Reflective Paper/Generational Poverty Essay

Generational Poverty creates a strong family oriented environment that is a bond that most children refuse to want to break by leaving home. Most of the children that are raised in poverty have a lack of education resulting in a high dropout rate due to frustration in learning or teen pregnancy. Children become possessions to their parents instead of someone that they should teach and prepare for them to move out on their own to achieve success for their families. The older children tend to take care of the younger children forming a sense of belonging to the family resulting in the children to be afraid of leaving home ever. Single parents tend to work longer hours resulting in the inability to educate their children resulting with lower test scores in school causing educational boundaries that could cause illiteracy with children wanting to drop out because of anger and depression with the inability to learn and keep up with the other children. There is a lack of cultural experiences to other environments due to lack of money or transportation to and from areas of culture. This can present language issues where children only know certain words and the specifics of communicating what their needs are expressed unsuccessfully due to being uneducated. (Entertainment, 2006) As the children grow into being teens their lack of education could cause a severe resistance to wanting success or achieve greater paying jobs. This could lead to illegal activities such as the making and selling of drugs to earn money to support their children or to a life of crime and theft. The men that frequent the homes are either lovers or fighter and they come and go in and out of the lives of the woman and children, mostly because they may be wanted by law enforcement. This could lead to the children having a lack of food to sustain proper nutrition based on the large families and low income that the parents bring home. (Entertainment, 2006) Planning for the future is crucial in everyone’s life; this provides more stability for families so that they feel secure for their futures. However, in generational poverty there is an inability to plan or save money for the future due to a lack of income. So planning is nearly impossible because they don’t know where they might be from day to day. Without having any bank accounts or having a mind set to handle money, they use every penny that comes into the household for survival, entertainment or relationships only; there is no security for the future so living in the present is all that populations of generational poverty can do. With an assumption of unemployment most of the members of generational poverty turn to house cleaning, doing peoples hair or nails and even babysitting for extra income to supplement some money that is needed. They have no concept for long term careers and hold a variety of jobs creates a common thought of no future security for not only th e adults but this mentality also passes onto the children who are victims of generational poverty. (Entertainment, 2006) Most of the long term jobs that generational poverty members have are dwindling as there is not a need for so many workers in the agricultural fields. Coal mines are closing down; there is despair in the towns where work was once abundant now the merchants are closing causing citizens to move away from the area. Now there are a lot of drugs, theft and generalized crime. The economy is shifting from manufacturing to a service economy and many of those in generational poverty can’t go along with that shift based of lack of educational experience to help them achieve higher pay, so in the end the manufacturing workers are relying on state assistance for food, money and medical. This becomes mentally instilled into the minds of the children that are being raised with little or no money that it is okay to be on state assistance and live that way for many years resulting in misuse of the system. In the 1960’s Oscar Lewis introduced the â€Å"Poverty Culture† as they learn from each other resulting in forming a â€Å"new normal† that includes the undesired to work and have no education, with this shift we could see a lot of generational poverty groups shifting from TANF to SSI. (Entertainment, 2006) Members of generational poverty are considered to be under classed where they can’t or won’t and are non-participating in work search help agencies. These people are in great demand for food, beds, clothes and school supplies where they are unprepared to participate in the main stream day to day due to illiteracy. With the under developed skills there are more school drop outs, more teen pregnancies and higher unemployment rates. Poverty stricken individuals are likely to abuse every governmental assistance program and get away with abusing the system as each system is not connected with one another. (Entertainment, 2006) As rare as it is some do break the cycle of poverty to poverty proving that the myths involved with not being able to escape poverty and the cultural shock of success is possible. It may take 10-15 years more to fully understand generational poverty. We know that most of those who are classed in poverty just settle for where they are because of not being educated and a lack of desire to succeed fearing that they will not be accepted back into their families if they make it out of the poverty level. With their mind set being that they are illiterate they feel that they can’t get jobs so therefore they don’t even try to better themselves. This effects educators in teaching children because of lack of social cognitive skills to successfully communicate their needs and to be about to read and write on the same level of children their own age, the value on a good education is not transferred to generational poverty children. Educators at school want to help children to excel academically, but when a value is not placed on learning it makes it difficult for teachers to have a