Washington, Dec 3 (IANS) The vast majority of low-income mothers strongly distrust the opposite sex, says a recent study.
But it did not come in the way of their marrying, and cultivating a romantic relationship with males, which some of whom later described as ‘trusting’, despite prior assertions.

In a bid to maintain these relationships, the women often suspended, compartmentalised, misplaced or integrated their trust to accommodate partners.

The mothers’ individual experiences with uncertainty and poverty and their history of domestic violence or sexual abuse directly determined the type of trust they chose to enact.

The study, co-authored by Linda M. Burton, Andrew Cherlin, Donna-Marie Winn and others from Duke and Johns Hopkins Universities, said women tended to create interpersonal trust in their partners that differed from their general attitudes about distrusting men.

Several of these forms of trust allowed women to enter into unhealthy relationships that had serious implications for themselves and their children, emotionally, mentally, and economically.

The authors argued that reducing the use of alternative forms of trust (e.g. misplaced) would allow women to spend time forging intimate partnerships that are more likely to lead to strong, lasting, healthy marriages, said a Duke and Johns Hopkins release.

This study was published in the December issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family.