I was a Head Start Family Educator in the Appalachians for five years. I thought I knew what poor was, until then. Other people would criticize the extremely poor:

• Why don’t they stop having kids if they can’t afford them?
• Why should my tax dollars help someone else not work?
• They should be out there picking up trash on the side of the road if they’re not working.
• Look at ‘em, collecting food stamps and welfare and living like queens.

And on and on; an ugly array of insults addressed at ‘those people.’ As if ‘those people’ enjoyed living in abject poverty. As if ‘those people’ reveled in not knowing how they were going to feed their children after the middle of the month, or keep the lights on, or find the money to fill the propane tank or buy kerosene to heat their shabby homes. As if ‘those people’ enjoyed having their children mocked for wearing dirty clothes, or for having bottle-mouth teeth. As if ‘those people’ didn’t know that their neighbor’s and yes, their fellow church-goers didn’t mock them behind their backs.

What I very quickly learned was that a parent is not going to worry about reading to their kids if they don’t know how they’re going to feed their kids. That they don’t think about bottle mouth and taking their kids to the dentist because they had it, they never saw a dentist, they drank Mountain Dew all the time and had it in their bottles so of course they gave it to their kids in bottles. And pop (soda) was a hell of a lot cheaper than milk, even powdered milk. And food stamps spent on cheap Little Debbie’s snacks would at least guarantee something filled the kids’ bellies.

In other words, I learned that you cannot expect people mired in poverty to do much Beyond merely survive, without some goddamned help. Be it rides to the grocery store, the doctor, the dentist, the library, GED classes, community action, school, etc etc.

Parents mired in poverty are very often so stuck in the present, that they cannot imagine a future that is better for their kids. They can dream, but that is rare. What was so fantastic about the home-based head start program was that we focused on the needs of the family in a microholistic approach: before we could worry about teaching Sammy her ABCs, we would need to figure out if mom or dad knew theirs. Before we could preach healthy food choices, we needed to figure out if the family had a sustainable food source. Before we could talk about the importance of regular doctor checkups for the whole family, if they had health care. And if they had health care, did they have ride to the doctor or dentist? But even before that: did they have a phone to make an appointment? Before we could talk about the older kids’ poor attendance at school — meaning missed meals — we needed to address why it was so hard to get everyone up in the morning? Was there domestic violence in the house? Addiction issues? A general lack of understanding about how school is beneficial?

So, where I am going here is this: I agree with you. All the pretty and correct words in the world won’t make a bit of difference in anyone’s life if their lives are always lived in survival mode.

Thanks for saying this. Consider me a fan.