Class and Race Differences in Resolving Nonmarital Pregnancies

Out-of-wedlock childbearing—involving the decision neither to get an abortion nor to marry—remains more prevalent among working-class and poor than among middle-class teenagers. While the majority of mid­dle — and upper-class pregnant teenagers, even in predominantly Catholic areas, terminate their pregnancies in abortion, the likelihood is much greater that working-class teenagers will carry their pregnancies to term.21 Studies of young women who had unintended premarital pregnancies in the early 1970s (just after legalization) concluded that women’s choice of outcome—whether to marry and have the child, to become a single parent, to get an abortion, or to deliver and put the baby up for adoption— was strongly influenced by class background. A survey of women in Hawaii found that "when women who chose abortion are compared with women with similar options who chose to have a child, the abortion patients are consistently more middle class in both objective social charac­teristics and basic value orientations." More of these women tended to be from professional or lower-middle-class families and had at least some college education. Women choosing childbirth, either within or outside marriage, tended to be from families whose adults were employed in "blue-collar or service occupations" and to have a high school education or less.22

A study of pregnant unmarried adolescents in California done in the same period found class, age, and ethnic differences between women who got abortions and those who brought the pregnancy to term. These differences characterized married and unmarried women. The women who took their pregnancies to term were more likely to be younger, Mexican- American, and from working-class families.23 Their decision to have the baby rather than seek an abortion had to do with the actual conditions that gave different shape to their lives. The abortion groups made better grades in school, had higher school attendance, and were more likely to be earning money of their own; the "term" groups had significantly poorer school records and were more likely to have dropped out of school.24 The extent to which teenage women experience their lives as purposeful, moving according to some plan, is centrally related to school experience; the quality of that experience in turn depends on their class and race. These circumstances have a critical bearing on the decision about abortion or childbirth.

Many working-class students find high school oppressive, crowded, and essentially custodial, a place that is sometimes alien to their culture and language if they are Latin or West Indian. They realistically see little connection between earning a diploma and going on to an adequate job or to college. In contrast, their cultures may regard having a baby as an achievement and a mark of adulthood and esteem. In this context abortion may not seem a desirable alternative. The well-publicized trend in the 1970s for teenage mothers, white as well as black, to keep their babies rather than give them up for adoption is associated with the narrow socioeconomic options of many of these women, as well as the growing tolerance for unwed motherhood.25

Lack of adequate educational and occupational opportunities helps explain the class and racial contexts of a significant proportion of teenage motherhood. On the other hand, the effect of early childbearing, for work­ing-class and to some extent middle-class teenagers, is to foreclose present and future educational and occupational attainment. The possibility of accumulating work experience, training, and the necessary resources for a consistent relation to work may be drastically affected by early child­bearing. The earlier a woman has a baby, it seems, the more likely she is to drop out of school; the less education she gets, the more likely she is to remain poorly paid, peripheral to the labor market, or unem­ployed, and the more children she will have—between one and three more than her working childless counterpart. Conversely, a sample of young adult women who had reached age twenty-four by 1972 found that for each year the birth of the first child was postponed, a woman was able to attain an additional half year of schooling.26

In addition to having a strong influence on dropping out of school, the bearing of her first baby as a teenager is associated with a young woman’s high subsequent fertility. Major responsibilities for child care at an early age, combined with limited education, may mean that she will "never catch up," never get out from under the weight of child­care responsibilities and lack of skills to improve her situation. Her relation to the job market is likely to be marginal, centered on unskilled, low — wage sectors, if it exists at all. As a result, teenage childbearing thrusts a young woman into economic dependency on welfare assistance, support from her parents, or support from her husband’s earnings. For working — class women, dependency in these circumstances frequently amounts to a condition of persistent poverty or, when poverty is avoided, to an inabil­ity to develop labor market skills. The long-term effect of early childbear­ing is thus cumulative, resulting in the loss of employment and resources in later years.27 Racism compounds this picture. All girls who drop out of high school to become mothers have a difficult time finding employ­ment, but the unemployment rate of black high school girls with babies is nearly twice that of white girls in the same situation.28

