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Effects of poverty on childhood development
Effects of poverty on childhood development
Effects of poverty on childhood development
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Bill and Alice's original viewpoint on the impacts of affluenza was neutral. Their perspective was neutral because the side effects of affluenza (which include being unsatisfied with one's possessions, workaholism, and a false sense of entitlement) weren’t present when they were growing up, “I was born just after the war in 1946; they call us the ‘baby boomers’. Times were really hard then and had been for my parents particularly during the Depression of the 1930s.” “We never had a great deal of money.” or when they were raising their children. “Bill did not earn much and living just on his income with three children was hard.” “The kids never went without but then there were not many things to buy them.. Life was so much simpler.” “We played
During his education, Sanders met young men “who had assumed from birth that they would lead the lives of comfort and power,” the exact opposite of the boys whom he grew up with. Those boys expected to “work as their fathers had worked,” enduring the adversity that is lower class life. Lower class citizens did not expect to accomplish greatness in life as it seemed “remote and unreal”, they have learned to accept their place in society and chose to not pursue careers and goals that seemed unrealistic. Higher class citizens, however, were born into said greatness. They expected just as much or more from themselves as affluence is what was normal to them. This belief is what motivated them to follow in their fathers’ footsteps to obtain stature and wealth. Furthermore, while both higher and lower class men are expected to provide for his family, that burden is experienced in different degrees. Lower class men shouldered all burdens of the family; they had to bear with exhausting work to make sure that money kept flowing in with lay-offs and unemployment looming over their heads. And when the money troubles do appear, the fathers are “the ones who had failed”, they were the ones to blame. Whereas higher class families never had to worry about money, for the fathers were “never laid off, [and] never short of cash at month’s end.” Fate did not intend for rich men to worry about becoming a bad father or husband, but due to the socioeconomic situation of poorer men, that is all that they can worry about. While both classes of men are fathers and providers of the family, richer men had it easier. In short, this disparity of men’s expected role demonstrate that class decides
In Lorrain Hansburry’s 1966 play “Raisin in the Sun”, protagonist Walter Lee has a plan that could make his family lots of money or lose everything they have. Walter’s sister, Ruth, is content with their current situation but it is never enough for Walter and he declares “Money is life”. That simple phrase denounces Walter’s entire family and accuses them of being less important than money. Walter blatantly ignores the rest of his family’s satisfaction with the way things are and loses all of their money on a poorly thought out scheme in hopes of progressing all of them into a place where his dream can happen. The inherent selfishness surrounding the American Dream can affect entire groups of people. In Jerome Karabel’s 2012 article “Grand Illusion: Mobility, Inequality, and the American Dream”, Karabel argues “If Americans really want more social mobility, they must choose policies that counteract rather than reinforce the growth of inequality”(Karabel). It would make sense to reduce inequality to make the American Dream easier to obtain ,if everyone has money they have some type of security, but because people compare themselves to others, economic equality is virtually impossible. People want to compare themselves to the poor and feel better than them because of they have more wealth or social status or things so they don’t close that gap to make the Dream more possible due to a narcissistic selfishness that prevails throughout a majority of the American
the middle and upper class. The essay was first presented in the winter of 2006.
The movie “The Great Gatsby” illustrates the stereotypes and the conditions that society lived in, the different roles and duties society had in order to be successful. Regardless gender or color the chance for success must be distributive as equal, but it was not distribute equally. Society set of mind were negatively despised by lower class. "A person who was not well-to-do and who did not belong to the right club or attend the right school was considered not only poor, but sinful. The pursuit of wealth came to have a meaning which transcended the mere desire to be more comfortable. It served in an attempt to erase original sin and earn eternal salvation. Striving for wealth has become a way for Americans to ease their consciences, while
After viewing an episode of I Love Lucy, positive aspects of family and financial issues can be clearly seen in the 1950s. The Ricardo's are middle class, Ricky works as a club band leader and Lucy stays home and `poured all her energies into their nuclear family.' (37) This is a positive side of the 1950s because compared to a few decades before, `women quit their jobs as soon as they became pregnant,' (36) and concentrated more on raising children. These families were much more stable and made almost `60 percent of kids were born into male breadwinner-female homemaker families,' (37) which is a important factor for children to have a good childhood.
...ass modeled the white middle class had no relevancy. It was the sense of meaning that the above value provided; the black middle class wanted to declare self-independence (266).
..., approximately 21,974 men and women held college degrees but were unable to find jobs. Due to the large number people falling to the lower class, the middle class was slowly becoming socially and politically insignificant. Constantly dealing with the possibility that their social class may disappear, the middle class suffered a harsh blow during this time.
The topic following Joy’s story explains that the rich are blaming the economical issues in today’s society as an effect of the recession. However, this is simply a tactic for the rich, Wall Street, and Washington, to keep attacking the middle class while they become even more rich by creating and rewriting rules in the economy that would benefit the privileged and affect the rest.
