This book is a study of the personal stories of many single mothers, with the intention of understanding why single mothers in poor urban neighborhoods are increasingly having children outside marriage at a young age. and without promise to marry their fathers. The authors chose to conduct their research in Philadelphia's eight most devastated neighborhoods, where oppression and danger are high and substantial employment opportunities are rare. They provide excellent education against the myth that poor young women in urban areas have children because of a lack of education about birth control or because they intend to benefit from the welfare system social. Instead, having children is their best and perhaps only way to achieve the purpose, validation, and companionship that are otherwise difficult to find in the areas where they live. For many of them, their child is the greatest promise of a better future. They also believe that even though their life hasn't been what they wanted, they want their child to have more and better opportunities and make it their mission to provide them with that. Their ethnographic study included approximately 162 women. The sample was limited to mothers earning less than $16,000 a year, which placed them below the federal poverty line. All women lived in neighborhoods where at least twenty percent were poor. Each had at least one child under the age of eighteen living at home. They were also classified as single mothers, although few of them actually maintained their own households. They ranged in age from fifteen to fifty-six, with an average age of twenty-five. Forty-five percent had no high school diploma, but fifteen percent had a GED. Of these women, forty percent worked in low-income service jobs. The authors had informal interactions with the women... middle of article......promising dreams, relationships often collapse under the pressure of unemployment, drug and alcohol abuse, of imprisonment, conflict and betrayal. Finally, we get to the heart of what marriage means to these mothers and why they say raising children successfully is the most important job they'll ever have. Almost every woman said things like, "It's only because of my children that I am where I am today." » That, I think, is the take-home message. Encouraging marriage, as we have done in the past, is not what will help these women. Based on this, I would encourage policies that allow women to grow and achieve more after having children, instead of giving handouts, giving hands and future generations could be made better for it. Works Cited Edin, Kathryn and Kefalas, Maria. 2005. Promises I Can Keep. Berkeley and Los Angeles, California: University of California Press.