OK, it doesn’t make sense to you. Why do you think this happens then? Crazy women just being crazy?
Plenty of people don’t know they are in a hole. They don’t know any other life than what they see around them, and everyone they see is in a “hole” of some kind, but they seem to be doing okay in that they are still alive. So why not join them? At least you won’t be alone.
Some people know they are in a hole, and they don’t have any hope that they can get out through “middle class” means. College isn’t even on their radar because no one told them they were smart enough to do college work (and their poor academic preparation confirms this). They don’t know anyone who can help them get a “good” job, and maybe family obligations make them loathe to move away. So what is left but to make a baby? Other than shrivel up and die from being an invisible nobody?
No, I don’t know why it happens. That’s why I’m in this discussion. Maybe to learn something. That still happens on this board, doesn’t it?
How can that be? There are countless forms of media that constantly bombard people with things that other people have. Why don’t people look at that and think “I want that”? I see things in the media that would be nice to have, I don’t think to myself “Well, it’s never gonna happen, so I might as well have 3 more kids”
These are the people I’m most concerned about. People who KNOW there is something better, but think that they can’t have it. Why do they think that? How can we get them to think that they CAN have that? What does it take?
The bigger question is whether his children will learn not to be like G… if G’s kids weren’t already adults as sorry as him.
And that’s my problem with the “but won’t anyone think of the children?” angle. How do you remedy this? Do you forcibly remove the children and teach them right? At what point are G’s rights as a parent trumped by the right of the children to not be doomed to a life of poverty and squalor because G is an idiot and teaching them all the wrong things?
That’s why I hesitate to go that route; it’s in essence, enabling the problem for future generations (as is doing nothing, I realize). How do you teach that strata of the population not to act like G? Clearly he failed monstrously at it, but so did the school system and the alternative minimum tax and the EITC and everything else. They’re no less poor and wretched for those things than without them. They just might try harder if they weren’t there.
I’m going to tell you what my mother-in-law told me in an attempt to help me understand the (to me) alien mindset of poor, unmarried girls setting out to have babies.
A poor, uneducated woman doesn’t have much. The one thing she unquestionably has, the one relationship that can not be dissolved, the one accomplishment that can not be taken away from her or denied is giving birth. If a poor woman has nothing else she still has her children. Even if the Authorities take them away she is still a mother.
You focus on the uncertainty having a baby when you haven’t even finished school brings to life. These women - girls, really - focus on the certainties.
These girls see no hope of digging themselves out of “the hole” as you put it. That’s all they’ve ever known, from their viewpoint all they’ll ever know. So why put off having kids if more time will make no difference?
Yeah, you and I know that things can be different. They don’t.
Good points all around. I have known way more than my fair share of chronically poor people and I have even been in that situation myself during my adult life twice. The thing that it taught me was to never let that happen again so I am super-conservative with my personal finances and now have a credit score and backup savings that can cover almost any outcome.
I think teaching and enabling helplessness is more of a problem than a solution. I know for a fact that most poor people aren’t truly helpless. Some of them are bad at life choices and managing any money at all but I have also known many that just decided to get their shit together and make it work. We are talking about black women that rose up through the military, disabled people that learned to give motivational speeches for pay and simple white guys that decided to get off their ass and work on an oil rig to support their families for very good money.
It is a fallacy and a travesty to think any individual person doesn’t have options to do better because they almost always do. Current American Liberal thinking wants to make poor people completely dependent on the state because that wins votes but it isn’t necessary.
Because I grew up in a very poor area, I do not have the same paternalistic view of the poor that many liberal elites do because I have seen too many people break out of it just because they wanted to do something better. A lot more chose not to. I believe they can do much better as long as they learn some very simple middle-class values. Those can be taught even into adulthood.
I can almost guarantee that I know more people convicted of serious felonies including many murders than almost anyone on this board but I also know a lot of people that chose the alternate path and made something of themselves despite the circumstances that they grew up in.
One of the most severe problems is that most resources go to the complete fuckups and not the people that are trying to break out of the pattern on their own. I support the latter completely but no so much the former.
Are you aware that birth control costs money? Not just for the pills people usually mean by “birth control”, a doctor has to prescribe those pills. If you don’t have health insurance getting an appointment will likely cost you in the neighborhood of $100. While some version of birth control pills are as low as $9/month some are more expensive, closer to $50/month, and you can only get what the doctor prescribes. If you have Medicaid hope meddling moralizers haven’t carved out birth control as something the state medical coverage won’t pay for. That’s why Planned Parenthood is so damn important, they help poor women obtain birth control and yet you have moralizing assholes trying to shut them down.
There are, of course, other types of birth control that don’t require a doctor to get. You really think loser men are going to be talked into wearing a condom? The morning after pill runs about $48/dose in the store I work in, we have to put the boxes in security devices to cut down on theft. We have condoms and sponges and spermicide walking out the door unpaid for on a daily basis. SOMEONE is using all that. Some folks are apparently motivated enough to use birth control they’ll steal it.
