ISSUES OF INTEREST

Single Mother Births-

The 2006 study by The Urban Child Institute, The State of Children in Memphis, reports that of the 53,000 children living in poverty in Memphis, 43,000 are in single mother families. Their conclusion:  Single mother births is “the primary underlying cause” of poverty and related ills of children in Memphis.

Out of the total of almost 150,000 children in Memphis, only 39% live with both parents.  Put another way, about one-third of Memphis children live in poverty and 81% of those have a single mother.  This chart shows this strong correlation by plotting poverty rates vs. the percent of children with a single parent by zip codes in Shelby County:

There are about 14,000 births in Shelby County each year (and more than 4,000 abortions).  More than one-half of these births are to single mothers and almost 40% to teenage mothers.  The number of unmarried mother births in Shelby County has been constant for the last five years. 

Single Mother Births and the Challenge of Education in Memphis

In The State of Children in Memphis and Shelby County, 2006, the Urban Child Institute identified single-mother birth as the primary underlying cause of poverty and related ills for children in Shelby County. The recently released 2007 report documents the link between single-mother births, persistent poverty, and inadequate education in the City of Memphis.

As consequences of poverty and the lack of two parents, single-mother births tend to be associated with the following characteristics:

• Inadequate care during pregnancy
• Prematurity & low birth weight
• Special needs
• Sub-optimal nutrition and excessive stress for the mother, the fetus and the young child

All of these characteristics stifle development of an infant’s brain in the critical months following conception (the human brain is 80% developed by age 3 and 90% hardwired by age 5). Poverty and poor family structure results in compromised children entering the Memphis education system. Their brain development has lagged from the moment of conception.

The problems of inadequate brain stimulation create difficulties for educators. A child who enters school with exposure to only one-third as many words as other children, whose brain has had only a fraction of the stimulation of other children’s brains, cannot be taught as quickly, as thoroughly or as successfully.

State and local educators celebrate an increase in the number of students that are rated “proficient” and “advanced.” This improvement is largely because Tennessee educators consistently have lowered the scores needed to qualify as “proficient” and “advanced.”

Yet, educators face overwhelming challenges due to poverty and poor family structures.

Are there solutions to this conundrum? Best practices and suggested strategies are outlined in this section of the study...More Details.

 

Why Poor Women put Motherhood before Marriage

The following summarizes the conclusions of a book, Promises I Can Keep – Why Poor Women put Motherhood before Marriage which was published in 2005 and based on a study of women in Philadelphia in the early 2000s. 

 

• There has been a general re-definition of Marriage over the last 50 years.   For both the poor and the affluent, marriage is not the cultural imperative that it once was. 

• While the practical significance of marriage has diminished, it remains highly valued.  However, the economic status of the poor have a significant negative impact on marriage  The poor see divorce as the ultimate loss of face so they don’t want to get married when conditions of economic distress would put the marriage at risk.

• The poor view childlessness as one of the greatest tragedies of life and would not risk waiting to get married and then having children.  The poor place a higher social value on children for two reasons:

(1)   There are fewer foregone opportunities- while there are costs to early child bearing, the perceived costs are low and the opportunity costs are low.  Their circumstances have already diminished their life chances so much that an early birth does little to reduce them further.

(2)   Motherhood is highly valued by the poor and is a main source of identity and self-esteem.  Alternative opportunities (career, higher education) available to the affluent are out of reach to the poor. 

• Poor women believe it is better to have children outside marriage than to marry foolishly and risk divorce (thus the title of the book).  While they know this is not the best alternative, the pool of marriageable men (stably employed) is relatively small.  Poor women treat the search for the marriage partner as a lifelong quest and the bearing and raising of children as tasks to accomplish along the way.

• The poor and the middle class have different standards of childrearing norms.  Middle class mothers measure their success by their children’s achievements.  The poor mother’s job is to provide the essential elements: a roof over his head, food in his stomach, clean and pressed clothing, a rudimentary knowledge of “numbers” and “letters”; but the rest is up to the child.  A good mother is defined as “being there” and “standing by them” through whatever problems come their way.

• While marriage will probably never regain its status as a universal cultural characteristic, the acute vulnerability of poor parents demands a targeted response:  while having children early may not affect a young mother’s life chances much, it will likely diminish the life chances of her children.  These costs are not evident to these mothers.

 

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