Recently some small steps have been taken to alleviate the harsh consequences that social institutions impose on teenage women who be­come pregnant and bear a child. To a large extent these measures have come as a response to the changed consciousness of teenage women them­selves. During the 1970s a significantly greater number of pregnant teenag­ers, especially black girls, was able to continue and complete high school even if they decided to carry through their pregnancy. This change was partly eased by a shift in school board policy allowing pregnant girls to stay in school.29 But school boards were only responding to recent changes in young women’s lives. As we have seen, the likelihood that teenage pregnant women will get married to legitimate a pregnancy declined dras­tically during the 1970s, for whites and blacks, while the proportion who remain unmarried increased. Later marriage, higher college attendance and labor force participation, and recognition by the courts of a girl’s maturity outside marriage (the "mature minor" doctrine) have combined to make teenage out-of-wedlock childbearing not easy, but more compati­ble with self-development.

The positive change in school board policies regarding pregnant teen­agers reflects not only more generally supportive social attitudes but also a specific realization that early marriage, even more than early childbear­ing, is a disaster for students who become pregnant. If a pregnant teenager gets married, she is more likely to drop out of school permanently than if she remains single, living with her parents.30 School boards have recog­nized that pregnant teenagers are not going to get married and be taken care of, or to disappear conveniently into "homes," and thus have granted their right to an education. These progressive developments—in the con­text of an active feminist movement—have in turn encouraged the found­ing and funding of self-help organizations, such as the Sisterhood of Black Single Mothers in New York, which have helped to meet the survival needs of some black teenage mothers.31

The tendency for teenage mothers to stay in school and not to marry (the two seem to go together), while increasing among all groups, is much more prevalent among black teenagers. In 1979 the likelihood of teenage mothers remaining unmarried was much greater among blacks than whites; 76 percent of white teenage mothers who were high school drop­outs had married, whereas only 19 percent of comparable black teenage mothers had. Black teenage mothers were much more likely to be living with parents or other relatives than with a spouse; in sharp contrast, three-quarters of the young white mothers were living with either a hus­band or (in a few cases) a "male partner."32 For the black girl, the family network provides a base of support that cushions the experience of early childbearing; she is still a daughter and, above all, she has her mother at home to help her out. For the white girl, despite rising rates of "illegiti­macy," marriage is still the dominant recourse; she becomes a wife and relies on the support of a young man whose resources and experience are nearly as limited as her own.

If the black girl’s situation reflects the traditional value placed by black families on childbearing, on providing extended family and commu­nity support to young single mothers, it is nonetheless a value born of harsh reality. If teenage black women avoid marriage after becoming preg­nant, it may be because racism and its impact on young black men (particu­larly on their prospects of adequate employment) make that a prudent choice. If these young women look to motherhood for a sense of esteem and self-worth, it may be because so few alternative sources of esteem are available to them. If black parents and other kin are supportive of their pregnant daughters, providing them with a home, child-care assis­tance, and a "positive attitude," it may reflect not only a set of traditional norms valuing children but a situation in which the parental family knows it can count on the contribution of the daughter’s welfare benefits. Finally, poverty and institutional racism may increase the value placed on babies and childbearing, regardless of the mother’s age or circumstances, because of the precariousness of life. Infant, neonatal, and perinatal mortality rates among blacks and other minorities remained nearly twice as high as those of the dominant white majority in 1979—a fact determined partly by poor nutrition and inadequate or unavailable maternity and child health services.33

Yet the fact of having coped with teenage motherhood for generations and having done so outside the framework of marriage may have made that experience a more viable one for black women than for white. Field studies of communities of urban and rural black women point out how the scarcity of black men able to get steady jobs and the frequently voiced conviction of black mothers that "you can’t trust men" create in young black women a set of values about marriage rooted in caution. From mother to daughter, from daughter to sister, the idea is passed down that a woman cannot rely on having a man to take care of her; pregnancy alone is no reason to get married.34

These distinct features of the social and family context of childbearing for black teenagers help account for the pattern of timing of reproductive events in black women’s lives and the difference between this pattern and that of white women. Black women tend to bear children earlier in life, with children spaced more closely together, and to have abortions at a somewhat later age than white women, after they have borne at least one child. The difference between racial groups in the timing of abortion is marked. Table 4-1 shows that nearly two-thirds of black women who had abortions in 1978 in eight reporting states were mothers; conversely, nearly two-thirds of white women had no previous children at the time of their abortion. Figure 4-3 reflects the fact that the peak age for abortions among black women is higher than it is among white women. While abortion ratios (per 1,000 live births) are higher among black women than white women at all ages over 20, those among white teenagers are consistently higher than they are among black teenagers.

