Shake that thing!

[cyrano]

I now have all six episodes of 'Thirty Days'. I was just struck by the factoid that families that make under $25K a year are twice as likely to divorce. So... sanctity of marriage people, how about a raise in the minimum wage law to preserve marriage? Or a more healthy and robust public welfare system? Think of the children!

Watched 'Last Boy Scout' and 'Presumed Innocent' this weekend. Netflix Noir Film Festival. (: I really enjoyed both of them--very different but at the same time very similar. Each gets four wags.

I got to see my friend Anne (who is now a teacher in Bakersfield) and help her with her lesson plan yesterday, even if I was sad and lame lying on my back guy.

Sitting on the couch very quietly, currently on the 'heat' of the 'heat and cold' programme. The heat is a sticky pad so it's going to hurt to remove it. Plus I'll have to get off the couch to get the freezy thing. I'm not in a big rush. (:

Comments

[mnarra.livejournal.com]

"but then they should have thought about what they are making in money and how can they responsibly raise a child before having one... yeah I know 'accidents happen' ..."

For an overwhelming majority of Americans, having a family is the only part of their lives that they get to decide. If you walked through some of the more impoverished neighborhoods and suggested to people that they don't make enough money to take care of their children, and are therefor irresponsible for having them ... be ready to run.

More than that, though, is a prejudice issue. You are sitting above the median looking down, seeing the unwashed poor wallowing in filth and raising their Jerry Springer audience members, uneducated, shiftless, and without a future beyond what their parents had, and you are saying that what they are planning for, what they are accepting, is not sufficient. The implication is that they and their families and their lifestyle have not been sufficient, and that it is irresponsible of them to have children that will perpetuate their culture.

Make no mistake; poverty in America is a culture. My ex comes from a Poor White Trash background, and PWT is not merely poor and uneducated. There are real cultural values that go with the background, and not all of them are bad values. You might believe that raising clean, educated children is the best choice for the kid, but they would tell you it is better to raise a girl that won't drink too much and a boy that will stay with his wife even after they grow to hate each other.

Poverty does not live in a world of choices.

"someone needs to get off their heiney and get a better job..."

I've been working toward a better job for more than two decades. I still make less than $6 over minimum, and am in high demand. Getting a better job is nearly impossible without the appropriate (and expensive) wardrobe, the appropriate (and expensive) tools, the appropriate (and expensive) education.

[sararainmaker.livejournal.com]

Trust me, I don't look down on the poor. I look down on the people who are lazy and don't try to make the money they need for food and clothing and the simple needs of their family, instead turning on the government to help them.

My husband-to-be came from a family that was in all right, impoverished. What is worse is that his father was a freakin' rocket scientist, he had the schooling and until the defense cutbacks in the 90's he had a very good job. Because of his fathers age at that time he couldn't find a job in his industry to save his life. His family had to move in with his sister for a time being just so they could have a roof over their heads. The man worked his ass off to provide what he could for his family, always trying to improve himself and his family. I admire that, and I think that taught his children more than any school ever could.

Don't get me wrong, I understand wanting to have children... What I don't understand is the people that DON'T work their ass off for their children and just sit and take money from the government never trying to improve the situation they are in at all... ("the situation" being that their children don't have food every day, not that they don't have a shiney new bike).

[mnarra.livejournal.com]

Hopelessness goes along with the poverty culture. See the above point bumblepudding made about day care. When there is no appreciable change in the net income, why bother to try?

As for the possibility of working too many jobs, too many hours...it works, but it takes a toll. I have held multiple jobs while going to school full time, for years. It's ugly. It eventually produces a situational insanity characterized by an inability to prioritize -- not a joke. My ex couldn't even work a single job, be a mother, fight with me, and go to school; she had to quit to do the schooling. My current gets shell-shocked at long hours; two jobs would brutalize her. The ability to hold multiple or long-hour jobs is not as minor an ability as one might think.

If the jobs you can hold are low paying, the stress that comes from working more than one can require treatment (in terms of ice cream, beer, dinner out, so forth) that negates the extra earnings, and, in the end, reduces the laborer to a point that being a spouse and parent are completely beyond him. I worked my tail off, performed as superman ... and, frankly, was not a very good father during that time.

It would have been better for my kids if I'd worked less hard, we had gone to welfare, and they had had me around for guidance, a lack they are paying for now.

