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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]53. Also grew up in a poor rural area and worked retail (and one factory job) for many years to help put myself through school. Now married to an attorney and have an advanced degree with a career in tech.

No wonder I think most of the posters on DCUM are clueless! ;) Lots of really low scores so far.

[b]It's funny though -- I consider myself to be fairly liberal, but my experiences living around people who were working class/poor make me less likely to cut them any slack...I remember seeing lots of abuse of welfare and SSD. People I know (still) back home who are just too lazy to get out of bed before 10am, or who can't keep a job for longer than a year or so (and not due to substance abuse or anything, just because they get "fed up" and "say f*ck it" one day). So I truly wonder if having a thinner-walled bubble means anything, anyway.[/b][/quote]

Interesting. Do you think there is a feeling of hopelessness when you grow up in that kind of environment? So you don't feel motivated to do much because it doesn't seem like you will get ahead no matter how hard you try?[/quote]

That's an excellent question. Sorry it took me so long to respond (I didn't come back to this thread for...uh...9 pages, apparently!).

I don't discount that, to some extent, there are people in low SES who feel that way. It can be very discouraging to have people tell you you'll never amount to anything, or to have your attempts to better yourself undercut by family or friends who see it as their duty to "knock you down a peg" (for whatever reason, it's like poverty is a communicable disease and they are just hell bent on infecting you with it).

However, I don't buy that it's inevitable that people in difficult circumstances just give up. I have relatives who had the exact same circumstances as my parents, and their lives have turned out very differently -- my mother worked her way up from a factory floor and a HS diploma to being an exec with an advanced degree. It's not like she had some amazing inborn gift -- she just worked DAMN hard to get there (she went to work at 5am to put in extra time, for example). My dad committed a felony (and not a white-collar one), but he still pulled himself back together and became the primary breadwinner again, after almost 2 decades of working hard to overcome his past. My relatives, on the other hand, were given things my parents were not (they are mostly much younger) -- one uncle was gifted a HOUSE by my grandfather, but he lost it (!) due to nonpayment of the taxes (can you believe that!?). One aunt is scamming SSD. None of them finished college (though all of them tried and dropped out). None of them has held a job for longer than about 2 years. They all smoke, drink, carouse, watch endless TV, and basically do little else. Their children are the same. They play the government for whatever they can, and work [i]only[/i] if they can't get what they want through their scamming.

I really can't say that they had fewer chances or harder lives than my parents. If anything, they had more given to them. Perhaps that's the difference? My parents were expected to work hard, by the time their younger siblings came along, my grandparents were older and less able to discipline them. I know that family culture (the "culture of poverty") plays some role in the perpetuation of low SES households in America, but personally I struggle to reconcile poverty as an abstract societal ill (that, as a liberal, I believe needs to be dealt with humanely and by us all) and the self-inflicted poverty of the people I know and am related to. Believe me that any government program aimed at them would be throwing good money after bad.

Anyway, I always suspect I'm the only person on DCUM who has this shameful family past and still tries hard to be a good liberal and donate, help others, and remain compassionate. It's just damned hard sometimes.[/quote]

You're not. I'm the 61 who followed you and wrote, ditto. Although not family, I grew up in a very low-income neighborhood and so far, I'm the only one who made it out. I often wonder (survivor guilt?) how come I made it and they didn't. Certainly, it wasn't a question of brains. I was not the smartest. For some reason though, I persevered and the others didn't. I struggle to understand why. The closest I've come to an explanation, and it's a half-*ssed one at that, is that people have different psyches and some people are just more able to handle big obstacles.  [/quote]

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