Winner of the Society for Research on Adolesence Social Policy Award for Best Authored Book, 2006-2008

"In his latest book, Furstenberg offers a valuable geneaology of American teen pregnancy, public policy, and America's unique moral politics that shaped the public debate. His book should be read in poverty and policy courses ... [and] by every scholar who aspires to conduct useful research, not only to reinforce the reasons for doing policy-relevant research but also to learn how to present it with honesty and humility."
-CONTEMPORARY SOCIOLOGY

"With this important and timely book a preeminent scholar of urban families seriously chal lenges conventional wisdom on the problems and consequences of teenage childbearing. Frank Furstenberg's empirically based and innovative arguments are provocative and compelling. Destinies of the Disadvantaged will be discussed and debated by researchers, policymakers, and practitioners for many years."
-WILLIAM JULIUS WILSON, Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor, Harvard University

"This masterful book on a remarkable thirty-year study will change the way people think about teenage pregnancy and childbearing."
-ANDREW CHERLIN, Griswold Professor of Sociology and Public Policy and director, Hopkins Population Center, Johns Hopkins University

"In his new book, Frank Furstenberg provides us with a masterful account of the causes, conse quences, and politics of teenage childbearing. Destinies of the Disadvantaged is essential reading for anyone who cares about the role of family formation in the reproduction of poverty."
-SARA S. MCLANAHAN, professor of sociology and public affairs, Princeton University

Teen childbearing has risen to frighteningly high levels over the last four decades, jeopardizing the life chances of young parents and their offspring alike, particularly among minority communities. Or at least, that’s what politicians on the right and left often tell us, and what the American public largely believes. But sociologist Frank Furstenberg argues that the conventional wisdom distorts reality. In Destinies of the Disadvantaged, Furstenberg traces the history of public concern over teen pregnancy, exploring why this topic has become so politically powerful, and so misunderstood.

Based on over forty years of Furstenberg’s research on teen childbearing, Destinies of the Disadvantaged relates how the issue emerged from obscurity to become one of the most heated social controversies in America. Both slipshod research by social scientists and opportunistic grandstanding by politicians have contributed to public misunderstanding of the issue. Although out-of-wedlock teen pregnancy rose notably between 1960 and 1990—a cause for concern given the burdens of single motherhood at a young age—this trend did not reflect a rise in the rate of overall teen pregnancies. In fact, teen pregnancy actually declined dramatically in the 1960s and 1970s. The number of unmarried teenage mothers rose after 1960, not because more young women became pregnant, but because those who did increasingly chose not to rush into marriage. Furstenberg shows how early social science research on this topic exaggerated the adverse consequences of early parenthood both for young parents and for their children. Researchers also inaccurately portrayed single teenage motherhood as a phenomenon concentrated among minorities. Both of these misapprehensions skewed subsequent political debates. The issue became a public obsession and remained so during the 1990s, even as rates of out-of-wedlock teen childbearing plummeted. Addressing teen pregnancy was originally a liberal cause, led by advocates of family planning services, legalized abortion, and social welfare programs for single mothers. The issue was later adopted by conservatives, who argued that those liberal remedies were encouraging teen parenthood. According to Furstenberg, the flexible political usefulness of the issue explains its hold on political discourse.

The politics of teen parenthood is a fascinating case study in the abuse of social science for political ends. In Destinies of the Disadvantaged, Furstenberg brings that tale to life with the perspective of a historian and the insight of an insider, and provides the straight facts needed to craft effective policies to address teen pregnancy.

FRANK F. FURSTENBERG is the Zellerbach Family Professor of Sociology and a research associate in the Population Studies Center at the University of Pennsylvania, and chair of the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Transitions to Adulthood.
 

