If you grew up poor...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Seems like a small thing but some of you really make me want to setup a fund when my kid gets to HS to help classmates pay for events.

Yes. But where/which one? Kids are zoned for Langley and go to a private. That hardly seems like an obvious choice. Anyone have a better suggestion for me?


PP with the swimming background: both kids heavily involved in expensive sports. This seems like a good place to put money that can help. Sounds like it helped you. Any thoughts?

[Anonymous]

My father in law (who is age 75) grew up very, very poor in rural Idaho..He says he could tell us some stories that would make us cry...He was born in a cabin without electricity or water. He and his brother shared a bed with their grandparents. They had no shoes. They sometimes foraged for food in garbage cans.

[Anonymous]

The mom of a girl I knew made her do her laundry by washboard to teach her to value her possessions and because they last longer. They weren't poor but think her mom wanted to instill a sense of gratitude and work ethic. She also had other atypical chores around the house but I don't recall what right now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We grew up in the Deep South in the 80s and 90s and became poor when my dad lost his job and from then suffered from major depression and had spotty employment. My mom did the best she could and held down 2 jobs, but there were 11 mouths to feed and we lived in a 3 bedroom, one bath house in the 'hood.
When I was young, my mother would climb into the dumpsters behind schools and daycares to retrieve tossed out books and educational toys. She'd clean them up with bleach and water and use them to help teach us reading and math.
Both my parents were college educated and stressed education, so we were excellent students. God help you if you brought home mediocre grades. My parents did not play.
We were also talented athletes and dancers, something else my parents encouraged. We took cheap courses in dance at the YMCA and free classes in school. Coaches often gave us extra lessons for free. Most of us went on to play a sport or dance in high school and college.
My mother loved and loves public radio. She'd play classical music and Broadway show tunes while making a veggie stew or baking bread. To this day, I play NPR while cooking.
We never went hungry and came up with creative recipes out of the most meager ingredients. Huge pots of veggie stew, fresh fried fish with steaming piles of rice, fresh veggies from the market baked into casseroles. She bought day old bread at a bakery thrift store and these little gingerbread cookies with pink icing that we shared in the backseat of the car.
The librarian at the library up the road thought we were awesome. We were the only kids in the neighborhood who always came and always participated in the summer reading program. She would pull out discarded books for us and send them home for us to keep.
We spent summers at the community rec pool and were all on the swim team. Hell, there were so many of us we were practically the team.
Mom often took took us to the museum, which I loved.
When I grew older, I bought all of my sisters' prom dresses. We were recently able to make a huge donation to charity of these dresses. That felt great.
Every single one of us won scholarships and went to college (the youngest is a rising junior). Most of us have gone on to get graduate or law degrees.
We love sharing stories about how we grew up at Thanksgiving dinner.
Ok, that's enough...I'm misty now. Gonna go call my mama.

this makes me teary, too. Good job, parents! They really did everything they could to give you kids a nice well rounded childhood despite being poor.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Seems like a small thing but some of you really make me want to setup a fund when my kid gets to HS to help classmates pay for events.

Yes. But where/which one? Kids are zoned for Langley and go to a private. That hardly seems like an obvious choice. Anyone have a better suggestion for me?


PP with the swimming background: both kids heavily involved in expensive sports. This seems like a good place to put money that can help. Sounds like it helped you. Any thoughts?

Winners lacrosse and score soccer are free programs in dC so kids can play sports. I think they provide tutoring also.

There are multiple free catholic elementary schools in DC that send kids to HS for free and mentor them through most of college. (Washington Jesuit and San Miguel are two whose names I can think of off the top of my head.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you grew up in poverty, do you resent your parents for it? Why or why not?

I don't have resentments, my parents tried very very hard under the circumstances and because of them I made a leap into the middle class. However, I'm baffled about the fact that they decided to have children under those circumstances - very young family, could hardly afford to. It caused so much hardships and made life so difficult for them that I wonder why?.

[Anonymous]

No it's not a contest.

But frankly, I am tired of being seemingly surrounded by people (usually women) who put themselves first 99% of the time. It is very, very hard to be poor. I know first hand.

But how do you reconcile that it was your mother that made matters so much worse by "having" to get her hair done, for example. I am not talking about the $1. hair maintenance that PP mentioned. I am talking about an entire day at the salon, with high end services, the she supposedly couldn't afford. Triple digits. That should be a lot of money to someone who complains about money all the time, yet fails to prioritize properly, each and every time.

