It is true that most Americans want to believe Jobs are the solution to poverty. ... and a decent paying as in living wage-full-time job clearly would be the solution in Vanessa's case.
If - there were a job that paid a living wage and if there were free child and after-school care and if there were affordable housing to rent on her salary - she would be fine.
Vanessa's past is irrelevant. It isn't our business nor is it up to us to judge without being privy to all the details of her life. Assuming the worst and ignoring that she was also a daughter who "chose" to care for her father "bedpan and all" is simply wrong.
This woman has always worked and always looked after her children as best she knew how. She didn't become pregnant at fifteen by the holy ghost - it takes two to tango and where the hell were her parents? Good Catholics that they presumably were, given that they are from Puerto Rico I'd bet they failed to educate their daughter in anything relating to birth control. If I were to speculate I'd say they probably forbade the pill.
Who knows, Vanessa may have seen the father as a way out - away from a drug addict father and a mother who was basically a single, always working mother herself.
The fact alone that she views her father as a good person for not leaving the family even though he was a drug addict who caused hardship for his family speaks volumes as to what her "normal" life has been.
If you read the article it stated that grandma is not in good health and cannot always tolerate the noise from her three grandchildren, forcing Vanessa to occasionally live in a motel or driving the car to an isolated area so the kids can sleep in the car, until she drives back to grandma's house the next morning for a shower and breakfast in time for school.
I'm appalled, mostly because of the financial implications - but since this is indeed Vanessa's reality, I will say that this is most likely a difficult family dynamic and that most likely both mother and grandmother are occasionally at the end of their rope concerning three lively teens and space and privacy issues.
From my own parenting experience, I can only say that having a good male role model in their lives is invaluable for children in their teens. I don't really see anyone but their mother standing between them and foster care or worse jail and I bet they all know it.
Grandma could and would not take them in on her own and there are no other family members who would deign to step up and raise these children. She's successfully managed to keep her oldest boy out of jail and away from trouble - that is more than can be said for some oh so privileged kids in wealthy homes.
Kudos and more power to her for that alone.
She hasn't taken the easy way out - she doesn't take drugs or drink alcohol or neglect her children - none of which can be said for her own father and both of the fathers of her own children.
Oh my - the lives of welfare queens - shucks, just imagine the free workout she is getting while lifting her patients for ten bucks an hour.
I'd love to see the CEO of Bayada or Chase Bank or Walmart live the life of a welfare queen for a solid year. We would have excellent child care services, decent pay and good solutions for the future.
No point in discussing the various welfare programs either - I find I am totally on board with these two quotes from the article:
Senator Bernie Sanders once declared, echoing a long line of Democrats who have come before and after him, “Nobody who works 40 hours a week should be living in poverty.”
Sure, but what about those who work 20 or 30 hours, like Vanessa?
Because liberals have allowed conservatives to set the terms of the poverty debate, they find themselves arguing about radical solutions that imagine either a fully employed nation (like a jobs guarantee) or a post-work society (like a universal basic income).
Neither plan has the faintest hope of being actually implemented nationwide anytime soon, which means neither is any good to Vanessa and millions like her.
When so much attention is spent on far-off, utopian solutions, we neglect the importance of the poverty fixes we already have.
I believe that the 4% currently unemployed are probably not employable for a myriad of reasons. But perhaps there is a slim possibility that some of them might be a candidate for a year of social service or twenty hours a month of public work programs like space force:) or recycling.
Bottom line - the first thing I thought about was her oldest, what can be done to give him a good start in life. How can he be helped out of this swamp, get an education, start working full time and learn about money and living a good life removed from a world of neighborhood violence and daily temptation?
What can be done to get him out of there before he succumbs to threats and gangs and drugs?
What can be done to protect her 14-year-old from becoming pregnant at fifteen and having her first child at 16 like her mother?
A seventeen-year-old who says he would volunteer to wear an ankle bracelet to be tracked and thinks of that as protection in his neighborhood - is mindblowing.
Nothing was mentioned about him working part-time or what plans he may have for the future. From what I understand the military can be and is quite choosy as to whom it will accept these days - besides athletic abilities and a brilliant mind, the military is one of the few options remaining.
May he be smart enough and resilient enough to find a way out - his mother is already condemned to live out her life in poverty.