show had its world premiere not on Broadway but here in Los Angeles; it will be moving to New York in early 2009.

We went for a variety of reasons, but mostly because all six of us, as different as we are, are devoted Dolly Parton fans. The part that Dolly made famous in the film is played by the wonderful actress Megan Hilty (who did a splendid “Glinda” in many productions of “Wicked”); Allison Janney (of “Juno”, “West Wing”, and “Primary Colors” fame) took over the Lily Tomlin part and acquitted herself very well. The music and lyrics, all by Parton, were accessible, memorable, and fun. The house was packed, and I feel quite certain the show will have a long and successful run here and elsewhere.

But I’ve written before about my deep fondness for Dolly Parton. Last night, watching the show — with its gently feminist theme of exploited working women rising up against a tyrannical and sexist boss — I thought of, you guessed it, Sarah Palin.

Virtually everyone agrees that Sarah Palin has, at least so far, helped the Republican ticket. Mind you, she’s got seven weeks to turn from an asset into a liability for John McCain, and I suspect that by the time we’ve made it close to Halloween, some of the initial enthusiasm for her will have subsided. That may be wishful thinking, of course — it’s also possible that her selection will prove the decisive factor in the election, and a galvanized conservative base will provide the GOP with the winning margin in November as a result. I certainly hope not, but I take that possibility seriously.

I don’t know who Dolly Parton is endorsing in this election. Dolly has always soft-pedaled her politics (though there is a very funny and vicious crack thrown at George W. Bush in the finale of “9 to 5″). Unlike her comrade-in-arms Emmylou Harris (whose advocacy for many social justice causes, especially veganism and animal rights, has made some of her right-wing fans squirm), Parton has carefully eschewed open involvement in the political arena. Dolly has legions of gay fans, whom she always warmly acknowledges — but she also has a strong fan base in southern and rural America. Including, one suspects, a great many voters to whom the selection of Sarah Palin was carefully calculated to appeal. Continue reading →

Cruelty-free means humans too: some thoughts on a more holistic veganism

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On some feminist blogs, there’s been good discussion about veganism and larger issues of race and class. Here’s Elle, BFP, and BFP again. The last of these posts deals with the much-ballyhooed “three-week vegan challenge” that Oprah Winfrey recently completed. There’s a lot of PETA-bashing that goes on, but that’s all-too-common on feminist websites, and I’m not interested in dredging up that old issue once more.

What is valuable in these posts is the discussion of whether or not veganism is, inherently, a cruelty-free lifestyle. Those of us who, like myself, don’t consume animal products in any form (food, clothing, etcetera) tend to describe our modus operandi as “cruelty-free.” When my wife and I were buying our new cars, we went out of our way to special order vehicles without any leather in the interiors whatsoever, a request that led to several months wait and not-inconsiderable expense. Of course, not only was our ability to make that choice rooted in privilege, in some sense it was imperfect — animal byproducts end up in tires and other places. We spoke to the car dealers about our desire to be “completely cruelty-free”, but we both knew as we did so we were pursuing an imperfectly attainable goal.

A vegan lifestyle, of course, doesn’t automatically mean an absence of connection to death. When even organic farms are tilled, little field mice are not infrequently cut to pieces. Most organic vegetables are grown with animal manure, usually collected from farms where animals are raised for meat. Trying to avoid all complicity with the machinery of death is, alas, nigh on impossible. Most vegans know all this, of course. They don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good, however, and with the limited options at their disposal, they seek to exercise the best possible choices available in any given situation, recognizing that few if any choices they do make will be truly “cruelty-free.” Continue reading →

Poor white boys: school leaving, male under-performance, and the disaster of masculine anti-intellectualism

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Regular reader Frederick often likes to send me “grist for the mill”, as it were, and last week sent me this Telegraph article: White working-class boys becoming an underclass. In one of those periodic reminders that the UK and America are very different indeed, the paper reports:

White teenagers are less likely to go to university than school-leavers from other ethnic groups – even with the same A-level results, according to official figures.

