I am talking specifically about people who grow up in dysfunctional homes and live in bad neighborhoods, but somehow become productive members of society.
Without a role-model, how do some people rise above their condition and be able to go/complete college, hold down jobs, and marry partners who are emotionally and financially stable?
Well much of what you write is a tall order. However, it is my personal belief that most if not all families function on a certain amount of disfunction. That being said, to fit the criteria you lay out one would need to have a lot of desire, personal fortitude and a means to rise above the fray.
Staying out of bad situations takes common sense and at times a attitude of “I can do anything” which you can. Have a certain amount of resiliance to the ineptitudes of others, and not being afraid to succeed. Many people in low income neighborhoods have a fear of success, that going to college means you are somehow above other people. Or at least perceived that way.
As for becoming socialized, get out and become a part of something, unplug, get away from the people peddling drugs and those addicted to their x-box and become a part of something larger. Boys and girls clubs, scouting, organized sports, community centers are always looking for help, volunteer or paid.
Above all it will be your attitude that makes or breaks your future, not your living circumstances alone.
Finding a partner who is emotionally and financially stable is usually something that happens over time. For instance, my wife and I could not rub two dimes together when we first met, over time with the completion of grad school and other things we moved on. Both still have student loans [thats how you do it if you can’t afford it] but it has been a natural progression, we have evolved together as people as human beings. Its not something that is perfect from the get go…usually there is a learning curve for everyone.
With out a role model, you rely on your own gusto, on your own choices to do the right thing to have common sense and act on it, to not lose interest just because you friends don’t want to do something. Seek the highest you can - you may surprise yourself…above all be patient with life, and remember it’s about the journey…
People are not socialized purely and exclusively by their immediate household and environment. Granted, typically one’s immediate household and customary environment play the* largest *role in providing social and behavioral role models, but they are by no means the exclusive source for such role models. Anyone with basic literacy and/or access to media sources has the potential to identify role models that do not come from their immediate surroundings, should they have the urge to use them.
I’m not saying it’s the easiest (or most likely) choice, but it’s hardly impossible or improbable either.
What makes you think they do? Certainly some of them do, but others are irreparibly damaged, or spend decades trying to learn by observation of their friends, trial and error.
I’ve got a dear friend who’s mother is a non-functional alcoholic. Some of her stories just break my heart. She kinda sorta attended elementary school, absent more days than she was there. She enrolled in high school, but left after about a week. Her mother was just often not home for weeks on end, even when Carol was a toddler. (She once confided in me that she has a secret fondness for Corn Flakes and mustard, because that’s what she ate a lot of as a kid when Mommy was at a “new friend’s house” for a couple of weeks at a time. And I mean at the same time: Corn Flakes covered in mustard. She “invented” the dish when she was three years old and Mommy had been gone for two weeks and there was nothing else left in the house to eat.)
By the time she was 12, she was living on her own, lying about her age to rent apartments or crash at some adult’s house for a while. She went through a few foster homes whenever the state caught up with her, but by 14 she was emancipated. She never traded drugs or sex for a roof over her head, but I hear that’s not uncommon for kids in her situation. Basically, she was mostly very lucky in seeking out people who were trustworthy and, inadvertently, very good role models in their own right.
Her biggest areas of weakness now, at 36, are an inability to hold down a job (she’ll just call in sick if she doesn’t feel like working that day) and an overoptimistic attitude towards boyfriends (she just expects to find a perfect knight on shining armor with no flaws whatsoever who will never ever disagree with her - admittedly, I’ve seen the same problem come from women with intact families, but something about her makes me think she’s really looking for a perfect parent and lover all in one person.) She’s also very fearful about The Man knowing things about her - her address, her phone number, etc. I think this is perhaps a holdover from running from the truant officer. She has a mailbox at a Mailboxes Etc. and will not give her physical address out to anyone in an official capacity. She won’t use credit cards online; she’ll give a friend the money and have them use their card for the order. Not a bad idea, mind you, but she really takes it to a level that I’d consider paranoia.
On the other hand, she’s amazingly quick-witted, can charm the rattle off a rattlesnake, and has a virtual Who’s-Who in her organizer. Need a lawyer? Carol’s got the number of at least 3, all considered personal friends. Need a plumber? Carol will have that, too. Jeweler? Call Carol, she’ll know someone. Nuclear physicist? Carol will know one. She has an encyclopedic knowledge of every neighborhood, store, bar and hotel in Chicago. She has a photographic memory for streets and routes, and can calculate the best route and three alternates to anywhere in the tri-state area faster and more accurately than MapQuest.
