Abstract
Karen grew up in inner city Philadelphia. She started seeing Bill, a 20 year-old handyman, when she was 16 and soon became pregnant. Karen dropped out of high school during her third trimester, and moved in with Bill. Karen and Bill lived together for about a year and a half before they broke up. Karen now lives at home in a small apartment with her mother and her young daughter, Alexis. Karen hopes to earn her GED 1 day, but for the time being, she is busy raising Alexis and looking for a job with decent pay. Felicia grew up in Winnetka, Illinois, a northern suburb of Chicago. She received a Bachelor’s Degree from Wesleyan University and then went on to earn an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Felicia then moved to New York City to take a position as an investment banker for a large firm in the financial industry.
Contributed by Christine A. Bachrach, Pamela Smock, and Lynette Hoelter.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Throughout the paper, we focus primarily on the distinction between marital and nonmarital childbearing. Increasingly, nonmarital childbearing occurs within cohabitation (Raley, 2001). Although cohabitation has increased among couples of all classes, childbearing within cohabitation is higher among LC women (Manning, 2001).
- 2.
We use the term family formation to reference both union formation (e.g., marriage) and childbearing.
- 3.
Race/ethnicity and social class both interact and have independent effects. As to the former, Blacks and several subgroups of Hispanics are economically disadvantaged compared to Whites, making it sometimes difficult to disentangle race/ethnicity from social class. Among married-couple families, for example, the percentage living under the poverty threshold is 14% for Hispanics, 8% for Blacks, and just 3% for non-Hispanic Whites. For mother-only families the analogous figures are 43, 42, and 26% (Proctor & Dalaker, 2001). Evidence of independent effects includes the finding that more highly educated individuals in all racial and ethnic groups are more likely to marry and to stay married (Goldstein & Kenney, 2001; Martin, 2006), but that Blacks of all social classes are less likely to do so than Whites. One study examines the marriage intentions of White, Black, and Hispanic cohabiting women. It finds that Black cohabiting women are less likely than White or Hispanic women to expect to marry their partners, even after controlling for the education of both the women and their partners, and their partners’ incomes (Manning & Smock, 2002). A general observation about the body of research on race/ethnicity and family patterns is that it has been unable to “explain away” racial and ethnic differences even when controlling for a host of independent variables.
- 4.
The metaphor of a societal ecosystem is a useful one. The elements of an ecosystem in nature can be large or small—ranging from a climatic zone to a small ant colony. The elements of the ecosystem are interdependent, and over time they collaborate in supporting the status quo and compete for the ability to change it. The actions of individual plants and animals are critical to affecting the dynamics of the system as a whole.
- 5.
Some scholars point to the close interrelationships among indicators of socioeconomic status and argue that social locations form meaningful categories such as poor, working class, lower middle class, middle class, upper middle class and so on (Lareau, 2003). Others contend that the concept of discrete social classes is not meaningful in socioeconomically fluid societies, and that continuous measures of income, education, or the “SEI” (i.e., a measure composed of income, education, and occupational prestige) better capture the location of an individual or family in the hierarchy. The debate on categorical versus continuous measures is longstanding (e.g., Grusky & Sørensen, 1998; Hout & DiPrete, 2006; Weeden & Grusky, 2005). Because our aim in this chapter is to contrast individuals and families with different relative social locations, we adopt an agnostic stance with respect to this debate.
- 6.
We rely on mother’s education to tap social class for some measures of family formation given the endogeneity of schooling and family formation decisions (e.g., Brien, Lillard, & Waite, 1999; Upchurch, Lillard, & Panis, 2002). We use less than high school given temporal trends in educational attainment; when using mother’s education as an indicator of class, we believe not finishing high school better taps low social class.
- 7.
We organize our discussion around structures that are defined in terms of life domains, especially work and family. One can also conceptualize structures in terms of locations in social space—e.g., sex, race and ethnic group membership, and socioeconomic status. One might also conceptualize the relevant structures as “class structures”, but we believe it is most appropriate to place the central focus on essential life domains and explore how they vary over social space rather than taking the opposite approach.
- 8.
The concept of a job as a “calling” demanding single-minded allegiance reflects traditional sex roles that assigned bread-winning responsibilities exclusively to men. Women have adopted the schema while at the same time developing competing schemas for “work-family balance.”
- 9.
Among those UMC women unable to conceive, adoption and assisted reproductive technologies provide alternative pathways to parenthood.
- 10.