The gap is widest among male teenagers from poor backgrounds, raising fresh fears that working class boys are becoming the education “underclass” in England.

According to a Government report, just over one-in-20 white boys from poor homes goes on to university.

This compares to 66 per cent of Indian girls and 65 per cent of young women from Chinese families.

The full report is here, in a PDF file.

The causes of “male under-achievement” are many and complex, and this study does not concern itself much with them. But it does seem clear that whatever the matrix of influences that lead young men to underperform their female peers, feminism is unlikely to be one of them. The study notes that even among recent immigrant groups in Britain, groups in which it can be safely assumed that the Western model of liberal feminism has not yet been fully accepted, girls outperform boys:

Overall, 58 per cent of men from Indian backgrounds and 66 per cent of women go on to university. Among Chinese families, 60 per cent of boys and 65 per cent of women go to university.

Anti-feminist voices, under the guise of concern about the well-being of young men, suggest that contemporary pedagogy doesn’t meet the needs of boys, who aren’t suited to long periods of concentration. The underlying racism of that charge becomes apparent very quickly when one looks at the much-stronger performance of boys from, say, Indian or Chinese descent. For a very long time, white European men have questioned the masculinity of Asian men, seeing the latter as somehow more effeminate. When we posit the ability to concentrate and “do school well” as essentially a feminine trait, then bigotry and anti-feminism collude to explain why so many East and Southeast Asian lads are doing so much better than their white male counterparts. The implication is that Chinese and Indian males are “more like girls” than “real” (white) boys.

I do think we see a performance gap between boys and girls in many places in the Western world. Much of that gap is attributable, I think, to a kind of masculine anti-intellectualism that has developed in response to the relatively recent success of young women in school. In both British and American society we define masculinity as, first and foremost, the absence of feminine characteristics. “No sissy stuff” is the first rule of Western manhood. As long as girls were systematically excluded from education, boys showed great aptitude for intellectually rigorous activity. Once girls began to be admitted to the same schools as boys, and began to demostrate the same intellectual abilities, the life of the mind lost its exclusive masculine cachet.

Boys can sit still. Look at any group of young Marines on the parade ground; paying attention is something well within the range of masculine capabilities. “Boys can’t concentrate as well as girls” needs to go the way of “girls can’t understand science as well as boys”, discarded as a vile myth that shortchanges the full range of human potential with which each and every one of us is born.

The real problem, as I see it, is a culture of “masculine anti-intellectualism” that seems increasingly rife among certain sub-groups of young men. Young men, particularly in Britain perhaps young working-class white men, are more likely than their sisters to see little practical need for education. Too many of these young men under-estimate the value of education, and over-estimate their ability to “make do” on their own, perhaps by doing “a little of this, a little of that.” Many of these lads are filled with ambition, but with little sense of how vital formal education actually is to realizing that ambition. And too many of these young men are eager for a perverse kind of masculine distinctiveness with which to assuage their own anxieties. Dropping out of school to work gives them that masculine distinctiveness, particularly as school is no longer (as it once was) an exclusively male province.

Does everyone need a formal university education? Perhaps not. But I do lament the unwillingness of many boys to buckle down and work. Knowing that earlier generations of the be-penised and the be-Y-chromosomed were able to master complex material and learn by rote, I don’t accept that men as a rule can’t thrive as well as women in the contemporary educational model. The problem is a lack of strong male role models who value education, the problem is a culture that emphasizes to young men that anything of real importance lies in an arena from which women are largely excluded.

Of cell phones and the Pill, tuition and travel, wealth and diversification: some random economicky thoughts

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My splendid cousin Ted, a marketing major at CSU Chico, comments on the increasing recognition that the current economic slowdown impacts the poor and the middle-class more than the wealthy.

