Unmarried With Children Summary

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

unmarried and had children. There is only one story that is told in the article, though, and that’s Jen’s. Edin and Kefalas mention how they have written a book entitled Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage, which contains stories of all of the mothers they followed. There is one statistic in the introductory paragraph that really gets the reader thinking. It states that “[i]n 1950 … only 1 in 20 American children was born to an unmarried mother. Today, that rate is 1 in 3…” (487). This opens up people’s eyes to inform them that there are more women today who are having a child and making the decision not to marry the father, which is exactly what the article is about: having a child and not getting married. Their case study is all about Jen’s story, what she went through, what she is still going through, and what she will be going through in the future. Even though most of the article is in Jen’s words, there are some parts that contain the authors’ own research.
On the other hand, Horn’s article is full of statistics; while this is good because he is getting the correct information out, but there isn’t anything Horn uses to back them up. The only information that he puts into the article that is his own were for the most part logical fallacies. One of those being a generalization about how when children grow up in a household where the parents are married is when the child will do their best (482). This isn’t true for every child, there are some children who live in a married household who could do better and there are some children who don’t live in a married household and are doing better than some children who do. Even though Horns uses exact facts in his article, there just isn’t anything of his own that isn’t a fallacy that backs the information up.
When it comes to the character and liability of the authors, Edin and Kefalas are more liable than Horns is. This is because Edin and Kefalas have done their own research on the topic and written a book based off of their findings, while Horns only uses his statistics. Both sources do mention the opposing view of what they are talking about which gives them both points for their character. In Horn's article he comes off as having a cold tone throughout, as well as judgmental. He also comes off as being very bias about the two parents of a child having to stay together no matter what. Edin and Kefalas on the other hand has a tone that seems to be very sympathetic towards the women who aren’t married and have a child. By having a nicer tone and not showing a bias its Edin and Kefalas’s article that has the greater appeal to character over the two.
The last appeal is emotion which once again Edin and Kefalas do better.

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

arranged.
There are some who might say that Horn’s argument might be the stronger argument. This because of his use of statistics which gives the readers proven facts about children who don’t live with married parents. Sometimes having only statistics is enough to get the reader onto the writer’s side. Also because of Horn’s use of statistics it shows that he is a liable course because the statistics he used were also from liable courses. Horn also talks about the opposing view on page 482 giving three different reasons why not getting married could be a good thing. As for when he gets to the emotion aspect of his argument. Horn tried to get the reader to feel sadness and sympathy for the children which would make the reader agree with Horn that if two people have a child together that they should get married. These aspects put together could create a good argument to some readers.
When looking at these three appeals for both articles side by side, it is easy to see which one of the two has the better argument. Horn didn’t have anything solid to back up the statistics that he used, came off as being judgmental and bias about the topic, and even though showed some emotion there is a chance that not everyone will get the exact emotion that he was hoping for. While Edin and Kefalas used a true story to get their point across and backed it up with some of their own research on what they were talking about, they did their own research so they know what they are talking about making them a reliable source, and they were able to make the reader some kind of emotion and even though all readers might not feel the exact same emotion, all of the emotions that the reader can feel are good for their case. So by comparing these two articles it can easily be seen that Edin and Kefalas came out with the stronger argument.