If you grew up poor...
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Anonymous
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Seems like Thanksgiving week is a good time to bump this thread, one of the most moving I've read on DCUM.
Thank you to those who've shared their stories. Perhaps others will do the same. |
Anonymous
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My parents grew up dirt poor. Large families, not enough money, not enough anything. My dad didn't even have indoor plumbing until he was a preteen or young teenager. Both my parents worked hard and were able to make a decent (albeit still poor-maybe lower middle class) lifestyle for me and my sister when we were little. Much better than they had, to say the least.
Then my dad was injured at work and everything changed. He couldn't work, his company tried to deny responsibility, fought him tooth and nail resisting compensation beyond the bare minimum of medical bills. In the meantime, my mom had to work full time, overtime if she could, and go back to school. We had to stay with my grandparents a lot because we couldn't afford a sitter. Dad wasn't always able to care for us by himself and mom was never home. My grandparents were racist, alcoholic assholes. They were abusive to my mother, holding it over her head that they were helping her so much and acting like she was ungrateful. My parents refused to make us endure the free lunch program, having been there themselves as kids. I think they thought it would be harder for us because we didn't start off as free lunch kids. I'm not sure how they managed it because it was $.90/day and there were two of us. I would save my dimes after lunch and get a treat on Fridays. My dad was thrust into the role of sahd when he was able to care for us and we didn't need to go to my grandparents house after school. He obviously resented it. I think he felt like he failed us. Probably suffered from depression. And we weren't very nice to him in turn. We were kids. We didn't know. I'm getting teary writing about this. He took a job as a gas station attendant, getting paid under the table so it wouldn't interfere with his disability payments to make ends meet and to buy a few gifts for us for Christmas. He had to work on Christmas Eve overnight. I woke up before he got home and saw all the Santa gifts under the tree and cried and cried because mom wouldn't let me open them until dad got home from work. Things got better when I was in middle school. Mom graduated and had a good job, and dad's financial issues finally got settled. Now they're quite wealthy. I don't know all of their struggles because they were very good at hiding them from us. I'm thankful beyond words that my kids haven't known such hardships. My parents tried so hard to break the cycle for us, and they did, just later than they had hoped. My kids are the first generation not to have food stamps or choose between x and food. But it's not because I did anything special. I just had a better jumping of point than a lot of people do. Thanks for bumping. And thanks to everyone for sharing. |
Anonymous
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*I grew up in Northern Michigan and remember my mother not being able to refill the propane tank. We had no heat in the dead of winter. My sister and I would use a blow dryer to keep ourselves warm.
*I recall mold growing in our bathroom because of a slow leak in our toilet that we couldn't afford to have fixed. *I remember going to a food bank with my mother one weekend to pick up food, only to find that an entire Brownie troop (that I couldn't afford to join) made up of girls from my class was volunteering that day. They made fun of me for weeks. *I often had to wear dirty clothes to school because we didn't have a washing machine. A lot of times we didn't have money for the laundromat. If we did wash clothes at home, it was in the bathtub. We hung them up to drip dry in the house. The next morning, I'd put on damp clothes and go to the bus stop. My clothes would be frozen to my body. Being poor is humiliating. I do have to say that it has taught me to handle stressful situations very well. I'm able to think on my feet. It also taught me to care for the things that I have. |
Anonymous
| Hahaha I am only 22 now but can remember my grandmom doing the bread bag thing when I was young. She would also pack weird stuff in my lunch like drinks in empty peanut butter jars. My grandmom was like a stand in mom for me growing up since my mom passed away when I was 3. She was also a widow and lived with my family growing up. I have lots of memories of her doing funny stuff. |
Anonymous
I did this too. |
Anonymous
| We couldn't afford milk so we put orange juice in our cereal. It was the kind from concentrate that comes frozen in a tube and you dilute with water. We diluted our until it was orange-tinted water. I'm a lawyer now, but to this day I cannot stand to drink orange juice unless it is fresh pressed in front of me. |
Anonymous
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It took me years of expensive therapy to manage the effects of growing up very poor. I will only say that growing up poor gave me a phenomenal (others have said this about me) work ethic that has made me very successful. I could pay for the expensive therapy and help many others who are poor
Good effects |
Anonymous
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We grew up poor. What the hell is a ziplock bag? We had never heard of one. Never saw or heard of orange juice or peanut butter either, and clothes were washed by hand and with washboard.