I recently made a presentation to my Sales Force Management class, where as I played the newly appointed V.P. of sales. I had to convince the CEO that we needed to switch from the low-end market for wristwatches( this is an arbitrary product that was assigned to me) to the high-end market, like Rolex and Bulova. The premise for my reasoning was mainly the impending recession that our country has fallen into, and that only the high-end market will stay profitable at a constant rate. This poses an interesting question of why do the the consumers with plenty of discretionary income continue to have some cash? How could the recession of an entire economy only hurt the low income citizens?

I’m not an economist; in our family, it’s my wife who manages both our money and, in her business management firm, other people’s as well. But I’m fortunate enough to go back and forth between very different economic worlds quite frequently. My students — and I am close to many of them — are, like so many community college students, economically very vulnerable. Most, however, are not homeowners; perhaps more importantly, most who live at home live in rentals rather than “owned” homes. In an odd way, many have been able to weather the worst aspects of the “credit crunch” because for them and their families, home-ownership is often an as-yet unattained aspiration. Though rents have not come down as fast as house prices, they have stabilized in Los Angeles County as the economy tries to absorb the massive increase in housing stock. Purely anecdotally, this has actually benefitted my students who live in apartments more than those whose parents recently (since, say, the run-up of the early part of the decade) purchased a home. In this sense, the “lower-middle” is getting squeezed more than the “bottom.” Continue reading →

Sex worker bodies, farm worker bodies: a musing on agriculture, porn, and cheap grace

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In the midst of the latest round of debates over sex here in the progressive blogosphere, I was struck by BrownFemiPower’s post about the kinds of oppression we sometimes ignore in our eagerness to focus on pornography.

I’m very very *very* tired of how sex work is framed as a labor issue by many anti-pornography activists–they chronically insist that porn is the worst worst worst job ever because it hurts females.

I hear this logic, and all I can think is, “Really?”

I’ve known women who have had to work 12-15 (or more) hours a day in 100+ degree heat with no breaks for water and no place to pee (I was one of those women). I’ve known women who have had to work on their knees the entire 12-15 hour shift (or in a squatting position), with a bag that digs into their backs and can carry 20-25 pounds of vegetables or fruits. I’ve known women who can not kneel at mass because their knees are so shot from the hard labor they’ve done most of their lives. I’ve known women who have worked in the fields since they were five or six. I’ve seen pregnant women, elderly women, young girls, disabled women all forced to walk up to two miles (after 12 or 15 hour days) to get back to their cars so they can go home.

I know women are being exposed to some of the most dangerous chemicals known to mankind. I know young girls are working in fields rather than going to school because their mothers aren’t being paid enough for the job that they do. I know women are being locked up and only allowed to leave the farms for up to two hours a week. I know women are working for wages that have not increased in 27 years. I know women who go to company doctors after exposure to pesticide clouds are being told that they have ‘female problems’ (rather than pesticide poisoning). I know women are giving birth to babies that die because of pesticide exposure. I know women are out digging ditches 20 days after they give birth. I know women are being sexually harassed by field bosses. I know young girls are being sexually harassed by field bosses. I know 90% of the female farmworkers in California say that sexual intimidation and harassment is a major problem at their jobs. I know women refer(ed) to a field in California as the “field of panties” because so many women were raped there. I know women are being threatened with guns by their field bosses.

At BFP’s, these last two paragraphs are filled with links that document what’s going on. Continue reading →

Vulgar ostentation or justifiable pride: a reflection on hanging academic diplomas

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On Friday, I wrote in my post about the perceived preference for Ph.Ds at the community college:

I’m glad I have my Ph.D. (My diplomas are all in a box somewhere, mind you. Our Kind of People never put degrees on the wall, after all; it seems showy and aggressive.)

I’ve been thinking about this issue of not putting the diploma on the wall. One of my senior colleagues here is a woman from, as she describes it, “an Irish working-class family where no one went to college.” One of six children, she was the first in her family to receive a B.A., and after years of hard work, a Ph.D. Her undergraduate and graduate diplomas are framed and hang on the wall in her office. She does insist that her students address her as “Dr. Sullivan” (not her real name).

