Work

The Role of Trust in Low‐Income Mothers' Intimate Unions

Year: 2009

Type: article

Abstract: Recent scholarship concerning low rates of marriage among low-income mothers emphasizes generalized gender distrust as a major impediment in forming sustainable intimate unions. Guided by symbolic interaction theory and longitudinal ethnographic data on 256 low-income mothers from the Three-City Study, we argue that generalized gender distrust may not be as influential in shaping mothers' unions as some researchers suggest. Grounded theory analysis revealed that 96% of the mothers voiced a general distrust of men, yet that distrust did not deter them from involvement in intimate unions. Rather, the pivotal ways mothers enacted trust in their partners were demonstrated by 4 emergent forms of interpersonal trust that we labeled as suspended, compartmentalized, misplaced, and integrated. Implications for future research are discussed.

Source: Journal of Marriage and the Family

DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-3737.2009.00658.x

Authors: Linda M. Burton, Andrew Cherlin, Donna‐Marie Winn, Angela Estacion, Clara Holder‐Taylor

Institutions: Duke University, Johns Hopkins University, Academy for Educational Development

Language: English

Topic: Family Dynamics and Relationships

Subfield: Demography

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

SDGs: Gender equality, Reduced inequalities

Open Access status: green

Funders: National Institutes of Health, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development