In class, we watched the film Poor Kids, a documentary involving three families and focusing on the children and how being poor affected them. The film showed many different living situations, from living in a very tiny motel room to a family in a homeless shelter, the effects of poverty were obvious in each situation. The families all had many similarities. Two of the three families were two-parent households which to me is a good point to show that poverty can happen even to the “all American family”. I feel that some people may have the misconception that most poor children come from a household headed by a single mother and this is not necessarily true. Also, the adults in each of the families were actively searching for work or working a job that was inconvenient just to try and make any money they could for their family.
For example, the one family in which the father did have a job, he was working in a factory that was something like an hour away and his wife and children all had to pile in the van and make the commute to his job every day. The reason his wife had to bring the kids every time is because the homeless shelter they were living in would not allow the children to be unsupervised. Other parents were putting applications in at every place in near vicinity and just hoping for the best.
In the case of the third family, which was a single mother and her two children, the town that they lived in looked to have absolutely nothing. It was run down, and you could tell its glory days were long past. The mother had learned a trade, she was a hairdresser, but she couldn’t find work at any salons. In this case, the physical effects of poverty were very evident. The mother didn’t have money to dress in what would be considered salon appropriate clothing and she had poor dental care (assumingly from lack of ever being able to afford it), and these things only exacerbate the struggle to find a job. Her 12-year-old son was mowing lawns to try and make any extra money possible to give to his mother to help feed the family.
In all cases, these children were very aware of the situations going on around them. They knew that their families were poor and struggling, and most of them mentioned that their lives weren’t always like this. The hardest part for me was to hear these children express such grim outlooks for the future. One little girl mentioned that in the future all the jobs will be gone, and this is just sad. This is something most children never think of, but when this is all children see, it is easy for them to believe that there aren’t opportunities.
This movie shows how poverty is a cycle that is hard to end. Five years after the initial movie was filmed, they went back to revisit the children, and in all cases, they were still struggling. They may have been a little better off but they were by no means out of poverty’s grasp. In one family, the father had finally found a job and the son, who was now out of high school, was working along side his father, and they were both just hoping that these jobs would hold out. This is an example of the son going down the same path his father had, and I would guess that throughout his adult life he is going to struggle just like his father because his only option was to get out of school and go straight into working a low wage job just to make ends meet. In all the families, it seemed that the boys struggled to make it through high school, they either got in trouble or just didn’t have motivation; and the girls were a little more focused on trying to do well in school and make it somewhere.
All in all, I think everyone should have to watch this movie and be exposed to how kids in poverty are living. This is a hard reality, but all communities have children that are struggling, and there needs to be a focus on resources that help these children and their families. If we don’t make it a goal to help children, more than likely they are going to continue down the path of poverty throughout their life.
For example, the one family in which the father did have a job, he was working in a factory that was something like an hour away and his wife and children all had to pile in the van and make the commute to his job every day. The reason his wife had to bring the kids every time is because the homeless shelter they were living in would not allow the children to be unsupervised. Other parents were putting applications in at every place in near vicinity and just hoping for the best.
In the case of the third family, which was a single mother and her two children, the town that they lived in looked to have absolutely nothing. It was run down, and you could tell its glory days were long past. The mother had learned a trade, she was a hairdresser, but she couldn’t find work at any salons. In this case, the physical effects of poverty were very evident. The mother didn’t have money to dress in what would be considered salon appropriate clothing and she had poor dental care (assumingly from lack of ever being able to afford it), and these things only exacerbate the struggle to find a job. Her 12-year-old son was mowing lawns to try and make any extra money possible to give to his mother to help feed the family.
In all cases, these children were very aware of the situations going on around them. They knew that their families were poor and struggling, and most of them mentioned that their lives weren’t always like this. The hardest part for me was to hear these children express such grim outlooks for the future. One little girl mentioned that in the future all the jobs will be gone, and this is just sad. This is something most children never think of, but when this is all children see, it is easy for them to believe that there aren’t opportunities.
This movie shows how poverty is a cycle that is hard to end. Five years after the initial movie was filmed, they went back to revisit the children, and in all cases, they were still struggling. They may have been a little better off but they were by no means out of poverty’s grasp. In one family, the father had finally found a job and the son, who was now out of high school, was working along side his father, and they were both just hoping that these jobs would hold out. This is an example of the son going down the same path his father had, and I would guess that throughout his adult life he is going to struggle just like his father because his only option was to get out of school and go straight into working a low wage job just to make ends meet. In all the families, it seemed that the boys struggled to make it through high school, they either got in trouble or just didn’t have motivation; and the girls were a little more focused on trying to do well in school and make it somewhere.
All in all, I think everyone should have to watch this movie and be exposed to how kids in poverty are living. This is a hard reality, but all communities have children that are struggling, and there needs to be a focus on resources that help these children and their families. If we don’t make it a goal to help children, more than likely they are going to continue down the path of poverty throughout their life.
No comments:
Post a Comment