An insight into poverty.

[elfs]

I read a fascinating article the other day. It regarded a survey of mothers in Georgia who receive financial aid of some sort, and it asked a lot of the usual questions and one of them was "If your children aren't in school, how often do you play with them?" But it also asked one of the most important questions of all: "If you had the time to do so, would you play with your children more often? If not, why not?"

It may surprise you to know that a huge percentage of the respondents said "no." But what's really interesting is the reason over half of them gave: doing so would interfere with the child's childhood. Because an adult interacting with a child is an imposition on this one and only time in a child's life when a child gets to be childlike.

It has long been observed that poor women don't interact with their children as much as middle-class mothers, and that this lack of interaction leads to a much slower development of language and other learning skills. But now we learn that some of them are doing so because skills like being able to communicate with an adult, and to read and write and so on, are the provinces of adults. To impose those skills on a small child is to deny that child his childhood. For poor women adulthood sucks, and her holding it off for her children as long as possible is perceived as a mercy.

The only question remains, how do we undo this perception and help these people realize that they're not really doing their children any favors? Because this attitude ensures that adulthood will suck for their children.

Comments

[dossy.livejournal.com]

The cycle ... it's vicious. :-(

[tahomapagan.livejournal.com]

this really does in the notion that if we provide enough support for poor mothers and provide their children with good enough schools, the learning gaps will be closed. although equity in educational opportunity is a huge issue in this country, fixing that in itself is not sufficient to address inequality in educational outcomes

positive parental involvement with the education of their children is, in my view, almost the only relevant variable in predicting how children will perform in education, and by extension, in life

[tahomapagan.livejournal.com]

by the way, do you have a link to the article?

Could it be an epic misunderstanding?

[shunra.livejournal.com]

So much pop-psy tells people not to force the children into adulthood (generally meaning adult responsibilities) that the buzz could easily be misconstrued by the people whose learning is more by rumor and gossip than from primary sources.

[jezel.livejournal.com]

Hooray then for Early Head Start and other high-quality early childhood programs that (along with providing a positive early environment for a number of hours of the day) help low-income parents learn how to play and interact with their children. Support high-quality child care! Woohoo!

[lisakit.livejournal.com]

My family had the benefit of coming from a long line of avid readers and people who valued education just 'cause it's fun. However, what would have helped most would be to somehow *prove* that adulthood doesn't suck. Nobody has proven it to me yet.

Another thing that would help is to find a way to prove to poor mothers that it's possible to do better, they *deserve* better, and they are *capable* of doing better. It took many years for my sister-in-law to believe this, but we finally got her to. It's hard though when the world keeps proving the opposite.

[edichka2.livejournal.com]

That's so counter to all my thoughts for my child.... In my mind, interaction with adults can and should be a wonderful thing. It's interaction with _other children_ that I fear -- learning bratty and inappropriate behaviors at the least, and the whole _Lord of the Flies_ thing in the worst case. I don't intend to insulate him from other children, but I want to gently ease him into and carefully manage his early encounters with peers. I think we do fine at letting him be a child, and perhaps even at _helping_ him preserve the innocence of childhood by, ironically, not immersing him with other children very much.

Dunno. We're making this up as we go along, but I feel like things are going very well.

- Eddie

Hmmm...

[velvet-wood.livejournal.com]

I'm going to be _really_ cynical here, and say that probably most of the people who gave that reason gave it not because it was true, but because it sounded better that the real reason. Much better to make people think that you'd make that 'sacrifice' for the good of your children than state the hard, cold truth that you just _don't want to_ spend more time with your kids. I mean, who the hell would admit to _that_? And yet, in a society that still pushes having kids, where poor people have kids through lack of education and alternatives, and better off people have them as little status symbols, it's inevitable. Yeah, I'm cynical, but it's cynicism based on long observation -- of all the families I've ever met, all the parents and children I've interacted with, only about 1 in 5 families had children because they actually _wanted kids_. Much more common was the accidental pregnancy, or they got tired of people asking them when they were going to have kids, or they thought they just 'ought to' to carry on the family name, or they thought it would improve their marriage, or, at best, _one_ parent wanted kids, and the other just went along with it, or everyone else in their peer group was doing it, so they did, or she 'just liked being pregnant', or, in one particularly horrible case 'we needed the tax deduction'. Most people, sadly, are quite happy to stuff the kids off in daycare and forget about them. Poor people can't do that, but that doesn't mean they don't want to...hell, given the stresses of poverty, they're way _more_ likely to want to. So with all these people having children they don't really _want_, of course they don't want to spend time with them. And even people who think they want children...how many of them actually know what that _means_ these days? How many people who have kids are really _prepared_ to have their lives change? Does that 16 year old looking at the newborn with dewy eyes actually _comprehend_ that having one of those cute little things means giving stuff up? In our use it once and throw it away culture, how many of them understand the committment that _should_ be involved in having a child? No, they don't want to spend time playing with their kids...they want to go play _themselves_, with other 'adults'. They want to have fun, not worry, let someone else deal with it. But they're just smart enough to realize how freakin' _bad_ that sounds, and to have at least a touch of shame, so instead they find a reason...and maybe even convince themselves that they believe it...that it would be _bad_ for the kids if Mommy and Daddy had to 'waste' their precious time with them, then they don't have to feel guilty anymore.

