Wednesday, June 03, 2009

The Losing Game of Multiple Partner Fertility

One of the major issues at the Furstenberg conference was "multiple partner fertility" - that is, women who have children by different men.

Sarah McLanahan reported that when poor single mothers move from man to man, they are usually trading up, if only marginally. They have a child with the new man to give them a stronger reason to stay together.

However, McLanahan also reported, the more children women have with different men, the less help they get from the extended kin network of any of the fathers of their children.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

keep your comments within your white male birkenstock latte sipping jesus freak intellectual (that is to say, abstract) community. for a sociology professor, you show an appalling lack of embarrassment for your sexism. smart people are embarrassed of their prejudices and hide them. learn from them.

Gruntled said...

Do you have a criticism of this post to offer? I would like to learn from that. Your criticism as offered is too abstract.