I think I’ve mentioned in other blog posts that I grew up in a small town. The population was around 3,000 and there were no other bigger towns close by. We actually had to cross state lines and drive 30 miles to watch a movie at the theater, shop at a chain grocery store, or, for several years, swim at a swimming pool. Even though we wanted to be like the “cool kids” in the big cities, I honestly feel it was the best place I could have grown up. I think one of the biggest divides in our country is the rural/urban divide. There are cultures and ways of living that belong to each community that are pretty distinct. That’s not actually what I’m planning on writing about right now, but I did want to bring it up because I want to write about what I’ve learned about people living in urban poverty, but I think I need to start by pointing out the high poverty rates associated with small towns. In my hometown, the current poverty rate or those living below the poverty line is 27.5%. That means more than 1 in 4 people in my hometown lives below the poverty line! In my state the poverty rate is 10%. I was surprised, myself, by these numbers as I just looked them up. All I knew was that the people I considered the “rich people” growing up, would be considered very middle class in the bigger cities.
When I left my small hometown for college, my world, as usually happens, suddenly got big. Even though, as I pointed out, I was surely surrounded by people in poverty growing up, I was very struck by the new kind of poverty I saw in my new big city, specifically the homeless persons I saw. Winters in this city are rough. I literally didn’t understand how people could be homeless and survive. I got into the elementary schools for my training hours and learned that these schools had significant percentages of homeless children. Children. I couldn’t wrap my head around it. I took a class about cultural diversity. Although most of the class was about racial and ethnic diversity, our professor spent some time on the cultural differences of persons living in generational poverty. I thought it was fascinating. We read a book called A Framework for Understanding Poverty, by Ruby K. Payne. In it, she discusses the hidden rules of each class. There was even a quiz that demonstrated how poorly we would survive if we had to switch classes. https://www.studocu.com/en-us/document/northwest-arkansas-community-college/introduction-to-education/poverty-quiz/27905198 Things like knowing how to talk to my child’s teacher, knowing how to get a bank account and checking my bills online, and planning ahead for a vacation were all middle class tasks that seemed completely natural to me. Are there really people who don’t know such things? Are there really that many hidden rules? I was intrigued. My junior year I looked for a work study job and landed a job at an after school program for homeless children. I had no idea what to expect. I still couldn’t fathom how a child could be homeless. The next 2.5 years changed my life and set me on a course that has profoundly shaped many of my life’s choices.
The first thing I learned was how to respond to behaviors to which I was utterly unprepared to respond. I made a lot of mistakes. I pitied them condescendingly, cowered at their aggression or tried too late to “get tough.” We dealt with fighting, running away, inappropriate language, inappropriate actions. Luckily, I worked with some amazing people and together we would slowly see the heart of this young child who was wearing a mask for self preservation, each of them in their own way. Part of our job was transporting them “home” after the program. We drove them to the women and family shelters, the (very) low-income housing developments, the church that was hosting that week’s beds for homeless families, the apartment of their relative where they were crashing with far too many other people, the residential group foster home, the domestic violence shelter with a secret address…I got to know my city in a way I never had before. Union Gospel Mission, Salvation Army and Catholic Charities shelters were the most frequented. I was shocked to realize the “homeless” were all around me…except I didn’t know them at all. Until that job, I never knew a single person who had ever been homeless. No one in my friend or family group. Why? I remembered that quiz about the hidden rules of each class and began to understand. I realized I would never experience homelessness. Why not? Of course it’s possible I could hit hard times, lose a job etc. But I will never be homeless because my friends and family are middle class. If I were to hit hard times, I have a huge community of people who would take me in for a while and help me get back on my feet and those people would probably have a full guest room to offer me or even a basement with privacy. Families in poverty only know other families in poverty. Their friends and relatives can be incredibly generous offering floor space that they don’t actually have to each other…until the landlord finds out or until someone’s mental illness finally is the last straw or until they get in a fight because who wouldn’t in such tight quarters with unclear boundaries? I looked at these children, whom I had grown to love, especially the ones who were the hardest to love at first, and I saw their most likely path: many of the boys would spend time in jail, many of the girls would have babies without finding a secure and committed husband, and all would most likely grow up to live in poverty with profound housing insecurity and continue the cycle.