This is a speculative claim. Access to information may vary across class lines either because of differentials in the actual availability of abortion services or differences in the extent to which information about abortion is shared within social networks or viewed as accessible through electronic media or other sources. However, existing evidence sheds little light on such differences.
- 11.
The relationship between parental or own education and the likelihood of resolving a premarital pregnancy through abortion does not likely to be an artifact of differential underreporting of abortions in surveys, since studies that use vital and medical records to assess pregnancy outcomes (e.g., Udry et al., 1996; Liu, 1995; Powell-Griner & Trent, 1987) report the same robust relationships as those relying on survey data.
- 12.
This may reflect social desirability bias, or the desire on the part of UMC women to portray themselves as tolerant of a behavior common in other groups. It may also reflect a different schema of nonmarital childbearing—i.e. one embodied in television character Murphy Brown’s decision to have a child as a well-off career woman—from than held by LC women.
References
Adamczyk, A., & Felson, J. (2008). Fetal positions: Unraveling the influence of religion on premarital pregnancy resolution. Social Science Quarterly, 89(1), 17–38.
Andrews, J. L., & Boyle, J. S. (2003). African American adolescents’ experiences with unplanned pregnancy and elective abortion. Health Care for Women International, 24, 414–433.
Benin, M. H. (1985). Determinants of opposition to abortion: An analysis of the hard and soft scales. Sociological Perspectives, 28(2), 199–216.
Blair-Loy, M. (2003). Competing devotions: Career and family among women executives. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Boyce, W. T., Frank, E., Jensen, P. S., Kessler, R. C., Nelson, C. A., & Steinberg, L. (1998). Social context in developmental psychopathology: Recommendations for future research from the MacArthur network on psychopathology and development. Development and Psychopathology, 10(2), 143–164.
Brien, M., Lillard, L., & Waite, L. (1999). Interrelated family-building behaviors: cohabitation, marriage, and nonmarital conception. Demography, 36, 535–551.
Burke, P. J. (2004). Identities and social structure: The 2003 Cooley-Mead award address. Social Psychology Quarterly, 67(1), 5–15.
Cavanagh, S. E., & Huston, A. (2006). Family disruption and child wellbeing: Understanding the role of family context. Social Forces, 85(1), 551–581.
Cherlin, A. J. (2004). The deinstitutionalization of American marriage. Journal of Marriage and Family, 66(4), 848–861.
Cleveland, H. (2003). The influence of female and male risk on the occurrence of sexual intercourse within adolescent relationships. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 13(1), 81–112.
Coltrane, S. (1997). Family man: Fatherhood, housework, and gender equity. New York: Oxford University Press.
Combs, M. W., & Welch, S. (1982). Blacks, whites, and attitudes toward abortion. The Public Opinion Quarterly, 46(4), 510–520.
Cooksey, E. C. (1990). Factors in the resolution of adolescent premarital pregnancies. Demography, 27(2), 207–218.
Cooksey, E. C., Rindfuss, R. R., & Guilkey, D. K. (1996). The initiation of adolescent sexual and contraceptive behavior during changing times. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 37(1), 59–74.
Côté, J. E., & Levine, C. G. (2002). Identity formation, agency, and culture: A social psychological synthesis. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Coverdill, J. E., & Kraft, J. M. (1996). Enrollment, employment, and the risk and resolution of a first premarital pregnancy. Social Science Quarterly, 77(1), 43–59.
Cunningham, M. A., & Thornton, A. B. (2006a). The influences of parents’ and offsprings’ experience with cohabitation, marriage, and divorce on attitudes toward divorce in young adulthood. Journal of Divorce and Remarriage, 44(1–2), 119–144.
Cunningham, M. A., & Thornton, A. B. (2006b). The influence of parents’ marital quality on adult children’s attitudes toward marriage and its alternatives: Main and moderating effects. Demography, 43(4), 659–672.
D’Andrade, R. G., & Strauss, C. (1992). Human motives and cultural models. New York: Cambridge University Press.
DiMaggio, P. (1997). Culture and cognition. Annual Review of Sociology, 23, 263–287.
DiPrete, T., & Eirich, G. (2006). Cumulative advantage as a mechanism for inequality: A review of theoretical and empirical developments. Annual Review of Sociology, 32, 271–297.
Duncan, G., & Brooks-Gunn, J. (1997). Consequences of growing up poor. New York: Russell Sage.
Edin, K., & Kefalas, M. (2005). Promises I can keep: Why poor women put motherhood before marriage. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Elder, G. (1975). Age differentiation and the life course. Annual Review of Sociology, 1, 165–190.
