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Title: On Our Own: Unmarried Motherhood in America by Melissa Ludtke ISBN: 0-520-21830-2 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: March, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.67 (6 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Not so interesting
Comment: I was disappointed when I read the book because the author only concentrates on teenage moms and successful older women who decided to have a baby once they achieved the highlight of their career.
I am a single, unwed mom and I don't fit in either of these two categories. I was 25 when I had my daughter. I got pregnant non intentionally but decided to keep the baby although it ruined the relationship with her father. I am neither poor nor rich. I simply couldn't find myself in the book and I believe there are many other cases like mine.
Rating: 4
Summary: Very readable, sane take on a controversial topic
Comment: In "On Our Own" Melissa Ludtke, a professional journalist, sets out to uncover the experiences of "unmarried mothers" in America for a very personal reason. She is in her late 30s and struggling with the decision to become a mother herself. In a series of alternating chapters, Ludtke discusses the experiences of two disparate groups of unmarried mothers, young, poor women and older, more financially secure women. Three key questions guide the core of this book, why to have a baby, how to raise children and ways to explain the absence or anonymity of "fathers." The book is based on interviews with 30 women with whom Ludtke visited repeatedly over the course of several years. The introductory chapter and the conclusion provide an overview of the status of unmarried motherhood in America and Ludtke deftly interweaves scholarly research about unmarried mothers into her book. However, Ludtke has sidestepped many of the traditional pitfalls in discussing this controversial issue by focusing on individual women who confound ...typical generalizations. Her subjects include a teen mother attending an Ivy League school and an older professional woman whose best-laid plans go awry when she is laid off suddenly.
Perhaps the most striking aspect of this book is how unrelenting difficult unmarried motherhood really is. Dispirited teen mothers and successful professional women alike struggle to fit their families into a society that still assumes the nuclear family is the norm. While these mothers share their travails with divorced custodial parents, they live with the knowledge, and sometimes societal condemnation, that they chose this route. Parenting alone is a best second choice for almost all of the 30 women Ludtke interviewed. While few of the teen mothers desired marriage to the men who impregnated them, they work diligently to include the biological fathers in the lives of their children with varying degrees of success. The knowledge that "father" will be an anonymous sperm donor plagues many of the thirty-something women to such an extent that several have engineered ways to have a known father in their child's life while others have found father substitutes.
Ludtke avoids the question of whether women should pursue unmarried motherhood by compiling a statistical projections that show that by the year 2004, unmarried mothers will reach 50%. So whether society is ready for them or not, it needs to start preparing to meet their needs. She focuses most of her suggestions on young unmarried mothers who may be less able to care for themselves. While this approach may anger those who wish for a more polemical ending, it is very in keeping with Ludtke's balanced approach throughout the book.
Rating: 2
Summary: Your bias is showing...
Comment: I heard about this book from a number of people before I actually read it. The premise is good - let's learn about single mothers by talking with them and finding out what they really think - but the delivery was a disappointment. Ludtke's words about teenage mothers basically serve to reinforce the two stereotypes we have of them: overwhelmed, with poor parenting skills and no hope for the future, or "supermom", working a fulltime job and going to college fulltime and getting 4 hours of sleep a night. The message, either way, is "They aren't like us", and how can we fix "them"?
The chapters featuring "older mothers", who typically gave birth in their late thirties using donor sperm, made me simply shake my head in frustration. We go from the struggling 18 year old trying to raise a child on $400 a month to the spoiled older single mother griping because her fancy private school wouldn't give her need-based financial aide - apparently her 6-figure income makes her ineligible. Puh-lease!
And, of course, a third of the single mothers in this country (like me) are left out. Women who became single mothers in their twenties are simply left out, as if our experience doesn't matter. Or perhaps we're harder to package into a neat stereotype?
This book was slow-going at times, I think the author could have cut 100 pages without any loss of information. I was also amused at her self-professed inability to understand simple statistics, it does little for her credibility. This said, there are some interesting people in this book, and perhaps reading the first 10 pages of each long chapter is worthwhile.
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Title: Single Mothers by Choice : A Guidebook for Single Women Who Are Considering or Have Chosen Motherhood by Jane Mattes ISBN: 0812922468 Publisher: Three Rivers Press Pub. Date: 10 May, 1994 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: The Complete Single Mother by Andrea Engber, Leah Klungness ISBN: 1580623026 Publisher: Adams Business Media Pub. Date: 01 March, 2000 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Helping the Stork : The Choices and Challenges of Donor Insemination by Carol Frost Vercollone, Heidi Moss, Robert Moss ISBN: 002861917X Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Pub. Date: 07 October, 1997 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: The Single Mother's Survival Guide by Patrice Karst ISBN: 1580910637 Publisher: Crossing Press Pub. Date: March, 2000 List Price(USD): $10.95 |
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Title: The Single Mother's Book: A Practical Guide to Managing Your Children, Career, Home, Finances, and Everything Else by Joan Anderson ISBN: 0934601844 Publisher: Peachtree Publishers Pub. Date: July, 1990 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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