"Unmarried Couples with Children provides a very valuable portrait of the cohabiting couples, little noticed by most Americans, who are the parents of one out of six American babies born today."
-ANDREW CHERLIN, Griswold Professor of Sociology and Public Policy and director, Hopkins Population Center, Johns Hopkins University

"Too many children face the multiple disadvantages of being born to unmarried parents. Unmarried Couples with Children provides the most detailed information yet available about how these fragile families are formed, how they function, why they breakup, and what happens after the breakup. The volume is indispensable for anyone hoping to understand these families and how to help them."
-RON HASKINS, senior fellow, Economic Studies, and codirector, Center on Children and Families, Brookings Institution

"This stellar volume marries ethnograpy with demography, getting inside the lives of fragile families as they negotiate their fierce commitments to their children. Each of the chapters explores a different aspect of data collected in a unique qualitative add-on to a large-scale longitudinal study of low-income parents. The innovative research methodology and fascinating findings in Unmarried Couples with Children vindicate a new style of social scientific research."
-NANCY FOLBRE, professor of economics, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

"[Unmarried Couples with Children] is a thorough, methodologically sophisticated piece of research that examines family planning, economic issues, reasons for couple breakup, parenting behavior post-breakup, and the formation of new families among low-income families in cases where the biological parents were not married at the time of the child's birth. This collection is definitely one of if not the most exhaustive and indispensable resources for anyone interested in understanding the issues, dynamics, and experiences surrounding unmarried couples with children, and in providing resources for families such as these."
-CHOICE magazine

Today, a third of American children are born outside of marriage, up from one child in twenty in the 1950s, and rates are even higher among low-income Americans. Many herald this trend as one of the most troubling of our time. But the decline in marriage does not necessarily signal the demise of the two parent family—over 80 percent of unmarried couples are still romantically involved when their child is born and nearly half are living together. Most claim they plan to marry eventually. Yet half have broken up by their child's third birthday. What keeps some couples together and what tears others apart? After a breakup, how do fathers so often disappear from their children's lives?

An intimate portrait of the challenges of partnering and parenting in these families, Unmarried Couples with Children presents a variety of unique findings. Most of the pregnancies were not explicitly planned, but some couples feel having a child is the natural course of a serious relationship. Many of the parents are living with their child plus the mother’s child from a previous relationship. When the father also has children from a previous relationship, his visits to see them at their mother’s house often cause his current partner to be jealous. Breakups are more often driven by sexual infidelity or conflict than economic problems. After couples break up, many fathers complain they are shut out, especially when the mother has a new partner. For their part, mothers claim to limit dads’ access to their children because of their involvement with crime, drugs, or other dangers. For couples living together with their child several years after the birth, marriage remains an aspiration, but something couples are resolutely unwilling to enter without the financial stability they see as a sine qua non of marriage. They also hold marriage to a high relational standard, and not enough emotional attention from their partners is women’s number one complaint.

Unmarried Couples with Children is a landmark study of the family lives of nearly fifty American children born outside of a marital union at the dawn of the twenty-first century. Based on personal narratives gathered from both mothers and fathers over the first four years of their children’s lives, and told partly in the couples' own words, the story begins before the child is conceived, takes the reader through the tumultuous months of pregnancy to the moment of birth, and on through the child's fourth birthday. It captures in rich detail the complex relationship dynamics and powerful social forces that derail the plans of so many unmarried parents. The volume injects some much-needed reality into the national discussion about family values, and reveals that the issues are more complex than our political discourse suggests.

PAULA ENGLAND is professor of sociology at Stanford University.

KATHRYN EDIN is professor of public policy and management at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

CONTRIBUTORS:  Amy Claessens,  Mimi Engel,  Christina M. Gibson-Davis,  Heather D. Hill,  Kathryn D. Linnenberg,  Katherine A. Magnuson,  Lindsay M. Monte,  Joanna Reed,  Emily Fitzgibbons Shafer.