Evans, G. W., Gonnella, C., Marcynyszyn, L. A., Gentile, L., & Salpekar, N. (2005). The role of chaos in poverty and children’s socioemotional adjustment. Psychological Science, 16(7), 560–565.
Farber, N. B. (1991). The process of pregnancy resolution among adolescent mothers. Adolescence, 26(103), 697–716.
Finer, L. B., Frohwirth, L. F., Dauphinee, L. A., Singh, S., & Moore, A. M. (2005). Reasons U. S. women have abortions: Quantitative and qualitative perspectives. Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, 37(3), 110–118.
Gerson, K. (1993). No man’s land. New York: Basic Books.
Gorski, P. (2004). The poverty of deductivism: A constructive realist model of sociological explanation. Sociological Methodology, 34, 1–33.
Granovetter, M. S. (1973). The strength of weak ties. American Journal of Sociology, 78, 1360–1380.
Grusky, D., & Sørensen, J. (1998). Can class analysis be salvaged? American Journal of Sociology, 103, 1187–1234.
Halfon, N., & Hochstein, M. (2002). Life course health development: An integrated framework for developing health, policy, and research. The Milbank Quarterly, 80(3), 433–479.
Hansen, K. V. (2005). Not-so-nuclear families: Class, gender, and networks of care. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Harding, D. J. (2007). Cultural context, sexual behavior, and romantic relationships in disadvantaged neighborhoods. American Sociological Review, 72(3), 341–364.
Hays, S. (1996). The cultural contradictions of motherhood. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Hertz, R. (2006). Single by chance, mothers by choice: How women are choosing parenthood without marriage and creating the new American family. New York: Oxford University Press.
Hofferth, S. L. (2006). Residential father family type and child well-being: Investment versus selection. Demography, 43(1), 53–77.
Hoffman, S. D., & Foster, E. M. (1997). Economic correlates of nonmarital childbearing among adult women. Family Planning Perspectives, 29(3), 137–140.
Holland, D., Lachicotte, W. Jr., Skinner, D., & Cain, C. (1998). Identity and agency in cultural worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Hout, M., & DiPrete, T. (2006). What we have learned: RC28’s Contributions to knowledge about social stratification. Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, 24, 1–20.
Jones, R. K., Frohwirth, L. F., & Moore, A. M. (2008). I would want to give my child, like, everything in the world: How issues of motherhood influence women who have abortions. Journal of Family Issues, 29, 79–99.
Kaestle, C. E., & Halpern, C. T. (2005). Sexual activity among adolescents in romantic relationships with friends, acquaintances, or strangers. Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, 159(9), 849–853.
Kaplan, E. B. (1997). Not our kind of girl: Unravelling the myths of black teenage motherhood. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Kendall, C., Afable-Munsuz, A., Speizer, I., Avery, A., Schmidt, N., & Santelli, J. (2005). Understanding pregnancy in a population of inner-city women in New Orleans—Results of qualitative research. Social Science & Medicine, 60, 297–311.
Komarovsky, M. (1967). Blue-collar marriage. New York: Vintage.
Lareau, A. (2003). Unequal childhoods: Class, race, and family life. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Laumann, E. O., Gagnon, J. H., Michael, R. T., & Michaels, S. (1994). The social organization of sexuality: Sexual practices in the United States. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
LeDoux, J. (2002). Synaptic self: How our brains become who we are. New York: Penguin.
Leibowitz, A., Eisen, M., & Chow, W. K. (1986). An economic model of teenage pregnancy decision-making. Demography, 23(1), 67–77.
Lichter, D., McClaughlin, D., Kephart, G., & Landry, D. (1992). Race and retreat from marriage: A shortage of marriageable men? American Sociological Review, 57, 781–799.
Liu, G. G. (1995). An economic analysis of pregnancy resolution in Virginia: Specific as to race and residence. Journal of Population Economics, 8(3), 253–264.
Luker, K. (1985). Abortion and the politics of motherhood. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Luker, K. (1996). Dubious conceptions: The politics of teenage pregnancy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Lustig, D. F. (2004). Baby pictures: Consumerism and exchange among teen mothers in the USA. Childhood, 11, 175–193.
Manlove, J. S., Ryan, S., & Franzetta, K. (2007). Risk and Protective factors associated with the transition to a first sexual relationship with an older partner. Journal of Adolescent Health, 40, 135–143.