Dr. S and I are good friends, and after I got my Ph.D. in 1999, she said to me “Now you can hang a new diploma on your wall.” I told her I didn’t think that was going to happen. “Why not?”, she asked.

I told Dr. S (who, among other things, has expertise in sociology) that “in my culture”, “my people” tend to see the display of diplomas as “showing off.” Both my parents had Ph.Ds. from Berkeley; I have no idea where either one of their diplomas is hiding. For them, putting a diploma up in the office would have been like hanging a marriage license on the wall after getting home from the honeymoon! It’s one thing, I told Dr. S, to be privately proud of an accomplishment; it’s another thing to wave the proof of that accomplishment around.

I don’t know which football coach it was who said it, but some grizzled old veteran who counseled against exuberant celebration after a score always said “Act like you’ve done it before and intend to do it again very soon.” In other words, drawing attention to one’s academic accomplishments (and hanging diplomas on the office walll is certainly drawing attention) suggests that one views the acquisition of the doctorate as vaguely miraculous. It also, I told Dr. S, seemed to be inviting admiration. OKOP, I told her, are trained to downplay “that sort of thing.”

Dr. S and I were and are good enough friends to have this sort of “cross-cultural dialogue.” Dr. S wasn’t in the least offended by my reluctance to hang my various diplomas, or by my willingness to confess to her my reasons for keeping the damn things tucked in a drawer. But she also offered her own perspective:

“Hugo”, she said, “I don’t display the diploma to show off for myself. My mother and father worked terribly hard to put me through school. My husband sacrificed enormously so that I could work on my doctorate while our kids were small. No one in my family or my husband’s had ever gotten a Ph.D. before. And after all that collective effort, if I act as you do — as if a Ph.D. is ultimately not important — it makes it seem as if I don’t appreciate all that they did to help me achieve this goal. When my eighty-year old mother comes to my office, she gets to see that diploma and it makes her feel incredibly proud. Your mother, Hugo, already has a Ph.D, and though I’m sure she’s proud of you, she doesn’t need to see it the way mine does.”

Dr. S reminded me that the “OKOP dislike of ostentation” is in part a manifestation of privilege. When everyone in the family goes to college, and lots of people get Ph.Ds, and parents don’t have to work double shifts at the factory to pay for graduate school for the kids — then the newly dissertated and hooded ones can afford to be nonchalant and self-deprecating. Dr. S argued that in her case, as a woman from a working-class Irish Catholic background, she was both entitled to a greater degree of display and indeed required to “show off”. To do any less would be to disrespect the extraordinary sacrifice of her loved ones.

I’m also aware of something that Dr. S didn’t mention. We teach on a campus that has a high percentage of non-white students, as well as a majority of folks who are first-generation college students. These students need reminders that a Ph.D. is possible for them too. Those professors who hold the doctorate — and are themselves members of ethnic minorities or were, like Dr. S, first-generation college students — thus have, perhaps, an obligation to display the diploma in order to inspire the young.

I have another colleague in another department; like me, he holds a Ph.D from UCLA. He is also African-American, and he began his academic career right here at PCC. On the wall in his office, he has diplomas from each stage of his career in higher education, starting with the associate’s degree from Pasadena all the way up to the doctorate itself. Those diplomas, which hang behind his desk and stare his visitors in the face are not just there to swell his head — they are there, I suspect, to send a message to those students who look like him (but not like me) that academic success is possible for everyone if they work hard enough. Though I’ve never discussed it with this man, I suspect that this is his reason for displaying the evidence of his academic prowess so boldly. What OKOP sees as aggressive and vulgar showiness, others may see as much-needed inspiration for the next generation.