“It is past time to take stock of the costs and benefits of, and the alternatives to, the most important post-9/11 changes in the practices of Western nations to deal with terrorism. Under the leadership of one of our most distinguished experts in terrorism, Professor Martha Crenshaw, a set of scholars has produced a book that does review the changed policies and practices with the breadth of coverage and depth of examination of major decisions the subject demands. There is much to be learned from The Consequences of Counterterrorism in terms of assessment of the successes and failures and unexplored costs of our past efforts.”
–Philip B. Heymann, Harvard Law School

“Sweeping statutory and institutional alterations mark liberal democratic responses to terrorism post-9/11. The political and legal costs of these provisions, however, have gone virtually unnoticed in the political science literature. The Consequences of Counterterrorism fills this vacuum, surveying an impressive array of countries in Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and North America. With ground-breaking research, the volume is a must-read for anyone seeking to better understand the effects of counterterrorist law.”
–Laura Donohue,  Georgetown Law School

“Martha Crenshaw has assembled a first-rate team of international scholars to assess the effects on democratic governance of the counterterrorism measures adopted by Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Israel, and Japan. The result is an excellent and essential volume for all those concerned with the rule of law, the protection of civil liberties, and more generally, the striking of the right balance between protecting democracies from terrorists, on the one hand, and preserving the foundations of democracy, on the other.”
–Robert J. Art, Brandeis University

The 9/11 terrorist attacks opened America’s eyes to a frightening world of enemies surrounding us. But have our eyes opened wide enough to see how our experiences compare with other nations’ efforts to confront and prevent terrorism? Other democracies have long histories of confronting both international and domestic terrorism. Some have undertaken progressively more stringent counterterrorist measures in the name of national security and the safety of citizens. The Consequences of Counterterrorism examines the political costs and challenges democratic governments face in confronting terrorism.

Using historical and comparative perspectives, The Consequences of Counterterrorism presents thematic analyses as well as case studies of Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Japan, and Israel. Contributor John Finn compares post-9/11 antiterrorism legislation in the United States, Europe, Canada, and India to demonstrate the effects of hastily drawn policies on civil liberties and constitutional norms. Chantal de Jonge Oudraat and Jean-Luc Marret assert that terrorist designation lists are more widespread internationally than ever before. The authors examine why governments and international organizations use such lists, how they work, and why they are ineffective tools. Gallya Lahav shows how immigration policy has become inextricably linked to security in the EU and compares the European fear of internal threats to the American fear of external ones.

A chapter by Dirk Haubrich explains variation in the British government’s willingness to compromise democratic principles according to different threats. In his look at Spain and Northern Ireland, Rogelio Alonso asserts that restricting the rights of those who perpetrate ethnonationalist violence may be acceptable in order to protect the rights of citizens who are victims of such violence. Jeremy Shapiro considers how the French response to terrorist threats has become more coercive during the last fifty years. Israel’s “war model” of counterterrorism has failed, Ami Pedahzur and Arie Perliger argue, and is largely the result of the military elite’s influence on state institutions. Giovanni Cappocia explains how Germany has protected basic norms and institutions. In contrast, David Leheny stresses the significance of change in Japan’s policies.

Preventing and countering terrorism is now a key policy priority for many liberal democratic states. As The Consequences of Counterterrorism makes clear, counterterrorist policies have the potential to undermine the democratic principles, institutions, and processes they seek to preserve.

MARTHA CRENSHAW is senior fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, and a professor of political science by courtesy, as well as professor of government, emerita, at Wesleyan University.

CONTRIBUTORS: Rogelio Alonso, Giovanni Capoccia, Martha Crenshaw, Chantal de Jonge Oudraat, John E. Finn, Dirk Haubrich, Gallya Lahav, David Leheny, Jean-Luc Marret, Ami Pedahzur, Arie Perliger, and Jeremy Shapiro.