[sararainmaker.livejournal.com]

The thing is you did your best for your children.
You taught them, inadvertently about life and about hard work.
You taught them about work ethics and life ethics.
You taught them about responsibility and how to be an adult.

You didn't teach them how to take advantage of the system and how to be lazy and just get away with it.
You didn't teach them that they can place their responsibility onto others.

Thats very admirable.

[mnarra.livejournal.com]

I did not do my best for my children. I could have done much better, but hadn't the balls to end my marriage and take the blame.
I taught my children that, if you are tolerant and forgiving, you will be brutalized.
I taught my children that some people work their asses off so that other people can soak up the benefits.
I taught my children that if you love someone, you will accept her abuse, emotional and physical.
I taught my children that, when you do grow the balls to leave, you lose everything voluntarily to punish yourself for the sin of quitting.

I am not proud of that decade of my parenting.

I am proud of the last two years of my parenting.

They aren't dead. I'm not dead. There's still time to do some right things.

[sararainmaker.livejournal.com]

*hugs*

You didn't teach your children that...
Your ex did. Your ex put you in a position where you had to decide on your family or your sanity. Your ex put you in a position where you had to give up all thoughts of a two parent household for your children.

You had to make the most difficult decision of your life.
You taught your children more good than you know in that period. and yes, you are all still alive, you still have time to improve things even more. Divorce is never easy on children, but with a loving, caring and responsible parent it's a hell of a lot better than the alternative.

*hugs*

[mnarra.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I don't agree, but thank you.

[sararainmaker.livejournal.com]

Sometimes it takes being an adult, being a husband or wife and/or being a parent to truly come into the values and morals our parents have taught us. As a friend of mine said at my wedding shower on Sunday, "Growing up, the people who I admired were everyone BUT my parents. It wasn't until I was grown and a mother of my own children that the persons I admired the most were my parents."

*winks* You are doing just fine... Just don't let them see you chasing after deer in the nude... I know If I had seen one of my parents doing that I would still be going to therapy. :D

[sararainmaker.livejournal.com]

What my friend said was in response to my answer to a "20-questions" about me game... Apparently my Aunt had been sneaking in calling my fiance for the past week and getting all sorts of information about me. Basically it was a twisted version of the newlywed game... anyway the question and my answer: "Who does Kelly admire the most - Her Father"

if you would have asked me that 10 years ago when I got out of high school, I can tell you for sure it would not have been one of my parents. :D

[cerulean-me.livejournal.com]

You might believe that raising clean, educated children is the best choice for the kid, but they would tell you it is better to raise a girl that won't drink too much and a boy that will stay with his wife even after they grow to hate each other.

My parents were poor. I was clean and educated. My friend's parents had money, but she drinks too much and has a drug problem.

These attributes have little to do with money, and more to do with how you raise your children. My children are generally clean- I have a toddler and a preschooler. My children are bright and well educated for their ages. We are careful to ask that people enroll our children in classes at the community center, rather than buy them stuffed animals for birthdays and such.

One can lead a rich life while still living below the poverty line.

[mnarra.livejournal.com]

"My parents were poor. I was clean and educated."

By which I deduce you and your parents were poor, but not poor white trash, that is, not part of that culture.

My parents were poor when I was young; we were not befouled & ignorant. I have been very impoverished since then; I buy groceries and clothing instead of beer and cigarettes. I am not part of that culture, either.

It is tempting to decide, since it is possible to quantify clean, educated, and addicted, that this is a matter of appropriate priorities and that calling PWT a culture is making an excuse on their behalf. I've watched the Clan (my ex's family) for two decades, and disagree. I can't support my feeling with anything but anecdotal evidence.

Mind you, I still want my children to be clean, educated, to know they are loved and be able to say and show that they love in positive ways, to know that violence (emotional and physical) is unacceptable and avoidable, and that (this is the big one, perhaps the defining anti-characteristic of PWT culture) what they do can have a positive effect on their lives. I'm three quarters of the way there; my daughter is there, my son is halfway there.

...which just means that, preferring my culture to theirs, I am willfully prejudiced, trying to supplant the Clan beliefs with my own. I'm okay with that, but that would be the "willful" part of my prejudice.

[mnarra.livejournal.com]

...and you are right. Money is not the sole defining characteristic of the situation. I would say that the difference between Poor and Poor Trash (no need to get racial) is the belief that "what I can do can have a positive effect on my life".

It's a fairly monumental difference.