Professor Anderson Responds I have been invited by Almanac to respond to these letters regarding my work and the work of my colleague, Professor Kathryn Edin. I have stayed out of the recent public controversy related to these works but offer this response for reasons explained here. The dispute between Professor Edin and me, which has unexpectedly surfaced publicly in the last week, was settled a few months ago. When I saw a problem of acknowledgment and attribution of my work in her and Professor Maria Kefalas’ book Promises I Can Keep, I did not impute malice or sinister motivation to them, but went to Professor Edin and suggested we discuss the matter and work it out as colleagues. With the help of a sociologist from another university who skillfully served as mediator, we settled the matter amicably. We reached an agreement last June, the terms of which are, as part of the agreement, confidential. I was satisfied by the agreement which I will continue to abide by. Now there has been a new turn of events. Several respected minds in American sociology from outside Penn led by Professor Sara McLanahan have written a letter to the Penn community about this controversy. Their statement gives the impression that they think there is something unreasonable–“absurd” and “fundamental misreading”—about my concerns with their book. These are harsh words, and from my experience it is hard to get 17 social scientists to agree to anything, so this letter is an unusual occasion. I never imagined that I would be dismissed with such utter confidence by respected figures of the discipline I have devoted my scholarship and career to serving. I find their letter unconvincing and disturbing. Professor McLanahan’s intervention is probably a well meaning effort to defend Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas against charges, as they appeared in headlines of the Daily Pennsylvanian, of “plagiarism,” a specific and loaded term which I have not used to characterize the dispute.!However, McLanahan, et al.’s!dismissal of the concerns aired in the Daily Pennsylvanian as “absurd”—and particularly their claim that “the arguments of the two books could not be more different”—have now been taken up by the popular press to suggest that the concerns which in the first place motivated me to approach Professor Edin are, as some critics said, “nonsense.” Many scholars who have been around for a while experience the sometimes uneasy feeling that he or she should have been cited in this or that work. We get used to ignoring it. In using words like “absurd,” Professor McLanahan and co-signatories seem to view it that way. But they discuss the problem as if the similarities between the book and my work were a matter of topics addressed or ultimate conclusions drawn. I have never raised any questions about the topics being similar, and I never disputed that Edin and Kefalas made an original argument in suggesting that poor young women refuse to marry because they don’t want to make promises they can’t keep. (This is a claim I have never made.) The problem is that in other respects, Promises owes a strong and almost entirely unacknowledged debt to Code of the Street, especially to the sequence of my chapters “The Mating Game,” “The Decent Daddy,” and “The Black Inner-City Grandmother in Transition” (142-236), as well as to earlier articles that led to those chapters, particularly “Sex Codes and Family Life Among Northton’s Youth,” in Streetwise. Promises follows Code in its themes and major issues; it makes many of the same findings and explanations and draws many of the same conclusions; and it includes many specific repetitions of matter from Code and its source articles. At the same time, the University of California Press and the authors themselves make strong claims for the originality of the work in Promises. Edin and Kefalas have made use of concepts and expressions in Code in a way that misleads readers into thinking that they are primarily responsible for those expressions and concepts and due the credit for them. They have engaged in a pattern of repeating the distinctive ideas, findings, explanations, or terms of Code without citing the source. These similarities have three notable qualities. First, the methods, ideas, or terms are sufficiently similar to those in Code, and the overlap is so extensive, that they constitute repetition of the original work. Second, the unacknowledged methods, ideas, or terms are sufficiently associated with Code that they should have been credited to it. And third, the writers knew the previous work. As scholars, we owe it to our sources and our readers to acknowledge whenever our contributions very specifically follow a pattern of previous contributions of others. This is what I chose to discuss with my colleague. The following sections summarize the unacknowledged similarities, the acknowledged similarities (Promises’ references to Code), and Promises’ claims to originality, followed by a comparison of quoted portions from Promises and Code on 22 important subject areas. Unacknowledged Similarities Despite McLanahan, et al.’s claim that the arguments in the two books “could not be more different,” it is not “absurd” to believe that Promises can reasonably be seen as a development and extension of the “Mating Game” chapter of Code. It addresses most of the same issues, develops many of the same themes, makes many of the same findings and explanations, and comes to many of the same conclusions. These general similarities alone would demand significant acknowledgement. But in addition, Promises includes many specific repetitions and echoes of Code without acknowledgment (quoted in the last section of this response). It would be impossible for someone who knew both works not to recognize both that Promises is indebted to Code and that the debt is one that by standards of ethical scholarship should be acknowledged. Worse yet, someone who reads Promises but does not already know Code will be doubly misled. Not only does Promises take sole credit for work it repeats, but it gives a reader no reason to look back to Code to see the genesis of the work Promises pursues. Acknowledged Similarities Promises does acknowledge Code in three footnotes, two of which are listed in the index. The first reference occurs on page 54. The note acknowledges two pre-Code articles: “Elijah Anderson’s work (1989; 1991) offers a perspective on these young families in inner-city Philadelphia” (253, n2). It does not acknowledge that framing story of Mahkiya and Mike is anticipated almost point-for-point in Code (see below, items 6, 7, 8, 11, and 20). The second is on page 160, acknowledging its discussion of “decent” families (261, n20). The third recalls the first. It is located in the conclusion (190). The footnoted lines in the text read as follows: We gathered our data in the kitchens and front rooms, the sidewalks and front stoops of those declining neighborhoods where the growth in single motherhood has been most pronounced. What we learned—and the stories we tell—challenge what most Americans believe about unwed motherhood and its causes. This on-the-ground approach creates a portrait of poor single mothers that goes beyond the statistics that are so often used to describe them.1 The footnote reads as follows: 1Elijah Anderson’s similar approach reveals a great deal about the sexual and romantic relationships of very young, inner-city African-Americans in Philadelphia, many of whom are not yet parents. See Anderson (1990, 1990). In this context, what is most notable about this footnote is how little it actually acknowledges. Edin and Kefalas grant that I also used an “on-the-ground approach,” but do not acknowledge any similarity or debt to the specifics of my approach, themes, issues or conclusions. The rest of the footnote credits me with “reveal[ing] a great deal”; but not only does it fail to acknowledge the similarity between those revelations and their work, it also misleadingly emphasizes the differences between their subjects and my “very young” subjects who are “not yet parents.” (It should be noted that the discussion of these issues in Code is by no means limited to the “very young.”) A skeptic might conclude that the effect of these footnotes is to deflect readers from considering the actual similarities between Promises and Code. Claims to Originality in Promises The unacknowledged similarities between Promises and Code must be judged in light of how Promises presents itself to readers and positions itself in relation to prior scholarship. The dust jacket mentions the originality of Promises three times, in the front-inside summary and in two of the four blurbs on the back, the last of which reads: “Promises I Can Keep is the best kind of exploration: honest, incisive, and ever-so-original.” Edin and Kefalas do not mention Code or other work by me anywhere in their “Introduction,” where scholars traditionally set out the relationship between their work and that of their predecessors. They introduce their approach in contrast to previous studies: “Since these trends [to unwed motherhood] first became apparent, some of the best scholars in America have sought answers, using the best survey data social science has at its disposal” (4). They do not make any reference here to the use of ethnographic methodology by leading scholars, thus implying that it is their work which stands as a unique corrective. They continue that the previous answers are inadequate and “the reasons remain a mystery” (5). The problem, they suggest, lies in the nature of a survey-based methodology, and they claim that with their ethnographic method they provide “new” ideas and a “unique” point of view: What is striking about the body of social science evidence is how little of it is based on the perspectives and life experiences of the women who are its subjects. . . . We provide new ideas about the forces that may be driving the trend by looking at the problems of family formation through the eyes of 162 low-income single mothers living in eight economically marginal neighborhoods across Philadelphia and its poorest industrial suburb, Camden, New Jersey. Their stories offer a unique point of view on the troubling questions of why low-income, poorly educated young women have children they