Full Description
Most unmarried women who engage in sexual intercourse do not become unwed mothers; they use contraceptives, secure an abortion, or get married before the baby is born. What happens to the minority of women who bear illegitimate children? This book is the first study to describe in detail the actual situation of unwed motherhood, as opposed to the causes and pathology of deviance. Based largely on observation of middle-class white girls in a psychiatricallyoriented mater nity home and lower-class black teenagers in a day school for unwed mothers, the study focuses on the unwed mother's moral career as it is shaped by social agencies.
Contents
Introduction; I: The Situation of Moral Jeopardy; 1: Sexual Careers; 2: Becoming an Unwed Mother; II: The Process of Moral Reinstatement; 3: Hawthorne House *; 4: The Moral Career of the Unwed Mother; III: Accommodations to Illegitimacy; 5: The Project; 6: The Moral Career of the Negro Unwed Mother; 7: Speculations: The Politics of Illegitimacy; Appendix: Methods