Cold? Our home was were 60 degree (north) line runs. Homes were heated with hot water lines that ran underground. The only thing they warmed was the ground. The grass got green early in spring on the spot were the water lines were. We were poor but didn't know it because all were poor and we didn't know any better. So what did we eat? Bread, milk, eggs, potatoes,pork, oatmeal. |
Anonymous
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My stepdad thought work was beneath him, so he never kept a job for more than 3 months.
He was my hero for awhile, and I used to believe his stories about quitting his job because his coworkers were mean to him or stole his ideas, when in fact, he really didn't like to work. So anyways we were poor. My mom worked 2-3 jobs, including a nursing job, housecleaning, and babysitting. Ii also started working when I was 12. My memories are this: - the principal calling me to the office telling me my parents would be late picking me up from school because they ran out of gas or didn't pay their insurance - I remembered some sort of public program where we got free food in the form of free bread and flour. - from the time I started working, my dad would "borrow" money from me. I was never paid back a cent. - my dad yelling at me because I dared to spend $20 (of money I earned) on a diary for myself instead of giving the money to him - cars that broke down all the time - my dad scamming a dealership into fixing his car by pretending to buy a car (oh and he was proud of it by the way) - my dad taking me, my mom and my boyfriend out to dinner but only ordering one entree (though he got himself a glass of bourbon) - shopping at thrift stores - not getting christmas presents - not ever having a birthday party - being on my own for lunch at school. I was not given money and there were no groceries in the house. I used to hide in the bathroom because I didn't want my classmates see that I didn't have lunch. - on some occasions, I would scrape $1 in change to buy "salad" at school which was basically lettuce with dressing. Some of the skinny, popular girls in high school did this. They did it because they were borderline anorexic - I didn't realize this until later. I did it because it was the cheapest thing my school sold for lunch. - my dad dumpster diving |
Anonymous
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I'm 51, born in the Midwest in 1964, and I grew up in a working-class/lower-class/poor community that was predominately Catholic. The community was still largely segregated, even among whites. Most white people lived in neighborhoods that their great-great-grandparents had settled, all based on ethnicity and what Catholic church had been founded by that particular ethnic group. Black people lived apart in certain areas, and Mexicans in others. People rarely mixed in those days and I thought nothing of it as a child, because that's all I knew. For the most part, I suspect the black & Mexican kids had it even harder, because their neighborhoods were even poorer.
My mom was a widow and I was (thankfully) her only child. I have no idea how we would have managed if there had been more than 2 mouths to feed. I never went hungry, without heat or clothes, so I cannot call myself a "poor" child. I'm sure we were viewed as "poor" in the larger community, but I never knew better. I *did* know that my mom never bought anything for herself - only things for me. While she worked, my grandpa took care of me if I wasn't in school. He also helped my mom financially, or we probably wouldn't have made it. I attended Catholic school, but my mom refused to accept a discount (based on income), so she paid full price and that was probably a huge financial drain. My mom drove a really old, beat-up Volkswagen bug that made all sorts of loud noises. I remember other kids teasing me mercilessly about how run-down it was, and the noises it made, whenever she dropped me off at school. I remember how much I dreaded drop-off if we were running late, because many children would have already arrived to see & hear her car. For years, the driver's side door would not close and my mom didn't have the money to fix it. So she drove with her left hand on the steering wheel and her right hand holding the door closed. The car was a stick-shift, so she would have to reach over to shift gears with her right hand...and then her driver's-side door would fly open. How we managed to never get in an accident, or cause an accident in all those years, is beyond me. The Catholic schools in our community would accept any student whose parents were members of the church, and tuition was income-based, so there were some very poor kids who attended my particular school. One still stands out in my mind, and her story is the one I want to share - because I think about her to this day. I'll call this girl "Nativity" because she was born on Christmas Day, 1963, and her parents gave her a name that means "Nativity." I went to school with Nativity from first-grade through senior year of high school, and I liked her. Nativity had few friends, but she had 13 brothers and sisters. She was the second-youngest, and was basically raising herself and her younger brother as far as I could tell. Nativity was very bright, but she was often dirty and wearing a school uniform that was unclean (a hand-me-down from one of her older sisters, no doubt). She and her siblings were all quite thin (though her parents were NOT), and I now realize that she probably didn't have enough to eat as a child. Her hair was always greasy, even in high school, and it's likely she didn't often bathe. In high school, she had bad acne, and I bet she didn't have the money