She’s also very aware of her weaknesses, and open to change and growth. (Well, not so much with the hiding-from-The-Man thing, but I did recently convince her to apply for a massage therapist license, which required her to give up a little info to the state.) She asks a ton of questions, of everyone she considers a friend (which is a LOT of people!) before she makes any big decision and many little ones.
She and her boyfriend were having trouble recently, and I started to feel like her therapist, she was calling me literally 4 or 5 times a day to ask me what I thought and what she should do. I wasn’t the only one - she’d hang up with me and call another friend and do the same, and then another and another. She’s trying to *consciously *absorb the wisdom and perspectives of other people like most of us do unconsciously as children.
So is it possible? Yeah. But making a naturally unconscious process conscious is hard, and you make more mistakes. Next time you’re driving down a street, become conscious about it for a minute. Really THINK about every little tiny correction you make to the steering wheel, every minute adjustment to the gas, every glance into your mirrors or turn to the periphery. It’s incredibly hard, and that’s a comparatively simple skill! That’s how most of her life has been - thinking where most of us just act.
We watch *The Cosby Show *and thereby learn how to fake it.
That was not a joke.
In my cousin’s* case, television is the answer. No, really.
My “uncle” (he’s actually my dad’s cousin, not brother) was an alcoholic and bipolar. He was also brilliant, with a super-high IQ. He wasn’t violent or anything, but he was utterly self-centered and only cared about the book he was writing (kind of Jack Torrence-like in that respect, it was never finished, just reams of “research”).
My “aunt” (wife of dad’s cousin) on the other hand is actually a well-adjusted, hard-working, very cool human being. However, she was the only productive, earning adult. So working so hard, she wasn’t around a heck of a lot. My uncle was such a useless piece of work that, when my cousin was really little, my aunt had to hire a babysitter to keep an eye on her even when my uncle was home. So my cousin was essentially raised by TV and loved all the superhero cartoons.
I shit you not, my cousin’s ethics are mostly derived from Tarzan, the Lone Ranger, and Superfriends. Her sense of right and wrong, loyalty to friends, plus all the PSAs that went with Saturday morning cartoons hugely influenced her moral base. As an adult, she’s one of the most rock solid, dependable people I know, and is totally the person you want to be around in an emergency.
*Cousin is actually “second cousin” or “cousin once removed” or something. Story told with her permission.
I’ve had more than one person (including therapists) say to me (in essence), ‘‘Gosh, considering everything you went through as a kid, it’s amazing you’re not a crack whore!’’
I’m not really sure how I’m supposed to take that. My first response to your question is that I did have role models. I had my Aunt and I had teachers, and I had a pastor, and I had Nelson Mandela. And all that is probably more than a lot of people get. I had poverty and an immensely dangerous family, but there was always someone I could look up to and trust. (By the way, my peeve of the day – ‘‘everyone’s family is a little dysfunctional.’’ We must have really different definitions of dysfunctional. My family experience is so far outside the norm that I can’t even post about it here (and yes, I’ve posted a lot of personal shit, so try to imagine what I don’t feel I can share here.) I love you Phlosphr, Og knows I do, but some of us really do have situations that are so fucked up they defy logic. I would give my eyeteeth for a ‘‘dysfunctional’’ family. I know things are tough all over, but I can’t let you take this away from me. It’s not fair to try to normalize an experience that is not normal. If we have to live that reality, we deserve full credit, damn it!)
Even my heroes are deeply flawed. This is becoming a major issue in therapy right now–having to come to terms with that fact that most of my real-life role models are just as unhealthy as the people they protected me from. It’s very upsetting to think about. So I guess a partial answer to your question is that I learned to idealize and trust people who where nice to me but did horrible things to others.
I was born socialized, in a sense–never had any problem appearing normal on the outside and fooled many people into believing I lived an idyllic life. I had one very low point, but overall I’m a very high functioning individual, the profile of an overachieving perfectionist. I was loyal to my friends and considered a stable person and a good listener. I never doubted that I wanted positive and healthy things and people. It wasn’t always easy for me to create that for myself – a lot of shit I had to teach myself. I learned most of the things I needed in my early twenties – I had amazing discoveries at 22 that most of you knew by seventh grade. I also learned things in seventh grade some of you won’t discover until you’re 44. Life evens out that way. In exchange for a shitty childhood you get wisdom, and believe me when I say my family has brought me much wisdom. Pain, too–but man, imagine what I wouldn’t know if it weren’t for having those experiences!
