Single by Chance, Mothers by Choice: How Women are Choosing Parenthood without Marriage and Creating the New American Family

294 Pages·2006·1.28 MB·English

by  Rosanna Hertz

Single by Chance,
Mothers by Choice
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Single by Chance,
Mothers by Choice
How Women Are Choosing Parenthood
Without Marriage and Creating the
New American Family
rosanna hertz
1
2006
1
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Copyright © 2006by Oxford University Press, Inc.
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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.
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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.