Manlove, J. S., Terry-Humen, E., & Ikramullah, E. (2006). Young teenagers and older sexual partners: Correlates and Consequences for Males and females. Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, 38(4), 197–207.
Manning, W., & Smock, P. J. (2002). First comes cohabitation and then comes marriage. Journal of Family Issues, 23, 1065–1087.
Manning, W. D. (2001). Childbearing in cohabiting unions: Racial and ethnic differences. Family Planning Perspectives, 33(5), 217–223.
Manning, W. D., Longmore, M. A., & Giordano, P. C. (2000). The relationship context of contraceptive use at first intercourse. Family Planning Perspectives, 32(3), 104–110.
Marsiglio, W. (1998). Procreative man. New York: New York University Press.
Marsiglio, W. (2004). Stepdads: Stories of love, hope, and repair. Latham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
McPherson, M. (1983). An ecology of affiliation. American Sociological Review, 48, 519–532.
McPherson, M. (2004). A Blau space primer: Prolegomenon to An Ecology of affiliation. Industrial and Corporate Change, 13, 263–280.
McPherson, M., Smith-Lovin, L., & Brashears, M. (2006). Social isolation in America: Changes in core discussion networks over two decades. American Sociological Review, 71(3), 353–375.
Miller, W. B. (1986). Proception: An important fertility behavior. Demography, 23(4), 579-594.
Mims, B., & Biordi, D. L. (2003). Teenage pregnancy among African-Americans: A qualitative examination of maternal education, teenage pregnancy, family dynamics and conflict resolution. Journal of the National Black Nurses Association, 14(1), 20–27.
Newman, K., & Massengill, R. P. (2006). The texture of poverty: Qualitative sociology of poverty 1995–2005. Annual Review of Sociology, 32, 423–446.
Oppenheimer, V. K. (1988). A theory of marriage timing. American Journal of Sociology, 94(3), 563–591.
Orenstein, P. (2000). Flux: Women on sex, work, love, kids, & life in a half-changed world. New York: Anchor Books.
Plotnick, R. D. (1992). The effects of attitudes on teenage premarital pregnancy and its resolution. American Sociological Review, 57(6), 800–811.
Powell-Griner, E., & Trent, K. (1987). Sociodemographic determinants of abortion in the United States. Demography, 24(4), 553–561.
Raley, R. K. (2001). Increasing fertility in cohabiting unions: Evidence for the second demographic transition in the United States? Demography, 38(1), 59–66.
Ridgeway, C. L. (2006). Linking social structure and interpersonal behavior: A theoretical perspective. Social Psychology Quarterly, 69(1), 5–16.
Rosenzweig, M. R. (1999). Welfare, marital prospects, and nonmarital childbearing. Journal of Political Economy, 107(6), S3–S32.
Sauer, R. (1974). Attitudes to abortion in America, 1800–1973. Population Studies, 28(1), 53–67.
Schoen, R., & Tufis, P. (2003). Precursors of nonmarital fertility in the United States. Journal of Marriage and Family, 65, 1030–1040.
Serpe, R. T. (1987). Stability and change in self: A structural symbolic interactionist explanation. Social Psychology Quarterly, 50(1), 44–55.
Sewell, W. H., Jr. (1992). A theory of structure: Duality, agency, and transformation. American Journal of Sociology, 98, 1–20.
Sewell, W. H., Jr. (2005). Logics of history: Social theory and social transformation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Shanahan, M. J. (2000). Pathways to adulthood in changing societies: Variability and mechanisms in life course perspective. Annual Review of Sociology, 26, 667–692.
Shipler, D. (2004). The working poor: Invisible in America. New York: Knopf.
Shonkoff, J. P., & Phillips, D. A. (Eds.). (2000). From neurons to neighborhoods: The science of early childhood development. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
Smith-Lovin, L. (2003). Self, identity, and interaction in an ecology of identities. In P. Burke, T. Owens, R. Serpe, & P. Thoits (Eds.), Advances in identity theory and research.. New York: Klewer Academic/Plenum.
Smock, P. J., Manning, W. D., & Porter, M. (2005). Everything’s there except money: How money shapes decisions to marry among cohabitors. Journal of Marriage and Family, 67, 680–696.
South, S. J. (1999). Historical changes and life course variation in the determinants of premarital childbearing. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 61(3), 752–763.
South, S. J., & Baumer, E. P. (2001). Community effects on the resolution of adolescent premarital pregnancy. Journal of Family Issues, 22(8), 1025–1043.