Birth control isn’t free. Let’s see - you’re having trouble paying the rent, the bills, buying food… where is the money for this supposed to come from? Which is more important, birth control pills or feeding the screaming toddler already in the world?
For someone middle-class the cost is trifling. For the poor it can be an onerous expense. That’s the point some of us keep trying to make. If you have money you have a lot more options, and money really can fix certain problems and allow certain mistakes that poor people have to suffer through. Middle Class Lady forgets to take her pills for a couple days, or a condom breaks, she can afford to get Morning After Pill. Poor woman can’t afford birth control pills or a condom breaks if she hasn’t got $50 she doesn’t get the morning after pill. Getting an abortion costs hundreds.
That’s fine, but just saying “I don’t understand this!” over and over doesn’t really advance the discussion. A lack of understanding can stem from a lack of knowledge or a lack of compassion. I can try to help with the former, but I can’t do much with the latter.
I see things in the media that would be nice to have, but that doesn’t keep me from being a realist. Realists don’t chase lofty dreams because they are too busy tallying up the costs and risks. I’ve never been poor poor, so I gotta guess poverty kinda forces a person to be a realist.
Even back when I was a little kid, I was able to discern “TV world” from “real world.” Sometimes I went a little too far with this splitting. Like, for years I thought stay-at-home mothers were a “TV world” thing, since I didn’t know any stay-at-home mothers and couldn’t really imagine why or how they would exist. And I thought the tableau of the family seated around the breakfast table every morning was a “TV world” construct, since my family never did this. So it isn’t hard for me to imagine that a person might think that other middle class trappings are something that only exist on TV and consequently not bother pretending those things are attainable.
I think people can feel hopeless for irrational reasons, but honestly, I can understand why a poor person might feel like they’d be better off accepting the “hole” they are stuck in. Especially now. Every day we hear about how uber-competitive the job market is and how cutthroat college admissions are and how even Ph.Ds are having to struggle to make ends meet. Why WOULDN’T someone raised in a dysfunctional family with zero financial resources and little educational attainment have minimal expectations for themselves? That would actually be more psychologically sustainable than hoping and wishing “big” and constantly being disappointed.
Providing opportunities for poor people is probably the best way to shatter their feelings of hopelessness. But that’s probably not enough to “fix” everyone. I mean, some poor people are screwed up because they really don’t have any hope of a good, “normal” life. Take a person like Freddie Gray, the guy the Baltimore police killed. He never had a chance to exercise “personal responsibility” because years of lead poisoning had robbed him of his agency. Now, maybe Freddie Gray was the rare anomaly–one of the few poor people who deserves pity, despite being a fuck-up. But why we assume he’s an isolated case? It would be kind of crazy for poor people in this situation to be optimistic about their chances to climb out of the hole, when all signs point to them staying there forever.
There was a time when various governments around the world, from North America to Australia resorted to removing children of various downtrodden types from their families and cultures and stashed them at boarding schools, forcing an education and middle class values on them.
Various governments are now paying reparations to various “lost generations” and dealing with serious problems with adults who, removed from anything resembling a normal family life, had no idea how to be parents themselves and yet still had children. So that probably won’t work, based on past experience.
Really, while most children of poor people will probably remain poor, it seems more manage to rise above poverty when we leave them with their families (barring actual abuse/neglect) than when we try to forcibly remove them from their families. I think sometimes the pendulum has swung too far, there are times when kids are better off being removed from a family, but in general kids seem to do best even when with dysfunctional relatives, provided the relatives aren’t too dysfunctional.
Is there any way to change the mind set? Not for certain, no. You can expose kids to various experiences and role models, but there is absolutely nothing that will guarantee any particular kid will break the cycle.
You really think one of those loser types who pride themselves on viable sperm are going to take “no” for an answer? One of two things is likely to happen: either he dumps the girl and finds one who won’t ask him to wear a rubber, or she gets a fist to the teeth.
Also, women want to fuck just as much as men do. After awhile, a lot of women are going to say screw it and do it bareback just because they’re so damn tired of being horny.
When you’re poor sex is free - and not much else that is fun is free. Not much else that makes you feel good, even for a few minutes, is free. It makes it even harder to say “no”.
I’m not saying that every poor man is a wife-beater, or unwilling to wear a condom, or doesn’t take responsibility for any children he fathers. Those aren’t the ones you’re talking about here, and that’s the problem. Guys who father children and blow money that should go to child support on booze and fancy tire rims are not guys who really give a damn about the woman’s position in all this.
But it costs her if the guy ditches her. Psychologically, not financially, but it is a cost that still hurts.
A lot of teenage girls fantasize about getting married. Which really isn’t a stupid thing, since people (especially conservatives) are always pushing marriage as a solution to poverty. But you can’t get married if you don’t have a willing partner. Is it that hard to understand why a girl pining to be someone’s Missus might be reluctant to push her HS sweetheart out of her bed? Maybe in her teenaged mind, she thinks their love will weather the “temporary” stress of an unplanned pregnancy.
I don’t think I’ve said over and over that I don’t understand something. I think I’ve been pretty clear in describing the mind set that I don’t understand.
A college education and a good job are not lofty dreams, no matter who you are.
