*Are gizzards some sort of innards of a turkey, and why in the world would anyone want to eat those? Ewwwww.
Gizzards are a part of a chicken's throat. Chickens eat small stones and "hold them" in the gizzard. The stones then "grind up" their food a bit. I'm a farm kid, and I honestly didn't know the gizzard was edible.
3) children with nearly nothing, but guilt causing the above parents to randomly and impulsively buy things they simply can't afford for their children (a gaming system, fancy clothes, or pet being perfect examples of this, with the added bonus that the parent doesn't have time to take care of the pet either.)
An off-shoot of this: You get a really GREAT present -- maybe from an aunt or uncle, maybe from a charity -- and immediately you're sad because you instantly realize that this present requires batteries or other replaceable parts, and you're never, ever going to get those parts. So you know that you're going to enjoy and LOVE that present for a very short period of time, and then you're going to have to look at it sitting there useless. Example: That fantastic little sewing machine I got when I was about 8-10; it required "glue cartridges". Oh, how I loved that thing, but once the initial cartridge was gone, I was never able to use it again.
If you're buying for an angel tree type thing, never, ever do that to a child.
My brother and I both did the wardrobe by Kmart thing when we were kids. He grew up with the mindset that his wife and kids should "have the things he never had growing up" and, hence, is living on the ragged edge financially, despite good incomes.
Kmart?
We wished we could shop at Kmart.
Seriously, I could say something rather similar about my siblings and myself. Two of us are very frugal, but when we buy something it's going to be quality. One spends lavishly on a hobby and plans to work 'til he dies. One earns a high salary (as does his wife) and doesn't need to budget, but also doesn't see retirement as something attractive. And the remaining sibling -- much like the brother you describe -- is still throwing herself the childhood she feels she never had.
"She shakes the last seven chicken nuggets onto a battered baking sheet, adds the remnants of a bag of Tater Tots ...her own lunch will be the bits of potato left on the kids’ plates." -[for the cost of those processed tater tots, you could buy a 15 pound bag of potatoes and not have to worry about crumbs (or hydrogenated oils, sodium etc.).]
"Fresh fruits and vegetables are eaten only in the first days after the SNAP payment arrives." [suggesting a complete inability to plan even one month ahead]
Yeah, we ate that way during my teen years. Why? Because my mom had finally found a job and returned to work, and everything related to food fell to me, the oldest child. As a teen with no help or encouragement, I was doing the best I could. We ate lots of Hamburger Helper and Chef Boyardee two-pizzas-in-a-box. Of course, I learned. Some people are doing this their entire lives.
The one thing I can say about poor people is the fairly pervasive 'get rich quick' mentality.
I think a lot of poor people have more of a "no matter what I do, nothing's going to work anyway, so why bother?" mentality.
makes some people able to break out of the mold? Why are some people able to escape generational poverty, and others aren't? Is it a positive role model, a lack of mental illness, inner fortitude and grit, being the right race, hard work or just plain luck? If it is some external factor, how can we expose the poor to it? If it is an internal personality trait, is there a way to foster that in people?
In my own situation, I can identify two things that made the difference to me:
- I was in a family who was first-generation poor; thus, I had grandparents, aunts and uncles who were middle class. I was always aware that other families were doing better, and I could see HOW they reached those points. This is very different from people who grow up in generational poverty.
- I was born smart. I always excelled in school, and I always saw clearly that was the path out of this situation.
Great thread. I grew up pretty solidly lower middle class, but went through a period of poverty line living from about 5th grade to freshman year in H.S., after parents divorced and mom was left with 3 young boys. Mom had dropped out of H.S. and had no real job skills beyond waitressing she'd done. But thank god, we had strong family support. I know my grandparents kicked in money to make sure we had Christmas presents each year, adn they were always there to pick us up from school on half days or in other emergencies. My mom busted ass selling ad space for a local paper, and got her G.E.D., at which point, she was able to get a third-shift bank clerical job sorting deposits or something like that. Dad was very often behind on child support, sometimes for 6 months at a time. I remember seeing one of the checks -- $88/week for 3 kids (which even in the late 70s/early 80s was not very much). I wore what the kids at school called "pro plastics," i.e., the cheap, knock-off sneakers that were NOT Pro-Keds, which was the must-have footwear BITD, and damn, I felt the shame every friggin' day. Used to be very envious of the food friends ate in their households, and just loved to get invited over for dinner to their houses, and sleepovers, so I got to eat the "good" cereals in the morning. Got free lunch tickets for school. But mom never went on welfare. Mom re-married to a good man; tough disciplinarian, but a solid, hard-working guy. They had a child together, my sister, so there were six of us in that household. Step-dad was regularly laid off for months at a time as a Union carpenter. I have no idea how they fed a family of six on what he earned (and I got to find out exactly what they earned when I had to submit their tax returns to my law school to qualify for grants and loans, despite having been out of the house for nearly ten years between my military service and college time). I don't know why I and my siblings all ended up well-adjusted and successful, but we did. I think in my case, I didn't want to disappoint my mother after all I'd seen her go through, and how hard she worked to make a normal life for us. Crazy. So yeah, I have some sympathy for kids like those featured in the Poor Kids film.
Brother, is that you? Seriously, a few of our details vary -- five children instead of six, stepfather wasn't a carpenter -- but, wow, I can relate to so much in your post: Grandparents making sure we had Christmas presents, being ashamed of wearing the crap shoes, loving the occasional chance to eat the name-brand cereal.
Holy Cow, that second link is crazy. Their rules for "poverty" are especially obscene and ridiculous.
I can't really relate to those "rules". I suspect they're more for the urban poor, whereas I was in a whole different category: The rural poor.
Real hunger reduction programs in a land of plenty should include classes including how to buy food if you can only afford gas to go to the store once per month.
I wonder if a better system would be handing out FOOD instead of money . . . and make the "handing out" an event. Include demonstrations on how to cook dried beans, how to make cornbread, etc.