I know my diplomas are somewhere in a box in the garage. I last saw them in 2002, when I was packing up after my divorce. I have no intention of throwing them out, of course. But in all honesty, I’m not really sure what to do with them. I don’t want them on the wall in my home, or on the wall in my campus office. Perhaps I’ll just keep them tucked away forever, in the same sort of place where I keep old tax returns and insurance papers. But let me be clear that I no longer cast aspersions on those who choose to hang the evidence of their achievements for all to see. For some, perhaps, it isn’t ostentation or insecurity that drives such display: it’s the desire to honor all those who made the achievement possible. And it’s the desire to inspire a new generation to achieve similar goals. In the end, there’s nothing vulgar or showy about that.

Reprint: A long post on tradition, virginity, success, feminism, and a nonsensical double bind

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We’re in the last throes of summer, so I’m reposting some of my old favorites. This originally appeared on March 10, 2006.

Yesterday in my women’s history class, we began making our way through Joan Brumberg’s The Body Project.  I’ve been using the book for years and years, and it’s a huge hit with my students each semester.

It is Brumberg who first drew my attention to statistics about menarche, marriage, and the loss of virginity.  She points out that a century ago, girls menstruated for the first time at an average age of 16 and got married at an average age of around 21.  Today, girls menstruate at an average age of just under 12 and get married for the first time at just over 25.

(A quick note about statistics.  The problem with teaching statistics — especially with something like menarche — is that very, very few folks end up being "average".  Almost every girl seems to have a sense of herself as being "early" or "late"  — a Goldilocks effect, I suppose!)

Here’s where it gets interesting.  A century ago, the time between the onset of puberty and marriage was but five years; today it’s close to fifteen. If a contemporary young woman is trying to "wait" until marriage to lose her virginity, she is waiting — in a very real sense — three times as long as women did in her great-great grandmother’s era!   She’s got three times the frustration of coping with unexpressed sexual feelings and longings, three times as long to struggle to live up to a cultural and religious standard of purity.  Forget trying to live up to the standards of one’s ancestors; today’s young women who remain committed to virginity are trying to accomplish something that has, from a demographic and physiological standpoint, never been achieved before.

Continue reading →

Why divorce is scarier than unwed motherhood: some thoughts on class, children, autonomy, marriage and “Promises I Can Keep”

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A little over a month ago, I picked up a copy of Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage. I heard about it from Lauren, who wrote a long post about the book by Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas. Lauren was inspired by a review of “Promises” written by Bitch Ph.D.

This is a powerful and important book. There are few groups in our society more consistently stigmatized than poor women (of any race, but particularly non-white women) who have children out of wedlock. Those of us in the middle class make a wide variety of assumptions about the motivations of the women who do become unwed teen mothers. Some of the assumptions are cruel in their falsehood (think of the “welfare queen” stereotype perpetuated by President Reagan). Others are both benign and clueless, such as the assumption that “these girls” just don’t know about birth control. And of course, in most such discussions, the role of the males who father these children is ignored.

One of the best aspects of “Promises I Can Keep” (and this gets touched on by both Lauren and Bitch Ph.D.) is its authors’ insight into how poor women interpret getting pregnant and having a child at a young age.

As I’ve blogged more than once, I got my high school girlfriend pregnant. We were very much in love; she was my “first” in every sense of the word. We knew about birth control, of course, but our use of protection was at best intermittent. When she got pregnant, we briefly fantasized about keeping the baby, about getting married, or about putting the baby up for adoption. But I was getting ready to go off to college, and she had another year of high school ahead of her. We both had dreams and plans and expectations that would have been derailed by a child. My girlfriend knew perfectly well that even if we chose adoption, carrying the baby to term would mean missing school, public embarassment (from which I would be conveniently immune), and it would mean the heart-wrenching surrender of a child she had carried for nine months. At barely sixteen, she was understandably not ready for all that. She had an abortion, and I was with her — as much as any man can be with a woman — as she went through it.