My issue or question has to do with the earlier question (great one BTW) - it is so easy to resent one or both parents for not stepping up or not doing what they were supposed to be doing or not prioritizing. How do you reconcile the situation without dismissing it?

I find myself really having a problem with people who put themselves before their children.

I saved for years before having enough money to send myself to college, while my parents were oblivious. During one of my f/t jobs (while also taking classes f/t), a woman said to me "why do your parents have such nice things while you are working more than any 20 year old I have ever known?" That really opened my eyes that parents should be stepping up for their kids. This woman had 10 of her own, as it turned out. I recall thinking I wanted her to adopt me, and how different my life would be if I had parents who prioritized differently.

Anyway, if you don't prioritize as having your children first, they will soon see.

[Anonymous]

PP here. We were working poor, BTW. No money for food, but money for mothers hair? Really?

[Anonymous]

I am missing two back teeth thanks to a time when we didn't have insurance.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

No it's not a contest.

But frankly, I am tired of being seemingly surrounded by people (usually women) who put themselves first 99% of the time. It is very, very hard to be poor. I know first hand.

It's not everywhere like this. I'm surrounded by the opposite - people who put their children first and do everything imaginable for them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Poster from the huge family in the Deep South again.
Was thinking about the points raised about the varying degrees of poverty and education as a way out.
One of my college roommates was the product of an affair (her mom had sex with a man in the neighborhood who promised to help take care of her other kids). Her mom was an illiterate, single mom who grew up sharecropping as a child.
She worked as a maid to make ends meet. The family had no power or running water. My friend remembers stealing water from the neighbors when they left for work. The kids would snag the garden hose and fill up the sink. They often went to bed hungry and cold. The man down the street never fulfilled his promise to help feed the kids and didn't acknowledge her as his daughter until he was on her deathbed. By then, my friend, who later taught her mother to read, put herself through undergrad, law school, and was working in the state AG's office let him know exactly where he was heading when he died.
For all of us, my friend, me, my DH (whose mother slept outside of the city's sole public school for gifted kids to make sure his name was first on the list for slots), education was critical. So was having parents who cared and fought for education and well being. We also had members of the community who took an interest and cared. That's not to say that always works or it's a magic solution. A childhood friend who also grew up poor had a brother who was smart and good hearted. He was shot to death at 16 when he tried to stop another neighbor from beating his wife and kids.
We were all the lucky ones who people looked out for and who made it out.

I was the first person in my family to graduate high school in the '90s. I went to college on full scholarship and then graduate school. I worked jobs and lived on $5 a week for food during my undergraduate days. I feel like it is getting tougher for education to be the ticket out for people. I find it heartbreaking that opportunity is getting harder and harder to grasp onto for poor kids.

You are so right. It is so hard for poor kids to get the opportunities we were blessed enough to have. And they're having to take out huge student loans which puts them further behind their more well off peers upon graduation. It's a frustrating cycle.

[Anonymous]

First page, second PP here. There are so many things from my childhood I resent my parents for. Physical, mental and sexual abuse being among them. My mother looked the other way for 14 years while I was my fathers personal play toy and when he tried to kill me it became, to my mother, my fault. These are the things I blame her for, not for being poor.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you grew up in poverty, do you resent your parents for it? Why or why not?

I try hard not to let these feelings bubble to the surface, but yes, I do resent them. There was always money for cigarettes and beer. They were callous about taking small amounts of money from me (like birthday gifts) and never returning it, even though they knew they were just going to fritter it away and it could have brought me some happiness. They were absolutely incapable of budgeting so that things could have been just a little bit more bearable. I begged them to let me handle things like grocery shopping and they refused.

What I really resent today, though, is that they let me believe our suffering was all because of a lack of money. I worked like crazy to get out of there, to make a life for myself, and to earn a lot. And I've done that. But now as I grow older and parent my own children, I realize we were missing so much more. The damage inflicted through causing us to grow up in poverty pales in comparison to the damage inflicted through abuse and neglect.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am missing two back teeth thanks to a time when we didn't have insurance.

There was a boy from this area who died because he couldn't afford dental care and his tooth infection spread to his brain. Awful, just truly awful.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Seems like a small thing but some of you really make me want to setup a fund when my kid gets to HS to help classmates pay for events.

It may be a small thing, but it would mean the world to the kids who might benefit from it. It's not even so much the trips themselves I had to miss that bothered me, but not being included because we didn't have any money sucked. Missing out on the experience to make/strengthen friendships, and just being part of the normal crowd.