(Dis)trusting the love of your life.

• Position: YOUR LIFE

Contrary to popular scholarship that attributes low rates of marriage among low-income mothers to their general distrust of men, a study led by a sociologist from Duke University, Durham, N.C., finds that gender distrust may not be as influential in shaping these mothers' unions.

Although 90% of low-income mothers surveyed expressed a general distrust of men, researchers found these feelings did not prevent the women from entering into a romantic, live-in, or marriage situation. Instead, mothers established forms of interpersonal trust in their partners that allowed them to enter into often unhealthy relationships that had implications for themselves and their children.

"To fully understand the intimate union behaviors of low-income mothers, researchers must move beyond primarily using general attitudes like gender distrust to explain trends in marriage and cohabitation," says lead author Linda Burton, professor of sociology.

In order to facilitate romantic unions, mothers either suspended, compartmentalized, misplaced, or integrated interpersonal trust in their partners. The mothers' individual experiences with uncertainty and poverty, and their histories as domestic violence or sexual abuse victims directly determined the type of interpersonal...