PHILADELPHIA-- In the forthcoming book "Promises I Can Keep," sociologists Kathryn Edin, of the University of Pennsylvania, and her co-author Maria Kefalas, of Saint Joseph's University, bash the myth that low-income mothers value marriage less than their middle-class counterparts.

For five years, Edin and Kefalas studied 165 low-income single mothers in eight destitute neighborhoods across Philadelphia and its poorest neighboring city, Camden, New Jersey.  They found that in America's inner urban core, the poor revere the institution of marriage, and strongly aspire to marry someday.  Most of the mothers in the study believe, though, that a poor but happy marriage has virtually no chance of survival.  To marry unwisely, "just to divorce" is considered a "sacrilege." In fact, the stigma of a failed marriage is stronger than that of an out-of-wedlock birth.  

Edin and Kefalas write that marriage is seen as "an elusive, shimmering goal, one that ought to be reserved for those who can support a 'white picket fence' lifestyle; a mortgage on a modest row-home, a car and some furniture, some savings in the bank and enough money left over to pay for a 'decent' wedding."  

The authors write that the women studied perceive marriage as a lifelong quest and the bearing and raising of children as something they accomplish along the way.  The women hope their children's fathers will rise to the occasion and become the loving life partners they desire, but they're not counting on it.  Meanwhile, their life prospects are already so limited that they have little to lose by bearing children young.  

"When we asked these young mothers what their lives would be like if they hadn't had children, we thought they'd express regret over forgone school and career opportunities.  But instead, most believe their children had saved them," Edin and Kefalas write.  

Mothers described lives, before their children were conceived, spinning out of control, struggles with parents and peers, "wild" risky behavior, depression and school failure.  Their children, they said, offered an opportunity to find meaning and purpose in their lives and to create relational intimacy when few emotional resources existed elsewhere.  

Edin and Kefalas write that marital standards have risen for all Americans, including the poor. They conclude that until poor young women have greater access to jobs that lead to financial independence, they will continue to defer marriage and to have children far sooner than many Americans think they should.