The Unconscionable Cruelty of Polly T;
There was poverty there all right, but it wasn’t financial. The children were poor – they would all have counted in child poverty statistics, but some were properly fed and some weren’t. Some were loved, and some weren’t. Some of them would be getting jobs in a few years’ time. The little mother would become a real mother. But with others, the passage of puberty would see a setting of the eyes into a flinty middle-distance stare, and they’d start burgling, mugging, dealing or go on the game.
What makes the difference? One thing is for sure: it isn’t money.
Great article. I would love to see what the likes of Wells, Ivison, McQuaig, and virtually everyone at the CBC would counter with.
Great article – and how about our socialist Liberal leaders – without any policies other than power – and attempting to achieve it by depriving others of their own individual power.
That is, by setting up a dependent population, by setting up a centralist social engineering mode of governance, where your basic life needs are achievable only by the largesse and goodwill of the government – whether it’s education, health care, housing, transportation – and jobs.
Send the little ones to Sunday School, where they can learn that “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so”. Take them to publicly-funded libraries and parks. None of these options cost a dime.
Great piece, thanks for the link. I will be visiting that blog frequently.
What a damn fine post!! And well said.
I remember growing up in student housing at UofT for the married students. Every single one of us lived with less money than welfare bums. Yet every family in the place was trying to do their best to improve their lives. There were literally people from all over the world living there. Each of which were trying to pull themselves out of the drudgery of whatever they came from.
We used to have a room in the building where a few times a year you traded in the kid’s clothes for bigger clothes because no one could afford any new ones. You put in a small shirt and took a big shirt. Someone with a younger kid took your smaller one, etc. No one abused it by taking more than they gave.
I didn’t know what a steak tasted like until I was well into my teens (a good steak is wasted on kids anyway…) We always had enough to eat because my parents always made sure that the basics were taken care of. They never went out except to stuff that was free. The one thing we had a lot of was cockroaches. They were everywhere.
The difference between where I grew up (my parents did an MD and a PhD between them so I was there a long time,) and the usual poverty is that we had parents who were working hard for a better life. Even though both my parents came from poverty, they chose to build something for themselves instead of whining. They both supported us by working while going to school full-time in an era before loans, grants and handouts. They are entirely self-made.
They’ve been rewarded for their efforts with the highest taxes in the world. Taxes that pay for those without the sense of pride and responsibility to do something for themselves.
The difference between the rich and the poor is merit. It’s time we stopped penalizing people for it.
Everyone made do with what we had (we didn’t have cable or a radio but did have the smallest and oldest tv I’ve seen before or since. We got 2 or 3 channels unless the weather was bad.)
Exactly the same thing in big city ghettos and Native reserves….no difference.
Been there and stepped over the shit.
This echoes a tremendous books called “What Money Can’t Buy” by Susan Meyers, PhD. It looks at the association of household income and the child’s outcome and compares it with the various family traits with the child’s outcome. It makes a greater scholarly argument that throwing more money at poverty is a waste of resources.
And the author was a single mother.
How very true. I still find it ironic, in a sad way, that Lieberals and Dippers figure that handing out money is the only way. I mean that adage of give a man a fish, teach him how to fish, has been around for ages but they still don’t get it and there will always be folks out there that are more than willing to play these good hearts (with your money) for every cent they can. Sad, really.
A while ago my adult daughter emailed me from university to ask me what I thought was the reason that she never saw herself as beig “poor” when she was growing up. This despite the fact that during her formative years, her parents and her siblings – a family of 5- lived on a $416.00 per month welfare check, had no car, couldn’t afford new clothes, and lacked many other amenities considered essential to most families. It was poverty by any definition.
I would never want to re-live those days of living on a very small fixed income, but what I did learn, was that it is very wrong to assume that poor people don’t have dignity, or aspirations, or a strong desire to provide the very best to their children. To make a person truely impoverished involves stripping them of these qualities, along with a sense of personal moral responsibility and unfortunately, our social system – by labelling everyone as a victim – encourages such dehumanization.
My children went to school with classmates who were encouraged by their own mothers to become pregnant -single teenage mothers- so that they could start contributing to the amount of welfare coming into the family income. A “social worker” once offered me the chance to participate in a job retraining program for single parents. When I informed the worker that I was married, she encouraged me to consider abandoning my spouse so that I could qualify for the benefits.
Lack of money is not impoverishment; You can learn to live with limits, and do all you can to better yourself. But the cruellest and unkindest cut is to have a the system conspire to keep you down by convincing you that you are an impotent victim of large, powerful, and impersonal forces like “capitalism” and “social injustice” and “class”. My family didn’t know we were “poor” because we never defined ourselves as victims, never believed that we were “entitled” to what others had worked for, unless we were prepared to work hard ourselves. We never allowed the system or the schools to give our children the message that it was ok to make excuses based on family background, income, or what neighbourhood we lived in, or to accept anything less than the best from themselves.
People who maintain the freedom of their minds and their conscience and live with personal responsibility may be poor on the outside, but can be rich with hope and promise on the inside. Our social service systems must start fostering those attitudes.
Rudy, excellent piece.
Rudy :
Excellent post. You did your family proud in spite of the roadblocks put up to keep you caged. They used to call what you described, as slavery or indentured servitude.
Its institutionalized poverty to keep a small segment of bureaucrats in gravy, at your expense. Read Indian act for reference.
I remember my Mom had had it up to the gills with World vision’s handling of a family she was sponsoring. The Father was a carpenter. The Mother a seamstress. From letters she found out nothing was changing for the family. Except the kids got to go to school.
She sent them enough money for the Dad to by tools, & a sewing machine to the Mom. After she got fed up. They where out of poverty in a 4 months time. Till she died they wrote her every month. That World Vision did not like this, would be an understatement.
I guess the idea of giving a hand while teaching a skill has gone the way of Brittany Spears.