Jane Austen, $ and Baby Mama Drama

"Single women have a dreadful propensity for being poor – which is one very strong argument in favor of Matrimony..." Nineteenth century novelist Jane Austen, a single woman all her life in a socio-legal culture that afforded women no legal or economic rights, understood the consequences of a lack of income and wealth, and wrote about it from a perspective that entertained millions while teaching readers about old English laws of primogeniture and the consequences to single women. How fitting that she's the newest woman on the British 10 pound bank note.

Read how "Baby Mama Drama Meets Jane Austen" >

While never a mother, Austen's insight and advice on money, finances, and families are salient today in a prospective analysis of broken or never-formed families, commonly described as family fragmentation, popularized as Baby Mama Drama.

Family fragmentation has significant societal effects as never-formed families are generally characterized by non-marital childbearing, and impoverished single mothers with young children. Add the drop in marriage rates in the United States, and unmarried child bearing is the essence of a never-formed family, contributing to a very noticeable gap in marriage and income inequality.

Indeed... money affects families and their restoration. "These matters are always a secret, till it is found that everybody knows them." Jane Austen, via Mr. Weston, in Emma.