can’t afford and why they don’t marry. (5) (Emphasis added) In such contexts, the standards of scholarly citation call for scholars to acknowledge those whose work has preceded them. When Edin and Kefalas position their work as standing in contrast to “the body of social science research” on the problem of unwed motherhood and do not mention the obvious precedent of the approach in Code and the articles that led up to it, they can only be taken to obscure any significant similarity to that work. When they claim that their approach offers “a unique point of view” and do not mention the many similarities between what they find and what Code showed before them using a similar methodology, they again can only be taken to obscure any significant similarity to that work. In other published work and talks, Edin and Kefalas have taken this practice even further—not citing my work at all. (See Contexts 4:2:16-22) Should the field accept McLanahan, et al.’s claims to the originality of Edin and Kefalas’ book, these scholars will have succeeded at seriously obscuring indebtedness to previous scholarship. Promises exhibits enough unacknowledged similarity to Code that it constitutes an unfair use of another’s scholarship. I urge anyone interested in this matter to carefully read the comparisons of verbatim quotes covering 22 subject areas, in the next section,* with the criticism and easy dismissal of me by McLanahan, et al. in mind: Is “absurd” an appropriate characterization, and is there justification for their conclusion that the works “could not be more different”? Would they or any reasonable academic tell their students that they need not footnote or acknowledge in these circumstances? Ultimately, these unfortunate events highlight an important issue: What standards for acknowledging the prior work of other scholars will Professor McLanahan, et al.–and the academy generally–stand by? Unacknowledged Overlap and Repetition Quoted Verbatim All quotations are from Edin and Kefalas’ Promises I Can Keep (“E/K”) and Anderson’s Code of the Street (“A”) unless otherwise indicated. 1. The belief in fate. E/K: “Some, like Abby, begin to take chances [not use birth control] on purpose and leave the outcome to fate.” (39) “Even if children seem to just ‘happen,’ most believe they were meant to be. Jasmine . . . tells us, ‘I never used anything [when] I got pregnant. God is in control. And [my kids] was meant to be . . . . I feel like, if it happens, it happens.’” (41-42) “When the pregnancy is confirmed, most take a fatalistic view that it is meant to be, just as Antonia Rodriguez did.” (43) “Few say their children are the result of either an overt plan or a contraceptive failure. Rather, the large majority are neither fully planned nor actively avoided.” (46-47) A: “Although an overwhelming number may not be actively trying to have babies, many are not actively trying to prevent having them. One of the reasons for this may be the strong fundamentalist religious orientation of many poor blacks, which emphasizes the role of fate in life. If something happens, it happens; if something was meant to be, then let it be, and ‘God will find a way.’” (147) 2. The sense of future among inner-city youth. E/K: “Jen and the other mothers we came to know are coming of age in an America that is profoundly unequal—where the gap between rich and poor continues to grow. This economic reality has convinced them that they have little to lose and, perhaps, something to gain by a seemingly ‘ill-timed’ birth.” (“Unmarried with Children,” Contexts, p. 22) A: “Their outlook on sex and pregnancy, like their outlook on violence, is strongly affected by their perceived options in life . . . Such perceptions are formed by the fortunes of immediate peers, family, and others with whom the youths identify. Among teenagers one of the most important factors working against pregnancy is their belief that they have something to lose by becoming parents at an early age; many believe they have something to gain.” (142) 3. The contrast with the sense of future of middle-class youth. E/K: “For lack of compelling alternatives, poor youth like Antonia and Emilio often begin to eagerly anticipate children and the social role of parents at a remarkably tender age. While middle-class teens and twenty-somethings anticipate completing college and embarking on careers, their lower-class counterparts can only dream of such glories. Though some do aspire to these goals, the practical steps necessary to reach them are often a mystery.” (31-32) “The centrality of children in this lower-class worldview of what is important and meaningful in life stands in striking contrast to their low priority in the view of more affluent teens and twenty-something youth, who may want children at some point in the future, but only after educational, career, and other life goals have been achieved. Putting motherhood first makes sense in a social context where the achievements that middle-class youth see as their birthright are little more than pipe dreams: Children offer a tangible source of meaning, while other avenues for gaining social esteem and personal satisfaction