Citation

Burton LM, Cherlin A, Winn DMC, Estacion A, Holder‐Taylor C. J. Marriage Fam. 2009; 71(5): 1107-1124.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2009, National Council on Family Relations, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/j.1741-3737.2009.00658.x

PMID

unavailable

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.