The next thing I learned working there happened as I got to know the families of these children. These parents, many single mothers, but not all, were isolated and lonely. I can remember calling just to tell a parent about an upcoming field trip and getting off the phone a half hour later realizing how desperately that parent just needed to talk to someone. They also needed to be givers, not just receivers. One time someone had donated a bunch of books to our program. It was very generous, but then it was followed up with a sort of ceremonial thank you dinner in order for the families to show their gratitude to the donor. There was nothing wrong with any of it, but I remember thinking how these families have to constantly put themselves at the mercy of other’s generosity and always humbly be appreciative or they will be viewed as ungrateful. They are grateful, but it is not good for a person to always be the receiver of gifts. They have gifts to give as well, but the world doesn’t tend to appreciate their gifts or they have given up feeling they have anything to offer. There is dignity in work. Work is important. Giving is important for one’s soul. In all economic classes there are people who have never learned how to be givers and we should pity those people. Entitlement looks differently depending on whether it’s a rich entitled person or a poor entitled person. I regularly hear people complaining about the lazy, poor people who spend their money on cigarettes and receive government benefits. I don’t want to get into the politics of either side. I just want to say I am very glad I don’t have someone judging every $15 I spend, because I spend money indulgently and foolishly regularly. The entitled poor person should be pitied, like I said. They are probably actually pretty miserable. They probably would love to work or give in a way that is recognized. The belief that people should work for a paycheck, (though not always said compassionately) is a belief rooted in the truth that it is not good for people to only be “receivers.” All people need to give to find fulfillment. More than all the economic problems and consequences of those problems, I worry about the dignity that has been taken again and again from people in poverty. I worry about how much harder it becomes for them to learn to be givers. It is good and important to support financially the myriad of services these people can receive, but even more important is to show them their dignity and teach them a way of life that looks different than what they have known; and that only happens through relationship and community. That only happens when people in middle and upper classes are willing to be in relationships with people in poverty. But sometimes, the people who give the most money to these services or vote for these services are the people farthest from being in relationships with the people who need these services. When I think back to my small town and wonder why poverty looked differently there-one reason is the community. There is only one other place besides my small town that I can think of where people who are very poor might be closely connected and have relationships with people in the middle class- our public schools.
I have to give a giant shout out to our public school system here. I hear all the critiques and opinions and culture wars about our public schools, but I have to say of all the institutions out there, it is the best for showing a child in poverty another way of life. The irony is that the amazing work these teachers do every single day has less to do with the education they give and so much more to do with the community they create. Every day there are millions of children who go to school having experienced trauma, hunger, abuse and they are given structure, a warm meal, a safe place, and the most life-changing of all: an adult who cares for them and friends who are from a different socio-economic class. We have heroes who work in the public schools and I am blessed to know some!
Another aspect of living in poverty I learned about is how everything, and I mean everything, is just plain harder for people living in poverty. Things like going to a doctor appointment, signing your child up for school, helping your child with homework, meeting up with a friend (activities that are simple and normal for us in the middle class) are things that are extremely difficult for someone who doesn’t have a working phone, has an unreliable car or no car, has to work terrible part-time shifts like graveyard or nights and weekends (when they would like to be with their kids), can’t make any plans because that terrible part-time shift changes every week, or has a 3rd grade reading level themselves. Things like needing to take time off of work due to sickness or a child’s sickness or a death in the family end up being catastrophic because even if they can still keep their job, they can’t afford to miss even a week of work. And the crux of the matter? They are going to experience sickness, deaths, broken down cars, broken phones, going hungry, guilt over your children going hungry and stress at very high rates because of the conditions of living in poverty and all of those things exacerbate all the other hard things! Yes, our city and state and nation offer a lot of services for people in poverty. However, receiving these services might as well be a full time job. There are multiple appointments to keep, where they have to take a bus sometimes an hour or more, remember to bring the correct paperwork, find childcare, find the correct place on time and explain to a stranger why they are poor and deserving of the one specific service they are asking to receive. Then do it all again in a month. Sure, there are places to go where they can receive food, diapers, certain medical care, but they have to get there…and then they have to go back because they only receive a couple day’s worth at a time. Single mothers are put in the hardest position of all. Childcare is outrageously and wickedly expensive. But what is a single parent supposed to do? She needs to work, but if she works she needs childcare, but if her job can’t even pay for childcare, then how is she supposed to work? Do you see her predicament? So, maybe she asks that one friend, who has also grown up in poverty and experienced trauma, to watch her kids, or maybe she asks the new boyfriend who, she hasn’t realized yet, is preying on her vulnerability and desperation. Or maybe she just hopes her 7 year old can watch the baby for a few hours, but now cps is involved and she might have to experience the worst moment of her life- having her child removed from her care.
