Single by Chance, Mothers by Choice: How Women are Choosing Parenthood without Marriage and Creating the New American Family PDF
Preview Single by Chance, Mothers by Choice: How Women are Choosing Parenthood without Marriage and Creating the New American Family
Single by Chance, Mothers by Choice This page intentionally left blank Single by Chance, Mothers by Choice How Women Are Choosing Parenthood Without Marriage and Creating the New American Family rosanna hertz 1 2006 1 Oxford University Press, Inc., publishes works that further Oxford University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education. Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Copyright © 2006by Oxford University Press, Inc. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 www.oup.com Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hertz, Rosanna. Single by chance, mothers by choice : how women are choosing parenthood without marriage and creating the new American family /Rosanna Hertz. p. cm. ISBN-13: 978-0-19-517990-3 ISBN-10: 0-19-517990-0 1. Family—United States. 2. Single mothers—United States. 3. Middle class women—United States. I. Title. HQ536.H48 2006 306.874′3208622—dc22 2006000897 A version of chapter 4originally appeared in Symbolic Interaction25, 1(2002): 1–31. 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper This book is dedicated to Alyssa Raven Hertz Thomas, who will inherit a world that will still include families. I will support her decisions, whatever they may be. This page intentionally left blank CONTENTS Prologue ix Introduction xv Part I The Big Decision 1 1 “Why Can’t I Have What I Want?” 3 2 Liminality and the Courage to Change: Making the Decision to Become a Single Mother 21 3 Moving On: When Baby Makes Two 37 Part II After Baby, Now What? 53 Introduction: “Where Do We Fit?” 54 4 The Father As an Idea 57 5 Romance, Intimacy, and Pregnancy: Father Involvement Outside of Marriage 86 6 Adoption and Fitting In 104 Conclusion: Ordinary Lives, Extraordinary Circumstances 133 Part III Composing a Family 137 Introduction: Recycling and Reconstituting Families 138 7 What Does Single Mean? 141 viii contents 8 Downshifting Careers While Financing Motherhood: Relying on the Gift-Giver, the Roommate, and the Careworker 158 9 A World Without Men, Amen? 177 Conclusion: What Does It Mean to Be a Good Mother? 190 Conclusion: Projecting Single Mothers into the Future 194 Epilogue: Completing Families, Completing Lives 198 Appendix 1: Demographic Appendix: Featured Women 215 Appendix 2: Methods and Sampling 222 Notes 230 References 257 Index 265 PROLOGUE Joy McFadden* I was stuck. By night I dreamt of a grassy yard to romp in with my dogs and blooming trees to lie under. By day I patrolled the gray halls of an aging Boston hospital. Skyrocketing property taxes and a demanding job conspired to keep me pale, cramped, and stuck. And, of course, there was the dull ache that throbbed every time I considered my prospects for marrying and having a family. “Stuck” didn’t even begin to describe that. Try “nailed to the floor.” I finally understood * All women quoted in the text of the book are identified by pseudonym, and I have changed certain details for some women to protect their identity, such as sex of child, exact occupation, and community of residence. However, income, level of education, race, age, and routes to motherhood are unchanged. Demographic information about each woman, listed alphabeti- cally by first name, can be found in appendix 1. The first-person vignettes that open the prologue and various chapters are not verbatim accounts from the women’s interview transcripts. I wrote these vignettes drawing upon the information and stories the women told me. Two of the opening vignettes are composites of several women with similar stories; they resembled each other closely enough that I merged them to create one story. Further, without blurring stories in this way, these particular women would have been too easily identified. Apart from the opening vignettes, all of the quotes in the body of each chapter are taken directly from the interview transcripts of a single woman, the one whose pseudonym accom- panies the quotation.
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