Promises I Can Keep: Why poor women put motherhood before marriage, by Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas

At times it was like watching Ricki Lake or Maury. I must have lived a pretty balanced life because I can so easily relate to these poor women profiled and the affluent women referred to. I understand the pressures and the desire to become established financially and get married before starting a family, and I can understand having no hope for a future outside of children and having them early. Despite being "affluent" growing up, I wanted a baby since I was 16. It all has to do with having meaningful options. Despite what right wingers want us all to think, the poor don't have the meaningful options of the rich with regards to education, careers, and mate choices. I had all of the options financially but don't feel I was encourage emotionally to pursue any of them. My self esteem was not strong enough to support ambition. Despite being talented and smart, all I cared about what getting married and having children. My marriage failed to produce children and I got divorced. I went from being the average middle class affluent educated married woman to having nothing, starting from square one like a 16 year old life drop out. Was I going to start over as though I wasn't about to turn 30? HELLLS NO! I had a kid anyway despite being dirt poor and not married to the dad. Because like the women in this book, I feel that children are central to having any meaning in life and to put money first is having your priorities backwards. Despite living paycheck to paycheck, eating Ramen noodles and going 6 years without buying a new pair of underwear I have not regretted it for a second. My son has given me all the meaning my life lacked. Having children saved some of these girls from jail, the streets, drugs, and worse. Maybe having children early might keep an already rich girl from becoming a doctor or a lawyer, but these women weren't going to be those anyway and neither was I. Some of these women on the bottom of the economic heap only went to school and got decent paying jobs BECAUSE they had children to support. Alone they had despair and no prospects for any kind of life. Why don't they (and why didn't I) choose mates with better prospects for themselves? There's only one Cinderella and she isn't real; neither is Pretty Woman. Oh yeah yeah, so why don't they get married? Because they don't want to get divorced, and the poor men available to poor women just aren't marriage material. They hold marriage to a very high standard and don't treat it like the piece of paper that some of their more affluent sisters do. "Young women also believe that they must be complete in their person-hood before entering into marriage, rather than look to the relationship to provide that wholeness. To marry before that is to be disingenuous, because the changes that may be required to achieve wholeness could destabilize the relationship." These are words of wisdom I could have used before I got married. It perfectly sums up the reason I got divorced.