My experience in foster care, though still new, has once again put me into contact with those living in poverty. First, let me say that foster care has a lot of problems, particularly the bureaucracy is maddening, but overall, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the system as a whole. The people I’ve met working in the foster care system are also heroes. The best piece of it, is that instead of putting children into an institutionalized orphanage, our country realized it is much better for a child to be in a real home with a family instead of an orphanage. It’s actually a really beautiful system…but of course nothing is ever that easy. Sadly, poverty and child abuse have a huge overlap. 69% of families who have had to deal with having their children removed from their care made less than $20,000 in 2007. The majority of cases that the Department of Children, Youth, and Families (the department that manages all the children in foster care) manages are categorized as neglect, not abuse. There are theories that help to explain why there is such an overlap. Parental stress due to poverty and many other risk factors associated with poverty, including domestic violence, substance use, parental mental illness, disability, and criminal justice involvement (Bennett et al., 2020; Fong, 2017) all seem to overlap leading to the need to remove a child. The most important thing to know about these parents, especially in the cases of neglect, is that they still love their child, even if they themselves do not know well what love is. The next thing to know is that they probably feel intense shame over having their child removed. “Mom guilt” is a term I throw around regularly referring to all the ways our culture makes us feel like we aren’t being a ‘good enough’ mom. We are sensitive to these messages because most of us want so desperately to be a good mom. These moms have heard the message that they are such a bad mom, they shouldn’t even be allowed to take care of their child. That message creates something much deeper than the “mom guilt” the rest of us feel, that message creates a piercing shame. People react to shame in different ways. The mom of our first foster baby regularly missed scheduled visits. The mom of our second foster baby almost never missed a visit. We wanted to try to get to to know her in a more personal way, so we set up a date in the park to meet with her…she stood us up twice before I realized she couldn’t bring herself to face us.
The state has an obligation to seek out safe family members and relatives when they remove a child from their parents. Remember, how I knew I would never be homeless? If for some reason the state removed my children, I also know my children would never go to strangers in foster care. I have so many family members who would step in. When we receive a call from foster care, that means NO ONE in that child’s extended family was safe or willing/able to step in. Once again, it’s the lack of stable community that is the cause of the more severe problem. Many of the parents who have their children removed were once in foster care themselves. In fact, it usually goes back multiple generations. Maybe this is why people often say the system is broken. There is definitely something broken when we can look at the cycles of poverty that continue, and the cycles of abuse and trauma that continue to the next generation, but I’m not sure we will ever create a perfect ‘system’ to fix something as complicated as human relationships, especially when we are still missing the relationship part.
Throwing money at people or systems does little good without concrete resources and relational support. Those in poverty value things differently than those of us in the middle class do. They tend to value each other, entertainment, and the present moment better. If they have, for instance, a larger sum of money than they are used to, don’t be surprised if they blow it all on one giant birthday party for their child, even if that means the next week they are out of food. They deal with guilt over their children and, sometimes, this leads them to lack in discipline. They feel guilty that their kid has had a rougher life than they should, so they spend money they don’t have on them or they let them get away with not going to school or not doing their homework or staying up too late or eating too much junk food. They let them do what they want even if it’s not necessarily good for them, because they want to make up for how they feel they have failed them in other areas. That was also probably how they were raised and we all know we learn by imitating what we know. Asking someone to leave poverty is asking them to leave their only family and community (however unstable it might be). They may have to cut multiple people out of their life due to substance abuse or mental illness. Those relatives who gave them floor space or couch space for awhile, well, they are going to expect the same in return once they get a stable place. They are told in multiple ways the extremely condescending message that:, they shouldn’t have kids because they can’t afford them. Thankfully, they tend not to listen too much to the lie that if they just sacrifice having children they could pull themselves out of poverty.
I tried my best to keep in touch with the families I met 20 years ago through the after school program. The families who have taught me more than I could ever teach them. Families who I love dearly. I have lost touch with the majority now, but there are a few kids who are all grown up with whom I am still in contact. When I got married I invited the families to my wedding. A week before my wedding, the 50 year old mom raising her two nearly grown girls and her granddaughter called me. I’ll never forget the realization I had about those hidden rules I learned about so long ago. “Hi Amy! We’re real excited about your wedding. I just have a stupid question. What are we supposed to wear? Is it like prom dresses? We’ve never been to a wedding before.”
I don’t know how to tear down the walls that keep the poor in a completely separate world than the rest of us. Politics and systems aren’t the answer. Relationships are the answer. Maybe your child’s friend from school can be welcomed over and brought into your community more. Other than that, the only way I’ve gotten to know people in poverty is through jobs or volunteer work that have introduced us and then I’ve tried to maintain the relationship when possible and safe. Maybe volunteering is a good start. The poor you see on the street are a very small percentage of the poor who are living and working unseen all around us. Let’s, at least, start to see them.