But of course, abortion appeared like the best alternative at the time because we both wanted and expected college. Our social class and our privilege made terminating the pregnancy the best possible option, because having a child would (especially in my girlfriend’s case) mean an end to (or at least a severe postponement of) of our ambitions. For many poor wonen, there are no social expectations of college and career to be derailed. The appeal of an abortion is thus considerably diminished.

Indeed, Edin and Kefalas point out that many poor women have a “radically different view” of abortion:

Virtually no women we spoke with believed it was acceptable to have an abortion merely to advance an educational trajectory… most believe that abortion is ‘the easy way out’ To them, ‘doing the right thing’ or ‘taking care of your responsibilities’ means bringing the pregnancy to term. And adoption is, to almost all, simply out of the question — it is generally viewed as ‘giving away’ your ‘flesh and blood.’

(My parents and my girlfriends’ parents both knew about the abortion — and they all said we were “doing the right thing.”)

The other fascinating part of the book I want to blog about today is the attitude that so many poor women in the study have towards marriage. Far from being contemptuous of the institution, the women whom Edin and Kefalas interview have an almost reverent attitude:

Poor women almost universally believe that marriage should be for life, and deride others who ‘get married just to get divorced.’ Most believe that marriage vows are sacred and ought to be held in the highest regard.

What’s fascinating, of course, is that the fear of divorce is much greater than the fear of having a child while still an unmarried teenager. That’s absolutely the reverse of how those of us raised in the comfortable, secular middle-class view the two issues. While most people in my social milieu weren’t divorced three times by thirty-five and married four times by forty as I was, more than half of the marriages in my extended family have ended in divorce in the past four decades. During that time, no woman in my entire extended family (and I am thinking now of dozens and dozens of second, third, and even fourth cousins) has had a child out of wedlock. During that time, only one woman in my family (a token evangelical) has had a child before at least the age of 27. We have had more babies born to women over 35 and even 40 than to women under 30.

So the secular WASPy middle-class might be accused of having a cavalier attitude towards marriage, though no one I know, including myself, got married “just to get divorced.” (I always expected my marriages to last, even though the first three all ended before the second anniversary.) We know that divorce is difficult and painful, but also entirely survivable. Having a child before one is grounded in a career and financially prepared to care for it seems infinitely more frightening to Our Kind of People than a failed marriage. (Or two. Or three.)

What’s helpful to me about a book like this is that it offers invaluable insight into what is, for me, a remarkably alien world. My feminism is sincere, but it’s also thoroughly white, and upper-middle class. Though my Christian faith reminds me that community is not unimportant, my feminism sees independence, personal responsibility, and autonomy as three essential components of human happiness. I want the young men and women with whom I work to become kind, thoughtful, educated and independent people. I want them to be well-educated, and exposed to ideas other than those with which they were raised. My classes at the community college, after all, are filled with single mothers in their teens, twenties and thirties. I see how exhausted and burdened they are. I honor their sacrifices, but I want their example to be cautionary!

But this book reminds me — as do many of my feminist colleagues — that not all young women are eager to embrace this feminist vision of personal autonomy. What I see as liberation, they see as alienation from the familiar (in both senses of the word). And rightly, they know that in the current economic climate, the odds of achieving real prosperity (the sort that enables a life of privileged individualism) are far too long. “Promises I Can Keep” makes the case that these young women who choose to raise their children outside of marriage aren’t nearly as short-sighted as many of us in the prosperous middle class tend to believe. What we often see as “failures of imagination” or an “inability to escape a dysfunctional culture”, these women often see as the best and most rational choices they can make given the options available.

So it’s an interesting question to ask young women:

Which seems to you more frightening?
1. having a child while young and unmarried
2. getting married and then divorced.

For the affluent middle-class, #1 is the easy and obvious answer. But for a great many others, it’s clear that the second is perceived as a much more significant, and thus scarier, personal failure. I’m going to find a way to work this discussion in to my women’s studies classes soon.