Where do they go? How do they survive? You know, the faceless children of the unemployed and bankrupt from the shrinking blue collar job market to the farms lost in the 1980s to the children of Katrina and unemployed of today? You know, the ones ignored whose parents were assured it’s nothing personal; it’s just business? Do they make it, or are they simply swept out of sight and mind with the brush of a nice euphomistic thought that God opens a window when he closes a door? Please tell me their secret for coping even after the intiial trauma has passed.
A lot of them are living with Grandma. Right now, in my kid’s school, its really common to have a few generations in the same house “living with grandma” because of foreclosure or unemployment.
I have a few in my Girl Scout troop. Which is why my Girl Scout troop saw “extra donations” in the form of my contributions and managed to go to camp on modest cookie sales a $1 a week dues (I think a few parents might have done the math). They are good girls and I’m doing what I can to contribute to a stable life, good childhood experiences, and giving positive role models.
We are doing extra fund raising to make sure those kids have school supplies, clothes for school, etc.
That’s good to hear that there is still compassion in this world! Kudos!
They scale down their lifestyle. They may move into an apartment and the formerly stay-at-home mom finds a job. They may shop at thrift stores, the kids probably qualify for free breakfast and lunch at school. In fact, I was passing a school on my way home from work which had a sign out saying they were providing free hot lunch and breakfast during the summer while school isn’t in session, for children under the age of 18.
StG
They move to less expensive places. Two neighbor around here lost jobs long term, finally sold their houses and took the small remaining profits to states where the living is cheaper.
There are a number of things that happen. Sometimes, in the case of blended families, kids go to live with the other parent (two co-workers are in this situation) and the former custodial parent winds up sharing a place, college style with other people. Sometimes more than one family bunks in together. As mentioned before, sometimes several generations share a home.
Teens turn part time earnings over to their parents who have taken jobs that pay less than their former salary. One of my favorite cashiers at my local convenience market moved her family from the farm to a one bedroom apartment when they were foreclosed.
There are good folks out here who do like Danerosa and sponsor activities like Girl Scout camp, like my folks who sponsor a child to a local pre-school each year or my county’s Democratic Party and make backpacks of school supplies for kids who need it.
We are now 25 years beyond the mid-eighties when the rust belt began to bleed workers big time. Like many of their families who migrated from the hills or the rural south before them to find work, they relocated and their (now grown) children have lives hundreds or thousands of miles away from their extended family.
Fortunately for most of us, we survive and some even thrive.
My husband and all his sibs had to turn over most of their part time earnings to their parents, because their parents had 8 kids, a stay at home mom, and a dad who left home at 14 and never managed to get a good paying job. Allowing teens to keep all or most of their earnings is comparatively recent. Most of my age peers were allowed to work in high school, but they were not allowed to control all of the money. Instead, they were expected to put a good portion of their wages into a savings account, and usually were allowed to spend some of each paycheck on fun things.
I know of several people who are sharing homes, either apartments or houses, with unrelated adults that they aren’t having sex with…in other words, becoming roomies with one or more adults, long past their 20s. And the multigeneration family home is becoming more common again.
I think the time is ripe for the “rooming house” concept to return. Large homes, not broken up into apartments, where the bedrooms are rented. A common area is provided (of course, these days most people would have TV and a computer in their room for entertainment. You could provide common meals as part of the board, or give each room a mini-fridge and allow kitchen privileges.
StG
Where do the children go
Between the bright night and the darkest day
Where do the children go
And who’s that deadly piper who leads them away
The children are eaten by the Irish.
HEY! We don’t eat kids. They don’t go well with beer.
So the Modest Proposal was never adopted?