Stack, C. (1974). All our kin: Strategies for survival in a black community. New York: Harper and Row.
Strickler, J., & Danigelis, N. L. (2002). Changing frameworks in attitudes toward abortion. Sociological Forum, 17(2), 187–201.
Stryker, S., & Burke, P. J. (2000). The past, present, and future of an identity theory. Social Psychology Quarterly, 63(4), 284–297.
Swidler, A. (1986). Culture in action: Symbols and strategies. American Sociological Review, 51, 273–286.
Thornton, A., & Camburn, D. (1987). The influence of the family on premarital sexual attitudes and behavior. Demography, 24(3), 323–340.
Udry, J. R., Kovenock, J., & Morris, N. M. (1996). Early predictors of nonmarital first pregnancy and abortion source. Family Planning Perspectives, 28(3), 113–116.
Upchurch, D., Lillard, L., & Panis, C. W. A. (2002). Nonmarital childbearing: Influences of education, marriage, and fertility. Demography, 39, 311–329.
Waller, M. (1999). Meanings and motives in new family stories: The separation of reproduction and marriage among low-income black and white parents. In M. Lamont (Ed.), The cultural territories of race: Black and white boundaries (pp. 182–218). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Waller, M. (2002). My baby’s father: Unmarried parents and paternal responsibility. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Wang, G.-z., & Buffalo, M. D. (2004). Social and cultural determinants of attitudes toward abortion: a test of Reiss’ hypotheses. The Social Science Journal, 41, 93–105.
Waxman, S. R., & Lidz, J. (2006). Early word learning. In D. Kuhn & R. Siegler (Eds.), Handbook of child psychology (6th ed., Vol. 2, pp. 299–335). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
Weeden, K., & Grusky, D. (2005). The case for new class map. American Journal of Sociology, 111, 141–212.
Wilson, W. J. (1996). When work disappears: The world of the new urban poor. New York: Vintage Books.
Wu, L. L., & Martinson, B. C. (1993). Family structure and the risk of a premarital birth. American Sociological Review, 58(2), 210–232.
Ellwood, D., & Jencks, C. (2004). The spread of single-parent families in the United States since 1960. In D. P. Moynihan, T. M. Smeeding, & L. Rainwater (Eds.), The future of the family. Russell Sage.
Harris, K. M., & Cheng, M. M. (2005). Family structure role models and the context of nonmarital childbearing. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association, Philadelphia, PA.
Quinn, N. (2006). An anthropological perspective on marriage. Paper prepared for the Romantic Unions Conference, Explaining Family Change Project, Los Angeles, September 13–15 2006.
Sayer, L., Wright, N., & Edin, K. (2005). Differences in family attitudes by education. Manuscript under review.
Goldstein, J. R., & Kenney, C. T. (2001). Marriage delayed or marriage forgone? New Cohort forecasts of first marriage for U.S. women. American Sociological Review, 66(4), 506–519.
Martin, S. P. (2006). Trends in marital dissolution by women’s education in the United States. Demographic Research , 15, 537–559.
Taylor, J., Layne, L., & Wozniak, D. (Eds.). (2004a). Consuming motherhood. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Taylor, S. E., Lerner, J. S., Sage, R. M., Lehman, B. J., & Seeman, T. E. (2004b). Early environment, emotions, responses to stress, and health. Special issue on personality and health. Journal of Personality, 72, 1365–1393.
Taylor, S. E., Way, B. M., Welch, W. T., Hilmert, C. J., Lehman, B. J., & Eisenberger, N. I. (2006). Early family environment, current adversity, the serotonin transporter polymorphism, and depressive symptomatology. Biological Psychiatry, 60, 671–676.
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (2005). Fertility, family planning, and the health of U.S. Women: Data from the 2002 national survey of family growth. Hyattsville, MD: Series 23–25: National Center for Health Statistics.
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (2006). Fertility, contraception, and fatherhood: Data on men and women from cycle 6 (2002) of the national survey of family growth. Hyattsville, MD: Series 23–26: National Center for Health Statistics.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2011 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Johnson-Hanks, J.A., Bachrach, C.A., Morgan, S.P., Kohler, HP. (2011). Social Class and the Timing and Context of Childbearing. In: Understanding Family Change and Variation. Understanding Population Trends and Processes, vol 5. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1945-3_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1945-3_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-007-1944-6
Online ISBN: 978-94-007-1945-3
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawSocial Sciences (R0)