Rackin Heather M, Gibson-Davis Christina
Department of Sociology, Louisiana State University; 126 Stubbs Hall Baton Rouge, LA, 70803;
Sanford School of Public Policy; Duke University; 228 Rubenstein Hall, Box 90312; Durham, NC 27708.
J Marriage Fam. 2017 Aug;79(4):1096-1110. doi: 10.1111/jomf.12405. Epub 2017 Apr 28.
We investigate how low-income young adults without children understand marriage and fertility. Data come from the Becoming Partners and Parents Study (=) a qualitative study of African-American adults ages 18-22 in a midsize southern city. This is the first study to analyze young, low-income, childless and unmarried Black respondents' frameworks (i.e., internal understandings of the world) of marriage and fertility. In contrast to research conducted on parents, our research on childless adults indicated a narrative in which there were close connections between marriage and fertility and an economic-bar adhered to both marriage and childbearing. Respondents also believed that childbearing was meaningful and provided purpose, but that it was morally questionable if the parent was not financially stable. Our results suggest that prior findings related to meanings of family formation and childbearing for low-income parents may not extend to those without children.
我们研究没有孩子的低收入年轻人如何理解婚姻和生育。数据来自“成为伴侣和父母研究”（=），这是一项对美国南部一个中等规模城市中18 - 22岁非裔美国成年人进行的定性研究。这是第一项分析年轻、低收入、无子女且未婚的黑人受访者关于婚姻和生育的框架（即对世界的内在理解）的研究。与针对父母进行的研究不同，我们对无子女成年人的研究表明，在他们的叙述中，婚姻和生育之间存在紧密联系，并且存在一种经济障碍制约着婚姻和生育。受访者还认为生育是有意义的且能赋予生活目标，但如果父母经济不稳定，生育在道德上就会受到质疑。我们的研究结果表明，先前关于低收入父母家庭形成和生育意义的研究结果可能不适用于没有孩子的人群。
