THE REALITIES OF DIVORCE FOR SINGLE MOTHERS
Research indicates that four of 10 American children will witness the divorce of their parents. Care of these children usually falls to the mothers, who compose 60 percent of the heads of households in single-parent families. "For Richer, For Poorer: Mothers Confront Divorce" (Routledge), a new book by Demie Kurz, co-director of Penn's Women's Studies Program, examines the trials that divorced mothers face.
For many women in Dr. Kurz's study, divorce is simply a necessity. "Divorce occurs because of the hardships that contemporary marriages cause for women, due to domestic violence, drug use, and alcohol abuse, as well as for reasons of personal dissatisfaction," she maintains.
Most women in her sample were glad to be out of a problematic marriage, but many encountered serious economic hardship. Lower wages and sexual harassment in the workplace make it difficult for many women to earn enough to support themselves and their children. Divorced fathers generally do not own up to their responsibilities: Fewer than half of all divorced mothers receive child support. Dr. Kurz observes that "...high rates of maternal custody and low rates of child support mean that women bear a disproportionate share of the burden of childrearing without access to a commensurate share of the family's resources."
Political rhetoric citing divorce as a crisis of the nuclear family misses the point, Dr. Kurz finds. She suggests that policy-makers abandon speeches criticizing the deterioration of the family unit and concentrate instead on developing pragmatic solutions to the causes of divorce.
"If we really wish to improve the quality of marriage and lower the divorce rate, we must do far more than make pronouncements about family values," she notes. "We must work for more egalitarian relations in the family--or more sharing of household work, for ending male violence, and for changing the norms that dictate that men should control their female partners."
MED SCHOOL GUIDE FOR MINORITY STUDENTS
Almost everything minority students always wanted to know about getting into medical school is now in a book scheduled to be published next month. Fourteen med students representing different minority groups wrote and edited "Getting into Medical School: A Planning Guide for Minority Students" while attending Penn's Medical School. The book was six years in the making.
Assistant Editor William Hunter, M.D., says the book is a road map for students who "can't pick up the phone and call Aunt Susan or Uncle James and say, 'What do I need to do next?' " because minority students usually come from communities where doctors belonging to their ethnic group are few and far between.
Written by people who have been there/done that, the guide covers important issues in getting a medical degree. Among the many chapters, one addresses the question "Is Medicine for Me?" Another discusses how to beat the MCATs, and a third explains how to finance a medical school education.
The first printing will run 4,000 to 5,000 copies. Each will sell for about $9, with royalties going to Afrinatino, a nonprofit corporation established by the authors to encourage minority students to join the medical profession.
To order a copy of "Getting to Medical School: A Planning Guide for Minority Students," call Betz Publishing at 1-800-634-4365.
LIFE IN THE BIG CITY
Witold Rybczynski offers a fresh look at urban possibilities in "City Life: Urban Expectations in a New World" (Scribners). "Once we accept that our cities will not be like cities of the past, it will become possible to see what they might become," he writes.
But first, Penn's Martin and Margy Meyerson Professor of Urbanism reveals how they evolved into their present forms. He takes the lucky reader globe-trotting and time-traveling to ancient Greece, present-day Charlotte, N.C., and Chicago of 1896.
Professor Rybczynski could have taken the easy route, plodding from one city to another, chapter by chapter. Instead, he gracefully makes comparisons and packs this concise book--his fifth--with delightful details. (Why is the top of New York's Chrysler Building decorated with eagle gargoyles? They mimicked hood ornaments on the company's cars.)
One of the book's pleasures is its seamless weaving of many urban threads. The author links the development of the elevator, for instance, to the skyscraper and explains how the skyscraper didn't just change skylines. By increasing real-estate values, the skyscraper radically altered the character of cities' centers. When land was cheaper and buildings were lower, "the center of all American cities since Williamsburg had been a mixture of commercial, residential, and industrial uses," he writes. Once the price of land was based on renting 20-story office space, only 20-story buildings were constructed--driving low-rise residences, factories, rooming houses, workshops and such to the periphery.
Philadelphians will get a special bonus from this book--it is full of examples from Chestnut Hill's development to the City Beautiful movement, William Penn's grid plan and Fairmount Park.