strong desire to want to help those who don’t help themselves to succeed, resulting in poorer quality of education at home, with peers and in the environment where roles are played. Parents are not taking the time that is needed to teach their children, most of the children are considered â€Å"latch key† kids or in daycare after school until they can get off work presenting a lack of supervision for the children to take their studies seriously leading to a higher dropout rate among generational poverty children. Schools are beginning to implement more structure to help those who desire to overcome generational poverty however change cannot occur over night and the first thing that needs to change is the attitude of the child before escape from generational poverty can be made. Without motivation or the will to improve their situation then the cycle cannot be broken, therefore a good solid education is the first thing that needs to be accomplished so that the cycle can be broken and children of generational poverty can succeed in breaking the cycle. (Diller, 2011) (Entertainment, 2006) AGED FACING ACCESS TO EMPLOYMENT The challenges that the aged face when there is a lack of access to employment begin with governmental forces that are pushing the aged out at 67 to receive SSI and Medicare. Companies are laying off the higher paid older employees to open up positions for younger lower paid employees who may have higher educational experience to navigate the changing from a manufacturing work environment to the service environment in which some of the aged face as problems due to a lack of educational experience. This leaves the aged with no health care and forced to take demeaning demanding jobs that they cannot successfully work because of their age and that they do not have the energy or abilities to overcome unemployment. This situation results in the need for them to spend their savings long before they intended to use it or that they have no savings because they have helped their children and supported them through the years. (Phoenix, 2013) UNIQUE CHALLENGES WOMEN FACE Women are faced with more life changing decisions then men, such as having a child is for life rather than having the option to bail when life gets to tough. Facing society looking down upon her when she chooses a career over staying at home and raising her child is scrutinized even though the woman knows that she loves and cares for her children, the way society looks upon her may stress her out. If a young woman marries a wealthy man she can devote her time and energy to raising her children without having to work. However if a woman chooses love over money then working to provide for her family is what she has to do despite what society thinks about her providing instead of staying at home and raising her children. Facing any stage in life is difficult if the woman is not equipped with a way to handle or deal with the daily stress of an ever changing life with their husband, children, career and just life in general. (unknown) (Coleman, 2012) PERSONAL PERSPECTIVE AND THE WAY I WILL APPROACH THE SPECIAL POPULATIONS Personally I did not realize the impact that generational poverty has on the communities where they are residing in. I knew that there were those who were poor, however, the generational poverty community is much worse off than I could have ever imagined. Being a mother, I could never imagine not teaching my child right from wrong or even the basic math equations that would help her to succeed in school. Life is full of many different lifestyles and cultures but pure ignorance in the education of young children is one that should not be tolerated by anyone. Educators who try to help the children of generational poverty are doing their best to help the children want to have the desire to succeed but the parents or older children at home have made it clear that leaving would devastate their parents, so the only that young children feel that they can do is drop out of school so that they can lead the same life as their siblings before them. As for the unemployment that the aged face because companies are deciding to force retirement, this is wrong and creates societal problems of the need to take care of the elderly or for them to seek out caring individuals to manipulate to care for them because of the lack of family support. Advocates within the community should be helping the elderly to find resources that are being abused by generational poverty victims and help the elderly get of governmental assistance. The changes that women face day to day are many that I face as I approach 40 years of age. My daughter is getting taller, stronger, and older and is not a baby any more, resulting in a desire to have more children. However as women get older their ability to have children has either been surgically removed or they feel that the risks are too high for them to have children. These types of stressors can result in depression, lack of sex drive and just an overall feeling of despair. Learning about these different aspects of life has been rewarding and changed the way that I think how I will approach those who are dealing with so many different cultures. I will more sensitive to those who are older, less fortunate and just going through some changes that they are facing in day to day life. Works Cited Coleman, K. (2012, October 24). Equal Pay For Equal Work: Not Even College Helps Women. Retrieved from NPR: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/10/24/163536890/equal-pay-for-equal-work-not-even-college-helps-women Diller, J. V. (2011). Cultural Diversity. A Primer for the Human Services. In J. V. Diller, Cultural Diversity. A Primer for the Human Services. Cengage Learning. Entertainment, L. I. (Director). (2006). Born with a Wooden Spoon: Welcome to Poverty U.S.A. (Characteristics of Generational Poverty)(Breaking the Cycle of Generational Poverty) [Motion Picture]. Phoenix, U. o. (2013). Understanding the Depth of Challenges