appear vague and tenuous.” (49) A: “Sexual relations, exploitative and otherwise, are common among middle-class teenagers as well, but middle-class youth take a strong interest in their future and know what a pregnancy can do to derail that future. In contrast, the ghetto adolescent sees no future to derail, no hope for a tomorrow very different from today, hence, little to lose by having an out-of-wedlock child.” (“Sex Codes and Family Life,” Annals of the American Academy, p. 77) “The prize baby is not usually the prize of first choice for many of these girls. For an undetermined number, the real prize is upward mobility, the good life, having a family on the middle-class model they avidly follow in the soap operas. The wish for many is to go to college or land a job downtown. But sooner or later they make do with what they have at their disposal. In effect, they may settle for babies because there is ‘nothing else to do.’ This poverty of outlook is far different from that of their ‘decent’ counterparts, to whom they usually defer during encounters, thus recognizing such people as their ‘betters’ in the neighborhood’s social order.” (“Neighborhood Effects on Teenage Pregnancy,” in The Urban Underclass, p. 392) 4. The view of a baby as a “gift,” the general receptivity of the poor to children, and the concomitant negative view of abortion. E/K: “The heady significance of the declaration ‘I want to have a baby by you’ is also fueled by the extraordinarily high social value the poor place on children. For a lack of compelling alternatives, poor youth like Antonia and Emilio often begin to eagerly anticipate children and the social role of parents at a remarkably tender age.” (31) “Children, whether planned or not, are nearly always viewed as a gift, not a liability—a source of both joy and fulfillment whenever they happen upon the scene. They bring a new sense of hope and a chance to start fresh. Thus, most women want the baby very much once the pregnancy occurs. . . . As sociologist Kristin Luker shows, many middle-class women view abortion as a personal choice arising from a woman’s right to control her body and her life. Yet most mothers who live in the Philadelphia area’s bleak core typically share a radically different view. Though most concede there are circumstances desperate enough to warrant an abortion, most still view the termination of a pregnancy as a tragedy—perhaps unavoidable but still deeply regrettable. Virtually no woman we spoke with believed it was acceptable to have an abortion merely to advance an educational trajectory.” (43-44) A: “[W]elfare and persistent poverty have affected the norms of the ghetto culture, such as the high value placed on children.” (166) “Many women in the underclass black culture emerge from a fundamentalist religious orientation and practice a pro-life philosophy. Abortion is therefore not usually an option. New life is sometimes characterized as a ‘heavenly gift,’ an infant is very sacred to the young women, and the extended inner-city family appears always able to make do somehow with another baby. In the community, a birth is usually met with great praise, regardless of its circumstances, and the child is genuinely valued. Such ready social approval works against many efforts to avoid an out-of-wedlock birth.” (Annals piece, 76) 5. The expectation of having children at a young age. E/K: “Conception without planning is most common among the young, yet even the very young . . . usually say they got pregnant only a year or two before they’d hoped.” (40) A: “[I]t is not always a question of whether the young girl is going to have children, but when.” (69) 6. Pregnancy as a transformative event. E/K: “For poor youth like Antonia Rodriguez, Emilio, Mahkiya, and Mike, the news of the pregnancy can dramatically transform the relational dynamic. Two young people who have only been ‘kicking it’ for a short period of time—often less than a year—suddenly realize they’ve ignited a time bomb. Most young women respond as Mahkiya and Antonia did—they attempt to get serious about life for the sake of the baby. Some of the young men do likewise . . . Many young men, however, react on some level as Mike does [“he’d call and say, ‘It ain’t my child. Don’t put my name on the birth certificate.” (p. 52)], attempting to deny the new reality. . . . Only their girlfriends and sometimes their kin chide them to grow up, get serious, and begin taking care of their responsibilities. Their male peers, on the other hand, may well be encouraging them to celebrate their freedom while they can. . . . The advent of pregnancy quickly divides the committed from the fickle . . .” (53-54) A: “Up to the point of pregnancy, given the norms of his peer group, the young man could simply be said to be messing around. Pregnancy suddenly introduces an element of reality into the relationship. Life-altering events have occurred, and the situation is usually perceived as serious. The girl is pregnant, and he could be held legally responsible for the child’s long-term financial support. If the couple were unclear about their intentions before, things may now crystallize. She now considers