The poor are EXHAUSTED

[laplor.livejournal.com]

I was raised by poor parents, and poverty extended into adulthood for me. If I wanted to spend time with a parent, I had to help them with the work they were doing simply because there was no other time in their days.

I don't remember more than a dozen times that my brother and I played a board game with an adult. My father never played anything with us - he would come home from work, eat, sleep, and get up and do it again. My mother was a stay at home parent, but filled her days with growing, gathering, and preserving food; making and repairing clothes; housework; and a half hour per day of watching one soap opera.

On the bright side, Mom did talk to us as she worked, and my parents did provide us with good, open-ended toys, and lots of books. When we were very little, Mom would stop to read to us, but by the age of 5 I took over reading to my brother.

Today, what I see of poverty is even worse. Now, unless they live only on income assistance, all available parents are working full time - possibly at more than one job. Many need to spend a lot of time traveling to their work extending their days even more.

They simply don't have the kind of time and energy that it takes to actively play with and educate a child and they know it! I know that their children are lacking stimulation, but I think that the parents need to have levels of stress reduced before they'll have anything else to give.

Besides, being a poor adult really does suck.

(Posting to my journal too)

Re: The poor are EXHAUSTED

[velvet-wood.livejournal.com]

Thing is... my parents were as poor as you get. My whole family, was, really, and sometimes still is, primarily because they're all too bloody stubborn to _ever_ work for someone else, so they all run their own businesses. But growing up, there were times when we lived in our own house, times when we traded cleaning years of filth for free rent, and one winter when the guy we were renting from needed the house for his daughter, a tent pitched on my grandparents land. I grew up with a fundamental understanding of being counting-pennie-for-gas-broke. Beans and rice, broke. But my parents always had time for me. I don't know how, but they did. Daddy took me to work with him, yeah, but I was his spoiled little girl...no way he'd have _let_ me help him, cause it was usually too dangerous. When he was logging, I'd bring a book and sit under a tree...occasionally, a little crepe myrtle tree or dogwood branch would get tangled up in the pine trees he was cutting, so he'd take the time to untangle it and bring it to me...imagine a 9 year old girly-girl presented with half a tree full of flowers! We'd laugh, and listen to Paul Harvey on the radio while we had lunch, and talk about books. When he built and repaired boats, he'd set up a corner of his shop with paints and models and tiny wood working tools for me. My mother worked, too, but usually at home, and always, for as long as I can remember, every morning we'd have coffee at my grandmother's house with aunts and uncles, and every evening, the same thing. Then home, and we might watch TV, or Daddy'd play chess with me, or we'd play cards every once in a while...he was tired as hell, but he still did it. Then, when we had _any_ money, it was off to the used bookstore, where we each got to pick a book. Sunday nights, we'd stay up late together, watching Dr. Who and British comedies, even though we _both_ had to get up early the next day...didn't matter, it was our time and it was _important_. Sleep came second. Not really sure where I'm getting, but basically, I think that like my parents, and like yours, if they _want_ to spend time with their kids, they'll make a way to do it. If they don't make a way, then they don't want to, for the vast majority.

[omahas.livejournal.com]

I think a number of you may have missed the point. The article asked the parents:

If you had the time to do so (play with your children), would you play with your children more often? If not, why not?

Not *do you* have time, but *if you had time* would you.

And the answers were all the same. We're not talking a giant conspiracy theory here where all poor people got together and said, "We can't let people know that we just don't want to play with our kids cause we didn't want them, so we'll create this particular lie, out of all of the *other* lies we could come up with."

Alternative POV:

[(Anonymous)]

If Judith Harris is right, it doesn't much matter.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0684844095/ref=nosim/102-0809713-9312118?n=283155

I'd like her to be wrong, but I'm not sure that she is.