I dunno. I don’t like the story. She’s got a masters, fercrissakes. She should be doing more job hunting. I’m thinking there are a lot of jobs that would come closer to utilizing her degree (and brining in better money) than being a secretary for the state. Granted, she probably does have a credit card and she may have already maxed it out, but she has soooo many options that the “truly homeless” don’t have. Selling the house, moving the kids out of district and near a better employment situation, renting out a room, whatever. It stinks, if you ask me.
I also have a masters degree–in a fascinating, but low-paying field. Having a masters is not a guarantee of financial stability, especially if, like me, you’re dumb enough to get one in the humanities. And as a secretary for the state, her pay may be lower, but I’m guessing the job is more stable and the benefits are better than a similar job in the private sector. She is luckier than the truly destitute, no doubt about it. But finding a job (particularly one with decent health insurance–a must since she has kids), selling a house, etc., all take time–which as a single working mother is a commodity in short supply. I don’t get the feeling that she saw the soup kitchen as a long-term solution.
From the original article:
She went once, went she felt desperate enough to do so. When out of the crisis, she agonized about splurging $3 on special cheese.
I don’t quite understand why people are jumping on her, and why she should change her and her children’s entire life because of an admittedly temporary crisis.
Long ago we had a long debate about food stamps and what was purchased. Some people thought that those folks who qualified for food stamps (or whatever it’s called now that the “stamp” part is gone) and used the foodstamps for lots of processed foods, or expensive items like steak were stealing from the taxpayer. In fact, we had one poster who said his family used food stamps, and would buy lobster and other expensive things they couldn’t otherwise afford, and that basically they chose to be underemployed, so they could keep their kids out of daycare and have more family time, and if they met the measure of the state’s cut off to qualify for assistance, hell yes they were taking whatever they could get. And that people had no right to have a say in how he chose to use it.
Personally, the thing that got me when I read this article is that she said she had a “house full of food” they’d already gotten from the food bank. She wasn’t in immediate need. She deliberately chose her living and employment circumstances so her kids wouldn’t be inconvienced. She obviously thought she was too good for her secretarial job (“a job that didn’t make use of my graduate degree or my intelligence”) but didn’t try for something that would pay the bills. And as soon as she was out of this fix, she was buying brie. It seems to me that she needed to be a little more aware of life’s realities. Obviously in this article, she doesn’t break down her financial situation. But she also is writing to make herself sympathetic. And she said she only went there once. It seems to me that if she was in such dire straights, where she thought there would be “weeks of hunger”, one meal at a soup kitchen wouldn’t make that big a difference. Of course, it was after this that her friends pitched in giving her money and gift cards.
You work hard, if you have to you do without, and you make your own way. The safety net is there for people who really need it, people who don’t have other alternatives, not for people who want to coast along.
StG
Well, I think we all make choices: a field we love or a field we can live better on. When children are involved, I think we tend to put our personal preference on the back burner in favor of one that will make ends meet.
I was particularly bothered by the part about keeping her kids in the same school district. I know it’s not always a popular decision to move kids away from their friends, but sometimes we have to do these things for the better of the family.
I was in Colorado and ended up on welfare, largely due to bad choices attributable to my youth. I told myself I’d give it 3 months, and if my situation didn’t improve there, it was back to Chicago for me (where I knew there’d be plenty of work).
I’m not saying there’s never a circumstance where the soup kitchen isn’t the obvious temporary solution, but by her own admission, she had food in the house. It just seems to me she took advantage where she didn’t need to.
I also recognize that our economy is pretty crappy and people who didn’t used to have trouble are having trouble now. In my opinion, she was not to the point where she had to take them to the soup kitchen.
Turns out I was a bit mistaken. Apparently Mississippi doesn’t have a ‘home alone’ law, although leaving a child under the age of 13 ‘can lead to DHS investigation’. The Mississippi DHS site says “depends on the individual child’s maturity”. I was told the age was 12 back when my kids were young.
I absolutely agree with you there. If I could go back in time, I’d counsel myself not to get the degree I did. I’m just saying that a masters degree is not always an asset when job-hunting. I think that the reverse can be true–it makes you “over-qualified” for jobs you might otherwise be considered for. And the author can’t take back her degree any more than I can.
If she had been relying on the soup kitchen regularly, as the family that** StGermain** mentioned relied on food stamps, I would think much less of her. Going once and having it be a slap upside the head to her doesn’t seem like such a terrible thing to me.
I don’t know how it is where you are. Around here, the desire to keep the kids in a particular school district is usually more about the quality of the education it provides and the safety of the schools.
Yeah, here in the Chicago area we actually want our kids to get a good education too. Generally speaking, if you live near a place that has a lot of jobs, there’s a lot of tax money going to the schools, too. I don’t envision this woman having to move to a deprived inner-city school system in order to find work. I think it was more of not wanting to inconvenience the children.
I agree. It’s not the end of the world…it strikes me as more of a temporarily “entitled” moment.
Incidently, I don’t think it’s bad that you got a degree in something that doesn’t earn you a lot of money. In my opinion, your educational direction should be driven by knowledge and interest first; potential income second. I know that’s a rather old-fashioned notion, but there you have it.
Kalhoun - Actually, to me that’s not an old-fashioned notion, it’s a very modern one. How many people “way back when” went to trade school or college or took a job they had no interest in, just because they needed the income to support their families? Today’s young people want to be stimulated. They’re willing to (IMHO) remain kids longer, depending on their parents, while they get that Masters in Dutch Art of the 16th Century.
StG
She said the soup kitchen fed people twice per week and that although she had food in the house, it wouldn’t have lasted as long as they needed it to. So it made perfect sense to me that she would use the soup kitchen to stretch her resources.
Most of the people I went to school with in the 70s were interested in humanities. It seemed that kids started looking at computer science and high finance in the 80s because the “rule” being tossed around at that time was that you were a loser if you didn’t “make your age.” They weren’t much interested in the subject matter, but were able to bring home the fat paychecks.
Unfit parent if you ask me. $1800/month childcare so she can be a “writer?”
Pul-eese.
If she were a father feeding his kids at the food bank I bet the state would take the kids in a second.
At the time she wrote the article, she was working full-time as a secretary. She wasn’t lying around all day working on her manuscript. And again, $1800 a month in child care for 3 children is very reasonable. Working a modestly-paying job and putting your children in modestly priced day care does not make one an unfit parent.
In my musings, I really didn’t intend to judge (if that was even remotely directed at me). I do think, however, that this is value in thinking about this critically and in wondering what other circumstances existed to bring her to that point. (The credit card question, for example.) When you write an article for the general public about your trip to a soup kitchen, you open yourself up to scrutiny. That’s true, actually, no matter what your first-person account is about.
FWIW, a month of full-time child care for my two children would run $2000/month where we live, and we have the least expensive provider in the area.
Bravo.
Some people will clearly be lucky enough never to think about going to a soup kitchen. Good for them. Some people will. Good for them too.