My point is, we become socialized and productive because we want it bad enough. Some people don’t want to bother with the effort, some people sabotage themselves because they don’t think they’re worth it, and some people can never get one break, not even a tiny one. I don’t know why I got lucky–and sometimes I think maybe it really isn’t luck. My therapist thinks it’s a kind of brilliant coping mechanism, the ability to seek out positive influences in the absence of very few personal ones. I don’t know. But when I rave about the power of a great education and about how much I worship my philosophical heroes I’m not blowing smoke up your ass. My drive for living comes out of this notion that you can take suffering and make meaning out of it and have an impact on the world as a result of it.
I just knew that nothing short of good would do for my life and I didn’t stop until I had that, and it’s still not good enough, and I’m still working to make it healthier and stronger. I am dysfunction proof because I have a policy of being honest with myself even when it’s bad news for my character. One thing you’ll never get from me is an inability to admit I’m wrong. I’ve seen how much damage denial can do. Maybe that means I’m too self-critical, but it’s a small price to pay for a positive life experience. Sometimes I believe the reason things were so bad in the beginning is because I wouldn’t otherwise appreciate the blessings and opportunities I have now. I was born compassionate but arrogant. Sometimes I’m grateful for my childhood-induced low self-esteem. Otherwise I might have been kind of a bitch.
I also want to add I think it’s kind of a myth that people with difficult situations will inevitably turn out unhealthy. It’s true that dysfunctional people on average are more likely to have had a dysfunctional childhood, but I doubt it’s even true that the majority of us don’t live successful lives. I’ve seen people walk through fire without blinking, and I’ve seen people fall apart for issues so tiny they boggle the mind. I think my reaction was somewhere in between. It just kind of depends on the person and the situation.
I could write books about the family I grew up in. I’ve only got a few minutes so I won’t today, but I was taught if “they” wanted to keep it, they would have used a better lock.
A few other facts: Beer is good 24 hours a day, if you have it, drink it or someone else will. Do as little as you can at any job, you will get fired eventually anyway. Angry? Hit first or you’re a pussy. At 10 yr old, I was shown how to break into vending machines, stoppping at an all night laundry was like going to an ATM. around 13 or 14 I learned all about shoplifting and passing a bad check and returning the stuff for cash. Women were good for cooking, sometimes cleaning and one other thing whether they wanted to or not. Pretty sure my stepdad and family were insane. My mom ran insurance scams by having 20-30 policies and splitting the hopital take with certain doctors, she had a “bad” back that required several weeks in a hospital every year. Above all say anything it takes to get what you want especially if the government is handing out money, food or anything else.
I’m not sure I’m normal now, but I pass pretty well, I left and joined the Army during Vietnam, I was willing to do anything to get the hell away from where I was. My wife, who I met in high school gets all the credit for teaching me what a decent person is.
yeah, think I will write that book.
Don’t forget to give yourself credit, too.
Working with some of the second generation homeless teenagers with drug addicted homeless parents was the most heartbreaking work I ever did. Their role models were addicts and thieves and street prostitutes and they didn’t know any other world or any functional adults. Most didn’t go to school and weren’t exposed to any other way to live that seemed within reach. I could go on and on with horror stories of moms bringing their tricks back to the hotel where their kid is sleeping, dads selling off anything they manage to get their hands on for dope, welfare checks heading right to the dealer while the kid cries for shoes, kids keeping an eye on their parents so they can make sure that all of the needles are hidden if they nod off so the cops won’t catch them - their lives were a living hell and half of them didn’t even know that it could be different. Most were using hard drugs by the time they were 13, and talking about how the food was going to be so much better at the jail when they turned 18 than what they got at juvenile hall. Just about all of them grew up to be young adult homeless people who did just what their parents did. I remember one kid crying hysterically because he thought I hated him when I wouldn’t lie to the cops for him. He had no concept of ethics beyond ‘street justice’, which isn’t pretty.
There was this one kid though, Danny. His parents lived in an old RV and mom turned tricks all day while dad hustled for drug money so he came down to the shelter and asked us if he could stay there instead and if we could help him get into Job Corps. Within a week in was in school, never missed a day and stayed up later studying at the emergency shelter every night. He would hole up in a corner surrounded by books in the middle of this chaos of street people and do his homework with a level of concentration that was just amazing. Who knows how he got the strength and determination but he made it in and through it, and about a year ago I got a letter from him and a picture of his wife and kids standing in front of the house he had just bought. I was so happy for him that it made me cry.
I can’t pretend to understand it first hand, but I think that people like he and Olive want it badly enough that they find something within them that’s strong enough to push past it. It’s pretty amazing to me because I’m not sure that I could do it.
