This book provides new ideas about the forces that may be driving the trend in the break between marriage and childrearing by looking at the problems of family formation through the eyes of 162 low-income single mothers living in eight economically marginal neighborhoods across Philadelphia and its poorest industrial suburb, Camden, New Jersey. Their stories offer a unique point of view on the troubling questions of why low-income, poorly educated young women have children they can’t afford and why they don’t marry. Promises I Can Keep follows the course of couple relationships from the earliest days of courtship through pregnancy and into the moment of birth and beyond. It shows us what poor mothers think marriage and motherhood mean, and tells us why they nearly always put motherhood first. A PREP Educational Product. (Curriculum resource)