Although the timing of abortions shows persistent differences be­tween blacks and whites, certain recent improvements in educational and employment conditions for some black women have altered the context

source: Drusilla Burnham, "Induced Terminations of Pregnancy: Report­ing States, 1977 and 1978," U. S. Department of Health and Human Services, Monthly Vital Statistics Report 30 (Hyatts- ville, Md., 1981), Fig. 1.

in which they experienced the need for abortion. These improvements underlie an important part of the rise in the rate of abortions among black women in this decade and the decline in childbearing among black teenagers.35

Educational advances at the college level and access to better jobs and higher earnings within the female labor force represent gains that have enhanced the prospect of self-determined life choices for middle — class and many working-class black women. Enrollment of black women in U. S. colleges during the 1970s increased by nearly twice the margin of white female enrollment. By 1978 ‘The proportion of black women enrolled in college (11 percent of those between fourteen and thirty — four years of age) was not significantly different from the proportion of comparable white women."36

For broader groups of black women, there were important advances in occupational position as the proportion of employed black women holding traditional service and domestic worker jobs declined by over one-quarter and that in clerical positions increased by one-half between 1970 and 1979. During roughly the same period, the earnings of black women in employment as a whole came close to those of white women (although the earnings of all women remained at less than 60 percent of the earnings of white men). In 1970 black women’s median earnings for year-round, full-time work were $6,940, or 82 percent of those of comparable white women. By 1978 black women’s median earnings had increased to $9,020, or 93 percent of the median for white women.37

The prospect of more education, more rewarding employment, and higher earnings has been associated for many black women with an in­creasing tendency to postpone (or avoid) marriage. Between 1970 and 1978 the percentage of black women over age 14 who had never married increased from 28 to 35 percent (the corresponding figures for white women were 21 and 22 percent).38 In the past, reasons for marriage or nonmarriage among black women have been related to the economic con­ditions confronting black men and the reality-based ethic of self-reliance of black women. In the light of recent educational and occupational gains, however, these patterns in marriage must be evaluated as well in terms of the new awareness of black women of an expanded range of options. One key decision is that regarding entry into, and maintenance of, em­ployment. High labor force participation is not a new phenomenon for black women. It is nonetheless significant that the rate of participation for black women between twenty-five and thirty-four years old had risen to the very high level of 70 percent by 1979.39

These important advances have resulted not only from shifts in the needs of the capitalist economy but also from the impact of the civil rights and women’s liberation movements. Although they are not the "cause" of rising abortion rates, they provide a context for understanding the decline in fertility, increased use of abortion, and the shifting role of maternity in the lives and cultural self-definition of black women. It is important to recognize that the linked trends of rising college attendance and employment, later marriage, and higher abortion rates are specific to middle-class and working-class women, both black and white, as dis­tinct from the poor. Indeed, as members of a racial minority who are trying to attain or maintain a middle-class position in a capitalist patriar­chal society, black women college and graduate students have been ob­served to exhibit sexual attitudes and behavior that involve "taking very few risks," being much more "careful" than white women, thus defying traditional racist-sexist stereotypes.40 The availability of legal, funded abortion has diminished the magnitude of risk for these women and thus has helped them achieve important goals.

Here too, changes in social conditions reflect and reinforce changes in women’s consciousness. Abortion is and always has been for black women an important "fact of life," a well-known option practiced by them despite its illegality, despite moral and religious opposition to it in the black community, and despite its association with genocide by black male political figures. Black women’s relation to abortion reveals a strong basis of support for their right to choose, which underlies the relative absence of public agitation for, and generalized discussion of, abortion in the black community.41 Writing in Essence, Bebe Moore Camp­bell decries the "shame" and "silence" that cloaked abortion practices of generations of black women and calls on black women to be strong and outspoken in their defense of abortion rights.42 Moreover, a recent poll in Life magazine revealed that 80 percent of "all nonwhite women" in a national sample agreed that women should have the legal right to get an abortion if they want one, as compared to 67 percent of white women.43 Their situation and needs, not ideology, underline the impor­tance of this right for them in daily life.