As we can clearly see, socio-economic status and class conflict both affect each character in the story in a different way, but ultimately lead to the same place. Class conflict is a major theme from the beginning of the story. “Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had” (1). A quote from Nick’s father on the first page of the novel immediately sets the theme of class conflict. Even though this is a piece of advice about humility, it still highlights the economic and power gap between the American upper and lower classes.
To quote an article on US News by Liz Wolgemuth, “The single biggest change seems to be that "financial security" is the No. 1 component of the American dream for respondents” (Wolgemuth 1). American dream is to have money and be secure, have wealth and safety, success and security. Financial security is key to the american dream. The american dream is being secure. Security for kids, is the parents dream. Willy was a great father for pushing his kids to be stable and successful, and even though a sales job may not have been ideal for Biff, its what he needed for financial security. Although some people's ideas of the American dream is financial security, it is clearly not Biff's idea, Tom’s, or Laura’s idea. Happiness, open air, freedom, and working with his hands-- this was Biff’s idea of the American dream. Laura clearly wants a life on her own. We can infer this because of how uncomfortable she is around Jim (awkward, gets ill, can barely function) when he comes over for dinner. Amanda pushed for the dinner because she wanted Laura to have her American dream. We know this is her dream from the first scene when she talks about her gentlemen callers, “One Sunday afternoon in Blue Mountain, your mother received seventeen! gentlemen callers!” (Williams 4). Amanda was ecstatic about how many callers she had back in the day. She loved this attention and
The premise of the Honeymooners center on the life of a domestic couple and their everyday actions of trying to achieve happiness in post war America. Sterrit proclaims that the Honeymooners were set in atypical environment; he would on to say that the Kramden did not look the part in mirroring at the time the current household and contrast it with shows that would portrayed the common household at the time such as Father Know Best. Quoted he said that “Ralph and Alice are less typical than they appear at first glance, and less typical than they would probably like to be at a time when conformity and consensus are strong American Values” (16). I do agree that the Honeymooners setting did not mirrored the state of a household, but to an extent, the Kramdens were not financially in the upper echelon that could afford the comfortabilities of the High Class or Middle Class. They however were the depiction of the lower class, individuals that would struggle to make end meets and were comfortable with having a home than the commodities. Money played a role in the settings of the Kramdens, if the Kramdens were to say have been more financially successful than they were, the whole show would have been different, perhaps not a...
In this conversation Hooks point out the importance of image in this society. She wrote, “In their apartments they have the material possessions that indicate success (a VCR, a color television), even if it means that they do without necessities and lunge into debt” (Hooks 435). This proves that some of the poverty in the country is not solely on the persons fault, it is also the society that was created around us. People are buying objects that they do not need, just to make them seem more economically stable than they actually are. They do not want to look like they are poor because they are afraid that people will look at them differently, just like the workers at Hooks’ university. This was a good way to answer the question that most people had in their minds at this point. Then Hooks transitions into logic, explaining how the media creates these ideas in people’s
The Affluent Society was written in 1958. A little information about Professor Galbraith, he was a Harvard economics professor. Served on many US president’s staffs as well as he were great writer. A lot of his theory is based on Keynesian economics. This book, The Affluent Society, is part of a trilogy. The book tackles the status of the US post World War II. It gives great insight into the political, economical as well as pop culture during the time. Each one of those areas is linked together to show the wealth gap that was beginning, that is now a huge problem in our society today. Instead of breaking down the book chapter by chapter, I would like to break down the book into vital areas that make the book what it is. It is extremely interesting how genius Prof. Galbraith is. To be able to research and connect the dots of these extreme and what seems “non relatable” subjects and make them relate in order convey a problem for us to see. Unfortunately, our country did not look at this serious enough. The book also shows a great deal of progress our country made in such little time. In the matter of a decade, the technical, social and political ups and downs of our society started this snowball effect that has now turned into modern day America.
Lower Socioeconomic Status and The Impact on Children Synthesis It is evident that we live in a society with a great diversity in individual socioeconomic status. Noticeably, we can simply look around our communities and/or neighborhood and visually see this diverseness. More importantly, children who come from a family who are socioeconomically dependent are at a greater risk for having significant health issues and/or other related social problems, if there are no early interventions and/or supports put in place. In stating this fact, these socioeconomic dependent individuals will have an extensive impact on the Canadian health care system. Lawrence, Hafekost, Hull, Mitrou, & Zubrick (2013) emphasize this by stating that "lower levels of socioeconomic status are associated with a range of lifestyle risk factors for poor health outcomes and lesser
The change in our society from having rich, middle, and poor economic statuses has caused our society to crumble. The increase of low waged workers has increased tremendously. The decline in wages cause parents to work 2-3 jobs just to make the bills, which in turn has caused parents and children’s relationships to fail, which also in turn cause the children to have behavioral issues, which in turn cause violence rates to increase. Every time you turn on the television, all you observe and hear about is violence in our world. Our society is crumbling out of control due to the low wage jobs and inequality of wages among workers and if not addressed and improved our future will not survive.