him seriously as a mate. Priorities begin to emerge in the boy’s mind. He has to decide whether to claim the child as his or to shun the woman who has been the object of his supposed affections. To own up to a pregnancy is to go against the peer-group ethic of hit and run. Other street values at risk of being flouted include the subordination of women and freedom from formal conjugal ties, and some young men are not interested in ‘taking care of somebody else’ when it means having less for themselves.” (156) 7. Promiscuity and denial. E/K: “Despite the dreams of shared children that young couples so often indulge in before conception, men are as likely to respond with shock and trepidation—or even outrage and denial—as with pleasure. Like Mahkiya’s boyfriend Mike, some immediately attempt to deny the child is theirs and accuse their mystified girlfriends of being ‘cheaters’ or ‘whores.’ Others try to force the expectant mother to have an abortion, threatening to break up with her and have nothing to do with the child unless she complies. Still others simply abandon their pregnant girlfriends when they hear the news. . . . Though young women usually claim their boyfriends’ accusations are completely groundless, youth in these neighborhoods do move quickly from one relationship to another, and the rapid onset of sex means that there is sometimes legitimate reason for doubt.” (54-55) “Infidelity is so common among couples in these neighborhoods that over time, some come to question any man’s ability to remain sexually faithful . . .” (93) A: “[T]he fact that there is a fair amount of promiscuity among the young men and women creates doubts about paternity and socially complicates many relationships. In self-defense the young men often choose to deny fatherhood; few are willing to own up to a pregnancy they can reasonably question. Among their street-oriented peers, the young men gain ready support for this position; a man who is “tagged” with fatherhood has been caught in the ‘trick bag.’ The boy’s first desire, though he may know better, is to attribute the pregnancy to someone else.” (157) “Another important attitude of the male peer group is that most girls are whores: ‘If she was fucking you, then she was fucking everybody else.’” ( Annals piece, 66) 8. Motherhood as a response to blocked opportunity that imparts alternative meaning to life. E/K: “[W]e believe that the stronger preference for children among the poor can be seen in the propensity of the women we interviewed to put children, rather than marriage, education, or career, at the center of their meaning-making activity. Presumably, people of all social classes share a deep psychological need to make meaning. Over the last half- century, new opportunities to gain esteem and validation have opened for American women. But these new alternatives—the rewarding careers and professional identities—aren’t equally available. While middle-class women are now reaching new heights of self-actualization, poor women are relegated to unstable, poorly paid, often mind-stultifying jobs with little room for advancement. Thus, for the poor, childbearing often rises to the top of the list of potential meaning-making activities from mere lack of competition.” (206) “Through the tales of mothers like Millie we paint a portrait of the lives of these young women before pregnancy, a portrait that details the extreme loneliness, the struggles with parents and peers, the wild behavior, the depression and despair, the school failure, the drugs, and the general sense that life has spun completely out of control. Into this void comes a pregnancy and then a baby, bringing the purpose, the validation, the companionship, and the order that young women feel have been so sorely lacking. In some profound sense, these young women believe, a baby has the power to solve everything.” (10) “In choosing to bring a pregnancy to term, a young woman can capitalize on an important and rare opportunity to demonstrate her capabilities to her kin and community. Her willingness and ability to react to an unplanned pregnancy by rising to the challenge of the most serious and consequential of all adult roles is clear evidence that she is no longer a ‘trifling’ teenager.” (45) “Becoming a mother has transformed Jen’s point of view on just about everything. For example, she says, ‘I thought hanging on the corner, drinking, getting high—I thought that was a good life, and I thought I could live that way for eternity, like sitting out with my friends. But it’s not as fun once you have your own kid . . . . I think it changes [you].’” (195-96) A: Teenage pregnancy “is a mean adaptation to blocked opportunities and profound lack, a grotesque form of coping by young people constantly undermined by a social system that historically has limited their social options and, until recently, rejected their claims to full citizenship. . . . [T]he ‘fast’ adolescent street orientation presents early sexual experience and promiscuity as a virtue. But when the girls submit, they often end up pregnant and abandoned. However, for many such girls who have few other perceivable options, motherhood, accidental