Unmarried With Children Summary

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In Wade F. Horn’s article “Promoting Marriage as a Means of Promoting Fatherhood,” Horn discusses how having a child and being married is better for children because the father is more involved in the child’s life. Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas’s “Unmarried with Children,” on the other hand, takes the reader through Jen’s story about getting pregnant at a young age and deciding not to marry the father of her son. While both sources make appeals to emotion, reason, and character, Edin and Kefalas’s article makes more successful appeals and thus is the stronger argument. One aspect of Edin and Kefalas’s argument that is successful is their appeal to reason. This is because the article is a case study during which they followed about 161 women who are …show more content…

This is because they humanize Jen which allows to reader to really connect with her and feel the emotions that Jen is expressing throughout the article. They also express the negative feelings as well as disapproval of Rick and the things that he has done. Both of these together help the reader agree with Edin and Kefalas’s point of view as well as make a connection to Jen’s story and possibly let the reader put themselves in Jen’s shoes. In Horn's article, on the other hand, the tone makes Horn sound judgmental. Which doesn’t get the reader to feel anything that would make them agree to his point of view of being married when you have a child. Horn does manage to make the reader feel some sadness and sympathy for the children who don’t have married parents by saying out of a month a child with unmarried parents only about 1 in 5 children spend the night at their father’s place (482). Even though this could work for Horn it could also work against him because of the readers who have been in this type of situation and it wasn’t for the lack of trying that the child could only spend one night, that’s just the only way it was able to be

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