When Unwed Mothers Marry: The Marital and Cohabiting Partners of Midlife Women

Autor/inn/en	Graefe, Deborah Roempke; Lichter, Daniel T.
Titel	When Unwed Mothers Marry: The Marital and Cohabiting Partners of Midlife Women
Quelle	In: Journal of Family Issues, 28 (2007) 5, S.595-622 (28 Seiten) PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0192-513X
DOI	10.1177/0192513X06295200
Schlagwörter	Welfare Services; Unwed Mothers; Public Policy; Females; Social Characteristics; Welfare Recipients; One Parent Family; Marriage; Social Change; Marital Status; Socioeconomic Influences; Birth; Socioeconomic Status; Individual Characteristics; Spouses; Racial Differences; Educational Attainment + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Fürsorgeeinrichtung; Unverheiratete Mutter; Öffentliche Ordnung; Weibliches Geschlecht; Gesellschaftsbild; Sozialhilfeempfänger; Sozialhilfeempfängerin; Single parent family; Ein-Eltern-Familie; Ehe; Sozialer Wandel; Familienstand; Sozioökonomischer Faktor; Geburt; Socio-economic status; Sozioökonomischer Status; Personality characteristic; Personality traits; Persönlichkeitsmerkmal; Ehepartner; Rassenunterschied; Bildungsabschluss; Bildungsgut
Abstract	The promotion of marriage and two-parent families as a strategy to reduce welfare dependency continues to be a major public policy goal of the 1996 welfare reform. Based on the assumption that women will marry employed men and that their earnings will lift poor mothers and their children from public dependency, this objective raises important policy questions. In this article, the authors investigate the extent to which unwed mothers--a large proportion of all welfare mothers--enter into and maintain stable cohabiting and marital relationships with economically attractive men. Using retrospective data on relationship histories for 3,872 women from the 1995 National Survey of Family Growth, the authors examine the marital life course of unwed mothers and document the social and economic characteristics of their partners at midlife. Their marital search model shows that nonmarital childbearing is adversely associated with the ability to marry economically attractive men and maintain long-term marital unions. (Contains 5 tables and 2 notes.) (Author).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2017/4/10