“In this fresh look at the dynamics of U.S. immigration, Massey and Sanchez document the effects on [immigrants’] identities of the current harsh anti-immigration environment they encounter in the United States. Hewing to the dominant view in the sociology of immigration, the authors model immigrant assimilation not as a straight-line process of gradual adoption of the dominant culture, but as a two-way process of group-boundary negotiation between newcomers and native-born citizens. . . . This sobering account of the experiences of immigrant reform is highly detrimental, not only for the immigrants themselves, but also for American society at large.”
—Population & Development Review 

“Based on statistical and ethnographic accounts, Douglas Massey and Magaly Sánchez have written a book that offers an insightful portrait of new Latin American immigrants and also challenges the prevailing anti-immigrant hysteria. The lives of the new immigrants, told in their own words, are full of hard work and dreams for a small piece of the American dream. Some make it, but most struggle at multiple jobs with no benefits and with little chance of upward mobility. The overwhelming evidence shows that almost all new immigrants are hopeful, law abiding, family and community orientated, and working hard to secure a better life for themselves and their children. The harshness of American policies has not reduced immigration, but has legitimized discrimination that has marginalized immigrants and weakened the fabric of American society.”
—Charles Hirschman, Boeing International Professor, University of Washington 

“Brokered Boundaries is a timely, unflinching, compelling, and rigorously reasoned analysis of the consequences of a hostile context of reception for immigrant destinies and identities. In an era of widening inequality, rising xenophobia, and unprecedented state persecution of millions of undocumented immigrants and their children, the authors trace the trajectories and stories of a sample of Latin Americans in the urban northeast. In the process they tackle empirical puzzles, challenge conventional wisdom, debunk the sunny ethnocentrism embedded in formulaic discourses of ‘assimilation’ in American life, and offer a sober reconsideration of policy courses for the American future.”
—Rubén G. Rumbaut, professor of sociology, University of California, Irvine

Anti-immigrant sentiment reached a fever pitch after 9/11, but its origins go back much further. Public rhetoric aimed at exposing a so-called invasion of Latino immigrants has been gaining ground for more than three decades—and fueling increasingly restrictive federal immigration policy. Accompanied by a flagging U.S. economy—record-level joblessness, bankruptcy, and income inequality—as well as waning consumer confidence, these conditions signaled one of the most hostile environments for immigrants in recent memory. In Brokered Boundaries, Douglas Massey and Magaly Sánchez untangle the complex political, social, and economic conditions underlying the rise of xenophobia in U.S. society. The book draws on in-depth interviews with Latin American immigrants in metropolitan New York and Philadelphia and—in their own words and images—reveals what life is like for immigrants attempting to integrate in anti-immigrant times.

What do the social categories “Latino” and “American” actually mean to today’s immigrants? Brokered Boundaries analyzes how first- and second-generation immigrants from Central and South America and the Caribbean navigate these categories and their associated meanings as they make their way through U.S. society. Massey and Sánchez argue that the mythos of immigration, in which newcomers gradually shed their respective languages, beliefs, and cultural practices in favor of a distinctly American way of life, is, in reality, a process of negotiation between new arrivals and native-born citizens. Natives control interactions with outsiders by creating institutional, social, psychological, and spatial mechanisms that delimit immigrants’ access to material resources and even social status. Immigrants construct identities based on how they perceive and respond to these social boundaries. The authors make clear that today’s Latino immigrants are brokering boundaries in the context of unprecedented economic uncertainty, repressive anti-immigrant legislation, and a heightening fear that upward mobility for immigrants translates into downward mobility for the native-born. Despite an absolute decline in Latino immigration, immigration-related statutes have tripled in recent years, including many that further shred the safety net for legal permanent residents as well as the undocumented.

Brokered Boundaries shows that, although Latin American immigrants come from many different countries, their common reception in a hostile social environment produces an emergent Latino identity soon after arrival. During anti-immigrant times, however, the longer immigrants stay in America, the more likely they are to experience discrimination and the less likely they are to identify as Americans.

DOUGLAS S. MASSEY is Henry G. Bryant Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School.

MAGALY SÁNCHEZ R. is senior researcher and visiting scholar at the Office of Population Research at Princeton University.