I know of at least 500 jobs in Computer Security in the DC area, and can name 3 colleges that take almost anyone. Cutthroat is WAY over the line in describing what is available in the real world.
I’m not trying to “fix” anyone. But there ARE opportunities around, but it seems like you are saying poor people either don’t see those opportunities, or they don’t think they can take advantage of those opportunities. How can we (collective we) change that?
I’m sorry, but this sounds a lot like “Poor girls have no choice but to have unprotected sex with their redneck, loser boyfriends. If they don’t, they get raped or punched in the face. It feels good, so these dumb girls are going to do it, because they are poor and this is the only pleasure they get”
Granted that I never had kids, I see stuff all the time in “various media” I’d like but I’ll never have. I want a flying car like Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang. I want to fly into space. I want to speak 14 languages fluently. I want to be a suave secret agent like James Bond 007. I want to sing like Adele. None of that will ever happen for me.
Just because people see something in movies or on TV doesn’t mean they’ll ever think they’ll have a realistic chance of getting that thing, even growing up like I did in a middle-class household.
They think they can’t have that because everything in their life tells them they can’t have that. They’re told they have to go to college to get those things, but won’t be able to do that because they don’t have the grades or the money to go to college. They’re told they have to read to get good grades but they have no one to take them to the library and no books in the house. They can’t pay for a tutor. They can’t go on this or that field trip because they don’t have the money for “activities”. They see people making it big in the performing arts but the schools have cut art, music, drama, and all that stuff for rote learning for tests. Their families can’t afford to go away on vacation, or send them to summer camp, so they literally spend their whole lies in the same neighborhood with other poor, desperate people. Yes, the idiot-box or the movies show them a better world but their reality is the same few blocks and run down neighborhood.
And that’s why “enrichment” programs are so important for the poor, and mentors, and other programs - that’s what shows the kids there can be something better in reality. That’s why internet access is important, so if they can’t get to a library they can still find things to read and answer to questions and see and hear from people who aren’t all in the same hole.
The kids are already living under the stick, you have to not only show them the carrot, you have to convince them it’s real.
Actually, no it’s not that hard to imagine. Why don’t we have more education and outreach on “Don’t fuck a loser, jobless asshole without a condom just because he has a nice car”
As soon as my daughter is of age, that is the first thing I’m going to tell her. I suppose poor people can’t learn from their mistakes and a mother that had a child at 15 can’t tell her 15 year old “Make sure he wears a fucking condom!”
They can either be celibate forever or have sex with loser guys because that’s the only kind of guys they come into contact with. Said guys might well think it unmanly to wear a condom, feel birth control is solely the woman’s problem, and may or may not be prone to violence.
Just where do you think there is a venue for poor girls to meet middle class and higher quality guys interested in more than a one night stand?
And yeah, it might be the only pleasure a poor woman gets. That, or food, which has something to do with poor people being overweight. If you feel like crap because of a shit job and little hope and food helps make you feel better you’re going to eat. Same for sex.
This is also why poor women who can get a sugar daddy try to keep him - sure, it’s a type of whoring but damn at least she can get a place to live, nice clothes, nice food, and get her bits rubbed on a regular basis. That may be her best option in life. Again, I can’t say I approve but there is a certain logic to that path in life.
You going to tell a young boy not to look at the women with nice tits? How effective do you think that will be?
Women do find money and power sexy. That’s why rich guys and politicians have women falling all over them. That’s why “losers” make an effort to get nice cars, it gets them laid. Do you really find that hard to understand?
I know poor mothers who scrape the money together to drag their daughters to the doc at age 14 or 15 to get the pill and then hand it to them and watch them swallow. On the other hand, a lot of people have funny objections to birth control for kids or don’t want to admit their kids are having sex. Much less teaching their kids to wear condoms.
Also, that mother who started having kids at 15 might not regard them as “mistakes” but rather the best things in her life. If they don’t recognize that as a mistake they’re not going have a lesson to pass onto their kids.
Multi-generational poverty is adifferent culture than the middle class. That statement is not intended as an excuse or free pass on harmful behaviors, but if you don’t understand that some of these people start from a different premise you won’t understand their logic.
Who is “they” in your post? Poor people? Are you lumping all poor people together?
After that admittedly petty response:
Poor people don’t need money to go to college, there are MANY programs to get them into college.
Poor people can WALK to the library, nobody needs to take them
Performing arts is not something I can discuss because I don’t know anything about it.
Poor kids get to go to summer camps for free (at least here in the DC area) so that is not an excuse.
There are many opportunities around for poor people to take advantage of. My question , is WHY DON’T THEY? why do they have sex with a loser, jobless asshole in the back of a truck without protection?
Do you honestly think that a poor girl who doesn’t graduate high school and has 2 kids has ANY chance to become middle class or higher?
I’m sorry but this seems to me to be insulting to a lot of women. I’m a guy, so I can’t say for sure.
You seem to be saying that a poor woman who wants a guy to use a condom CAN’T find any guy willing to fuck her with a condom on. Really? She only has “celibate” or “unprotected sex” as her two choices?