You look around at your family of alcoholics and liars and realize that you want to be the one to break the cycle. You use them as an example of something that you don’t want to become. You work your ass off in school to go far away to a college, and then work your ass off even harder to make sure you can go even further away.
It really depends on the person. One can choose to believe that they are doomed to fall into the pattern or they can try to break away. You take little steps at a time. I used to be extremely introverted and never talked to anyone but luckily with the help of teachers and friends I became what I consider socially acceptable.
It wasn’t easy. There were days where I couldn’t talk because everything was so balled up inside me, I couldn’t speak. There were days where I didn’t feel good enough, smart enough, or motivated enough and I feared that I would never really leave home. There were days where I thought that killing myself would be easier than trying to climb out of that hole.
As I became older and more independent, I realized the endless possibilities ahead. Having all the options helped me stay motivated because hey, if one didn’t work out there was always another path to try. Anything was better than giving up.
One of my proudest moments was when my dad called me the hero of the family, in that people would look at me and think “Well, she seems normal so she must come from a normal family.”
It’s funny. I’m not sure there is a rhyme or reason to it. Both my girlfriend and best friend come from heavily disfunctional families and both are well adjusted, very successful people (although with flaws just like the rest of us). On the other hand, my girlfriend’s sister, who grew up in the same house, is a walking train wreck of a human being who obviously carries around massive baggage from her childhood.
It don’t know the reason for it, but it seems like a messed up family and childhood affects people in one of two ways. Either it messes them up pretty terribly and they wind up acting out the same behaviors they saw growing up. Or, they become so determined to NOT be like their family that they pretty much become the opposite.
You think I’m not still looking for Rob Petrie in my life? I base my ideal of marriage on that sitcom marriage. I am still somewhat proud of the fact that I chose a fictional couple that at least look like they wouldn’t have minded having sex together.
I knew the Brady Bunch was complete horseshit. The Huxtables came along too late for me. I truly didn’t want Good Times or that one with Schneider the Plumber (One Day at a Time?).
I watched and absorbed. I also did have some foundation–the shit didn’t start in my family until I was about 5 or so. Then again, on the street of my very executive level home, there lived at least 3 alcoholics, two abusive (physically and emotionally) dads, any number of latchkey kids and some eccentric senior citizens. We may have had some financial stability, but it was still all fucked up.
You get what you get and you do what you can do. What else is there? I did learn the lesson that it was no use to disappear inside a bottle because that just causes more shit longterm.
In a word, practice. You just keep trying to learn socialization skills by trial and error until you fall into it. Also, a dark sense of humor–the kind you find with cops and nurses–helps quite a bit.
As others have pointed out, it’s not all about your family. You have socialization practice in school and sports. I wasn’t a natural athlete, but joining sports teams helped out quite a bit. Sports also helped me maintain my grades by showing me how to focus and do what had to be done. I was lucky enough to have coaches who looked out for me. Nowadays, I occasionally think to myself how much more studying I could have accomplished if I hadn’t wrestled in high school, but then I think back to how much my coaches helped me out with both school and life, and I realize I’m being an idiot by going there.
The army helped too, and not just because it gave me structure, although that helped. After never being able to get away from my family, I suddenly found myself on a different fucking continent, and for the first time in my life, I had free time and disposable income together. There’s nothing quite like sitting there on a Friday evening with free time, disposable income, and a sincere desire not to turn into an alcoholic to help you determine your direction in life.
This has been mentioned too, but I’ll share. After I graduated college and before I shipped out to basic training, I was busting suds in this hick diner, and I got to be good friends with Max, a short-order cook whose family situation made my family look like Ned Flanders’ brood. He asked me why I had signed up (This was about a week after I’d done so), and I told him the truth–that I was hoping it would straighten my ass out so that I could lead a normal life. I told him that even after college, I was still a goof, and I wanted to de-goofasize myself so that I didn’t wind up in a homeless shelter someday. He looked at me kind of weird and asked “Why don’t you just find yourself a good woman? She’ll do the same thing the army will, it’ll be a lot less painful, and you’ll be sure to get laid.”
I didn’t believe him then, and in any case, it was a little late to change my mind, but while I was in the army, I did find a good woman. The perfect woman. We’ve been married for well over ten years, and she’s in the next room chilling as I type this. Max was right. More than sports, more than the army, more than probably anything else in the entire world, a good woman will straighten you out and help you cope. There is no real comparison of myself before and after getting to know Mrs. Fresh. I have a good job, an excellent education, and great prospects because of her smarts, patience, tolerance, and love. And she’s purty, too! THAT’S how this person from a dysfunctional family became socialized, and I’ll forget my own name before I forget that. 