for Clearasil (or whatever we used in those days). It never occurred to me that I shouldn't be friends with Nativity because of her poverty, but - looking back - it obviously was the reason she had so few friends. Our classmates included some of the meanest, cruelest people I've ever known in my life, and our school was very class-based. Again, as a kid, I didn't think anything about this...other than I wished I could have some of the "rich" kids as my friends, too. I was probably viewed in the same general light as Nativity and the other "poor" kids, though I didn't have it anywhere near as bad as they did. Nativity lived a long way from school in a run-down old rental house and she + her siblings (basically one in every grade) walked to/from school each day. The girls had to wear uniforms with skirts - no pants for girls in those days - and I remember Nativity complaining about how cold that walk was in the Winter. I went to her house a few times and it was very small - smaller than my small house - and most of her siblings still lived there. I recall her saying that not everyone had a bed, so children took turns sleeping on the floor. The house had one bathroom, so the boys urinated outside whenever possible. Nativity's house backed to an alley. She had an almost non-existent front yard with a busy street running right in front. Her backyard was much larger, but we couldn't play there when I visited. Nativity said her mom forbade her to play in the backyard because there were rats back there, the size of cats. One had bitten her younger brother at some point. So Nativity stayed in the house most of the time, I guess. I remember how much she liked to read, so I suppose she read to pass the time - when she wasn't doing any of the 100 things required to care for herself and her little brother. Nativity's mother was mean (but having 14 kids could do that to a person). Her father was a laborer or something. I only ever saw him at church - and he definitely did not look happy. He always scared me, but I'm sure he had a very hard life himself. Of all the stories about Nativity, this one still makes me the saddest: Because her parents were so poor, Nativity and her siblings only got 2 presents per-year, birthday & Christmas. Since Nativity was born on Christmas Day, she only got one gift each year. When she was old enough to notice, she apparently asked her father why she couldn't have two presents on Christmas, one of which would be her birthday gift. He said it would be unfair to her siblings if she opened two gifts on Christmas, but everyone else only had one to open. Then she asked for a half-birthday gift - just so she could have two gifts each year, like everyone else. Nativity's father apparently told her that giving a half-birthday gift to any child would cause resentment among all the other siblings. When she protested, Nativity's father "beat" her. So she never asked for two presents again, and she confided this story to me one Christmas when we were in early grade school. I can still see her telling me the story, and hear her telling it to me...including the use of the word "beat," which made an impression on me. After all these years, that memory is still crystal-clear. Growing up in the 1970s in a Midwestern Catholic community, any girl who got pregnant out-of-wedlock was considered "bad" and "scandalous." Any white girl who got pregnant out-of-wedlock, and delivered a baby that was obviously from a black or Mexican father, brought incredible "shame" to the entire family. (Anyone else who grew up in this era, in a similar community, will know what I'm talking about, and I mean no offense to anyone by sharing these details, because they provide context.) One-by-one over the years, Nativity's older sisters became pregnant before graduating high school. Moreover, each father was black. Everyone was "shocked" by this and the family was "humiliated" over and over again. It was really a huge, giant deal every couple of years. Nativity was shunned even more by this series of events, though I always tried to keep up with her and talk to her as we advanced through grade school and high school, even if we weren't in the same classes. In hindsight, I can't help but think that each of Nativity's sisters had a point to make to the family, and to the world. Nativity once alluded to this, as well. But she was smart enough to know that while teen pregnancy could bring "shame" to her horrible parents for a time, *she* would pay a price much higher than they ever would. I had always hoped Nativity would follow her dreams and break the cycle of poverty. She was an honors student in high school and I knew she wanted to attend college. Unfortunately, she became pregnant by our senior year and left at semester. I was quite young for the grade, totally naive, and completely clueless. I had no idea she had been pregnant until someone mentioned it when Nativity didn't return to school for second-semester of our senior year. As an adult, I wish with all my heart that I'd found a way to contact Nativity. At the time, it didn't even occur to me. I just felt awful for her, because she *almost* made it out. But she didn't. Years later, I heard that Nativity and the father of her baby had married, owned a small business, and had no other children between them. I really hope this is true. I hope Nativity found happiness, or at least contentment, and that she made it out of poverty in the end. I'm sure her childhood scars will never heal, but I hope she has found some peace. I'm a lapsed Catholic now. But whenever I read about the Church's stance on artificial contraception, my blood boils. Nativity's story is just one of many I witnessed, all largely due to the fact that people were trying to raise 8, 10, 12, 14, etc. children in one household. Those were really the last days of a large Catholic family being a sign of religious devotion, and a point of pride, but I witnessed them in all their glory. My mom & I made it through because she could care for one child (with some hard work, sacrifice, and family help). My peers with just a 1-2 siblings (mostly families who had adopted because of infertility) did far better than anyone else in school. Families with multiple kids were much more likely to live in poverty & unable to scale various obstacles along the way. Sorry if my post is too long. I thought Nativity's story was worth sharing. I live a nice life in my mid-50s, with children of my own, and I'm grateful to have made it to the other side. |