or otherwise, becomes a rite of passage to adulthood. . . . Becoming a mother can be a strong play for authority, maturity, and respect . . .” (147-48) “The young mothers who form such baby clubs develop an ideology counter to that of more conventional society, one that not only approves of but enhances their position. In effect, they work to create value and status by inverting that of the girls who do not become pregnant. The teenage mother derives status from her baby; hence her preoccupation with the impression that the baby makes and her willingness to spend inordinately large sums toward that end.” (165) “[A] girl tends to achieve a new, if provisional, status in her mother’s eyes once she becomes an unwed mother. At the same time, through the trials and tribulations of motherhood, such girls often gain a new appreciation of their mother, as well as of themselves. Moreover, the community is prepared to make a conceptual distinction between a biological and a ‘real’ mother. A common neighborhood saying goes that any woman can have a baby, but it takes caring, love, and ‘mother wit’ to be a real mother. . . . Accordingly, a profound female bonding takes place as the mother begins to pass her wisdom and experience down to the daughter. At social gatherings neighbors, relatives, and friends often augment this knowledge with their own fond remembrances and tales of maternity, attempting effectively to socialize the new mother into the preferred role of real mother.” (209-10) 9. The role of the boy’s mother. E/K: “[N]ews of the pregnancy soon reached Mike’s mother, who initiated a campaign of her own to convince Mike it was immoral to ‘force someone to get rid of their baby.’ This tactic apparently worked.” (51) A: “On learning of the pregnancy, the mother might react with anything from disbelief that her son could be responsible to certainty, even before seeing the child, that he is indeed the father. . . . She may even go so far as to engage in playful collusion against her son, a man, to get him to do right by the girl.” (169) E/K: “But other would-be ‘mothers-in-law’ join their son’s campaign to pressure the young woman to have an abortion, or wholeheartedly back their son’s efforts to deny paternity, sometimes even planting the initial doubt of her fidelity in his mind. Sons and their mothers are very much afraid of becoming saddled with the responsibility of children who are not their biological offspring.” (68) A: “The mother may feel constrained, at least initially, because she is unsure her son actually fathered the child. She may be careful about showing her doubt, however, thinking that when the baby arrives she will be able to tell in a minute if her son is the father. Thus, during the pregnancy, she nervously waits, wondering whether her son will be blamed for a pregnancy not of his doing or whether she will really be a grandmother.” (170) 10. The role of the girl’s mother and grandmother. E/K: “The African American grandmother has always played a powerful social and symbolic role in the lives of her grandchildren. But in the impoverished white and Latino neighborhoods we studied, where help from a child’s own father is often in short supply, the mother’s own mother is often an integral part of the parenting team as well. Poor single mothers across the racial and ethnic spectrum rely on their own mothers and grandmothers for much more than free babysitting or child-rearing advice.” (66) A: “From slavery onward, in the most trying of circumstances, the mother – and by extension, the black grandmother – has been an extremely important source of support for the black family.” (206) “Because the role of grandmother has such communal support—even public acknowledgement and expectation—unmarried teenage mothers of fifteen and sixteen easily turn to their own mothers for help, which is generally forthcoming. In this social context depending on the age of maturity of the new mother, the experienced grandmother may take over the care of the newborn . . .” (209) 11. The change in the girl’s status as her pregnancy advances. E/K: Mike’s occasional bouts of ‘wild’ behavior, which became more frequent during the pregnancy, also caused tensions in his relationship with Mahkiya. Prior to pregnancy, she says she might have joined Mike in some of the fun. But the practical realities of pregnancy meant that her behaviors were suddenly constrained in a way that Mike’s were not. Like so many others, Mahkiya spent the last trimester of her pregnancy on the couch at home, bored and lonely, while Mike was out partying, clubbing, and ‘ripping and running the streets.’” (52) A: The young pregnant woman “looks forward to the day when she is ‘straight’ again—when she has given birth to the baby and has regained her figure. Her comments to girls who are not pregnant tend to center wistfully on better days. If her boyfriend stops seeing her regularly, she may attribute this to the family’s negative remarks about him, but also to her pregnancy, saying time and time again, ‘When I get straight, he’ll be sorry; he’ll be jealous then.’ She knows that her pregnant state is devalued by her family