A good man will do that too.
This too, in a big way. Everything I needed to know about forming strong relationships I learned from watching other people in my family fuck theirs up. I watched four of my mother’s marriages fail and at least as many of her boyfriends walk away. You don’t get a vague idea about what doesn’t work, you become a veritable expert. My marriage is ridiculously healthy, to the point of absurdity, thanks to my mother’s horrible relationships. Maybe a key difference between those who ‘‘make it’’ and those who don’t is that those who make it see dysfunction for what it is instead of living lives steeped in misery and denial. When you’re a kid, you may not know something is illegal, you may not know it’s abusive, you may not even know that it’s different for other kids – but you do know, somewhere in your gut, that it’s wrong.
ETA: I have nothing but awe for the successful kids in situations like Karyn describes. I may have had personal hardship but I didn’t have to deal with systemic failures like an apathetic educational system, a neighborhood of crime and violence, and zero role models. I definitely had good people I connected with who helped me through. Maybe I could have found my way without them, but I doubt it.
It’s not easy. Two out of the five of us didn’t. Since neither one of them can take care of themselves financially, my mother is trying to figure out how to handle her will to help them. I suspect my younger brother may be dead before my mother dies, because living on the street isn’t the easiest on the body. He’s systematically destroyed all his relationships and chances, but keeps dreaming of the millions of dollars his – future – inventions will bring.
The sister will survive as long as she gets disability and lives in family subsidized housing. I don’t think she’s ever worked full time in her life and as she pushes 50, she’ll ever learn. She never learned social rules, and her partner forgot them. The friends who remain are the one who don’t mind picking up all the meals and buying all the food.
Another sister is fairly similar to me and there’s an estranged brother who is nominally socialized, I suppose, but from what I last saw, the world was all about him.
For me, it’s a hard question. How did I escape? Why me and not the others?
My therapist talks of the resilience of the soul. Of people who not just survive, but thrive in life. Of people who break the cycle of abuse. Who are beat but don’t hit others. Who are raped but don’t let this shut them down.
It has not been easy. There are those who – perhaps – had an easier time getting out, but it’s taken decades to break the family patterns. To learn how to get along with others. To let go of emotional neediness and control anxiety and depression.
Learning social rules as an adult is interesting. You make mistakes all the time, and I think that’s why I moved to Japan. It’s easier to excuse social clumsiness when you’re obviously a foreigner.
Once you do get to a certain point, though, it becomes easier. When you can let go and start to pay attention to how others handle themselves, then you can pick up ideas for yourself.
TP–you just gave me an insight, which is quite startling. I think you hit on one of the reasons I like to travel so much and I enjoy other cultures. Not only do I like to learn and experience new things (as much as anxiety riddled, control freak me can), but being a stranger in a strange land excuses most social mistakes. Plus, I grew up watching and absorbing what not to do–and what does one do in a foreign country but watch the “foreigners”? It’s my childhood, but with pleasant outcomes, not tears, screams and violence.
Thank you for shedding some light on that.
Olive, one of the most telling things was that the vast majority of those kids that didn’t want to be homeless for the rest of their lives said that they wanted to be social workers or drug treatment counselors when they grew up. I think it was because we were the only functional adults that they knew and all they could imagine because they saw us working and knew what our jobs were like, but we were still part of the world they knew and were less intimidating to them. I also knew to worry and get family services involved when the little children started clinging to me and my staff immediately, probably because we were the only people that they knew that were consistently not wasted or scary and we were always happy to see them. I’m not a parent but it was always a big red flag to me if they wanted to spend their days playing on the floor in my office instead of being with their mother and/or father.
I should add that the first generation homeless kids that came from at least semi-functional backgrounds and went to grade school did much better than the kids who were born into homeless families. They did have a concept of what right and wrong were and how housed people keep it together and they didn’t really want to stay homeless. We were able to get most of them into transitional programs or ship them back home when they were ready to get on with growing up.
I have a family of good friends (9 kids in the family) and each one of them is permanenty damaged in one way or the other. But I think we all are, in one way or another, and not necessarily due to “traditional dysfunction” in our families. Each one of them has at least one area of their life that’s fucked up, but they all seem to make up for that by overcompensating in other areas. We all get by, some better than others.
I just want to thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for what you do. It was people like you, who cared despite really having no obligation to do so, who really made me understand that there could be a better way. It’s the reason I will become a social worker and I can only hope that I can make such a positive impact on so many lives. Thank you.