Anonymous
| Grew up on a farm in the midwest. Our first home didn't have modern plumbing, no sewer system, we had an outhouse. During the winter we had 5 gallon pail in the basement so you wouldn't have to go outside at night with your pj's on. We did have a cistern that caught and stored rain water and a well but no hot water. Mom used a wringer washer to do laundry and always hung the clothes to dry. In the winter she would hang them all over in the basement. I fondly remember running around in them. Since we had no hot running water we would only get a bath once a week. We would use a round tin tub as our bathtub. Mom would warm water up on the stove, then girls got to go first when the water was "fresh". When the girls were finished Mom would add some more hot water to the tub and the boys took their bath. We always had plenty to eat living on a farm. Strong family bonds since travel was infrequent and most of your playing was with your brothers and sisters. I think it was a great way to be raised. All 5 kids went onto college or technical school, one into the military. Today one owns their own business, one works in manufacturing, one is a school teacher, one is a master electrician, and one is a software developer. |
Anonymous
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My dream as a kid was to live in a house. I would daydream of being kidnapped. I was not only poor but grew up in a very dysfunctional and abusive house.
I remember: Lunch tickets for free lunch not being able to afford an instrument when all my friends picked their 5th grade instrument with excitement Not being able to take dance or gymnastics classes like my friends Not having a bike or knowing how to ride one No vacations, not knowing how to swim Roaches and mice (I still shake my shoes before putting them on) Beans and rice Taking food stamps to the grocery store with my cousins Christmas gifts from the local church Lying about what I got for Christmas Food drop offs from the local food pantry - I remember bugs in some of the food No AC and such hot summers with a box fan Having to share a twin bed until middle school No birthday parties, not being able to have anyone over Moving a lot and changing schools - 4 elementary, 1 middle school, 4 high schools Nobody to ever help with homework because they couldn't understand - in Elementary school I ran away from home my sophomore year of h.s. Through all I maintained gifted classes and high grades because I knew nothing else could save me but an education. I was the first to finish h.s. And go to college. Now I make 150k and have the home I never dreamed possible. I treat myself and my kids well but give as much to others as I can. DH is such a great husband and father but less charitable and thinks I'm crazy to buy lunch for random strangers all the time. He had a very different experience growing up. My kids will know my story when they are old enough to understand. |
Anonymous
| Pap here. No shower, just an old disgusting tub. Didn't take my first shower until I left home. |
Anonymous
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My greatest achievement in life was having my child graduate from Princeton. To me the American Dream is still alive. My dh and I lived frugally to pay the tuition.
We grew up so broke we only had one dress each year. No free lunches because our Catholic School didn't have them. Grandfather paid for us 8 kids to go to Catholic School. Left town as soon as I could. I blocked out my childhood. Had only 1 kid with husband so I would never have to live on a budget (God willing). |
Anonymous
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One pair of jeans for the school year.
One pair of shoes. Roaches. No school field trips or events. No trips of any kind. We didn't have a car. I worked after school from the age of 10 (walking dogs and pet-sitting, until old enough to babysit and work in a store at age 14). Most of my earned money helped pay for groceries and the electric bill. We were evicted and had to move a few times. I was hungry. Almost all the time. My mom also grew up poor but for some reason seemed to think we were of "higher caliber" than the other families in our working class communities. She made it known that she thought we were better than everyone and this was almost more embarrassing and isolating than being poor. She managed to buy herself new clothes and high end makeup and always looked put together while my sisters and I were made fun of for wearing the same thing almost every day. I hated my mother for this. To this day she sometimes brings up those years and jokes about our "adventures" and good times. If I don't go along with her happy memories bs she gets really upset. I don't have happy memories of my childhood. I was neglected, hungry and felt generally unsafe most of the time. My kids will never, ever know of this. |