On Our Own: Unmarried Motherhood in America

by Melissa Ludtke

Overview

The U.S. has experienced a dramatic increase in births to unmarried women in recent decades—from 4% of births in 1950, with most of the babies then adopted, to more than 30% today. Melissa Ludtke's book is the only in-depth analysis of this radical change in family formation to compare and contrast the lives of these mothers of varying ages and economic circumstances.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520218307
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	03/31/1999
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	483
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Melissa Ludtke is a journalist. While researching and writing On Our Own she had fellowships at Harvard, Radcliffe, and the Columbia School of Journalism.

Table of Contents

Prologue

1. My Story: Decision-making About Unmarried Motherhood 
2. Unmarried Motherhood: A Half-Century of Change 
3. Having a Baby: Unmarried Adolescent Mothers 
4. Having a Baby: Unmarried Older Mothers 
5. Raising Children: Unmarried Adolescent Mothers 
6. Raising Children: Unmarried Older Mothers 
7. Where's Daddy? Unmarried Adolescent Mothers 
8. Where's Daddy? Unmarried Okler Mothers 
9. Unmarried Mothers: Who We Are and Where We're Headed 

Afterword 
Acknowledgments 
Bibliography 
Index

What People are Saying About This

Carol Gilligan

Ludtke brings the voices of women having children on their own into a public debate from which these voices have been conspicuously absent. Interweaving their voices with her own savvy and intuitive commentary, she has written a vitally important book. -- Author of In a Different Voice

Editorial Reviews

An illuminating tour of the profound social and moral changes that have occured over the past generation.

Boston Globe

Ludtke takes two seemingly unrelated trends—the high number of unmarried teens who become pregnant by mistake and the increase in the number of older, single women who become mothers by choice—and seamlessly weaves them together in a remarkable, impressively comprehensive tale of single motherhood. In part her journey into the consciousness of America's unmarried mothers was jolted by her own realization that she wanted to have a child even if it meant doing so sans partner. Her personal stake infuses the mini-stories of the teenagers and women she interviews with an empathy that makes their humanity real, their tales important. A journalist who has worked for Sports Illustrated and Time, Ludtke knows the value of solid statistics and research. She intersperses her conversations with a variety of facts and figures, as well as interviews with experts. But she offers more than mere statistics—we meet people who struggle with some of life's most important issues and some of society's most pervasive stereotypes and biases. Ludtke's able and intuitive interviewing and savvy juxtaposition of these two divergent groups, reveal a number of surprising similarities between them. For example, they desire to have children for wildly different reasons, yet for both groups, that desire stems from the wish to take control of their lives. Ludtke's effective melding of the facts with the feelings leaves the reader both better informed about the where's and whyfore's of unmarried mothering and more concerned about the policies that affect the future of these women and their young children.

This moving study should be required reading for all those who believe that America's embarrassingly high teen pregnancy rate can by "fixed" by simply reducing welfare funding and that the Murphy BrownDan Quayle debate was settled in the ratings sweeps.

Kirkus Reviews