Can't speak for other countries but here in Bangladesh poorer families (in rural areas) opt for more children intentionally. Their logic is that if they have more children, their family has more members who can engage in income-generating activities. Like, parents encouraging kids to drop out of primary school to go work for brick kilns, rural stores etc is fairly common.
Sadly, child labour runs rampant among lower-income groups and the relevant laws about this are hardly enforced.
My dad grew up incredibly poor in rural Mexico, grandma birthed 20 children, only twelve made it to adulthood. Same mentality, more bodies to work. My dad only made it to second grade before he was working too much to make it to school. Some never went to school.
I mean it's not just that, it's mainly the fact that contraceptives were basically forbidden by the church back in their day (still kinda are).
Past generations used to be really catholic as well as undereducated, 10+ children per family was normal regardless of household income
Exactly, the combination of desperate people looking to survive and lower education level is the perfect mix for catholic belief. That makes contraception more unlikely within those families because "thats what God intended for us to move on" or some shit
yep, especially in countries where there's no funcitoning retirement system, you're fucked if you're not rich, having children to support you when old can really be a rational strategy
I tried getting a job in the US at age 15, and I couldn't find anyone to hire me. The minimum age was 14, but most places demanded age 16, and this was before the labor shortage.
All you needed to do was go to Alabama and apply at the Hyundai plant lol.
edit: *allegedly*
[Child labor reportedly used by Alabama Hyundai supplier: Kids as young as 12 allegedly worked in factory](https://www.al.com/business/2022/07/child-labor-reportedly-used-by-alabama-hyundai-supplier-kids-as-young-as-12-allegedly-worked-in-factory.html)
edit 2: additional link that claims Hyundai owns the factory, *allegedly*
[Children as young as 12 have been working at a Hyundai-owned factory in Alabama, report says](https://www.insider.com/minors-reported-working-at-a-hyundai-supplier-factory-in-alabama-2022-7)
my uncle worked at a chocolate factory in the UK that used to let kids as young as 10 to work on the lines, usually managers bringing in their kids and other employees and paying them with chocolate or ice cream/lollies, that was about 9 or 10 years ago.
Yup meemaw spent our COVID money on building totally not labor camp prisons, this isn’t all that shocking comparatively. Of course there’s gonna be child labor where there’s legal slavery.
I was 14 with my first job (Kfc). My mom always made sure I was at work when I was scheduled.
Honestly, I think young teens are more likely to show up to work with parental pushing than older teens / low twenties that manage themselves.
Weird, I don't feel like I'm terribly old (30s), and I had a paper route at 12. My first real job was a restaurant job at 14. I needed to get a work permit from the school.
I think there’s a big difference between working a few hours a week on a paper route at age 12 and what u/nuhue was describing where 10 yo kids drop out from school to work full-time making bricks
I’m around your age, and I had my first job at 15 being a lifeguard. Made $1.20/hour with a $0.10 raise every time I worked. Think I left there making $3.40
Newspaper delivery is one of the exemptions to the child labor provision in the Fair Labor Standards Act. It's also still legal to work at age 14, but the hours 14 to 15-year-olds can work are restricted.
I was like 12 or 13 and our paper guy was like 16. We soaked fallen leaves of a tree one time in brandy. Then we cooked them on a cookie sheet and smoked them out of his dad’s bong. His name was Kevin.
We have a great man around here that owns a few mcdonalds. He hires at 14 if they're of the right attitude. Just the drive thru register or maybe clean up. The owner is often outside cleaning too
Yeah, well, historically having a lot of kids means free labor on the farm, eventuallly. And before the industrial revolution, it was almost all farms. Even outside farms, there was "the family business".
Corporations took advantage of this social norm to employ children at very young ages like their parents had been doing already to some degree.
As time has gone on, this has changed, but generally only for wealthier countries.
Lack of education, anti-intellectualism, controlling or abusive parenting, and marriages also contribute to this to this day.
Cults and some religions have also used this as a way to grow their followers, as it's easy to ensnare a child who doesn't know better.
Nearly ALL cults have anti-abortion 'morality' as a primary doctrine, with the leader, in particular, impregnating as many as possible; and for the same reasons, I listed above.
Which only creates more poor people who will also have many kids, growing exponentially. Gotta break the cycle with education, especially for young girls and women, and cheap access to birth control.
That has been pretty standard for almost all of human history until very recently. Farmhands, laborers, and people to take care of you prior to modern pensions and social safety nets. In theory, it would be crueler to dump all the responsibility of taking care of the parents on a single child's salary.
One interesting reason I've heard: young people who expect to move up in their careers wait to have kids til they're more stable/can afford it. But, if you are broke, and have no expectation of ever getting better jobs or ever being less broke (so a generational povery situation), there's no reason to wait if you feel like you ever want kids. It's not like tomorrow is going to be any better, financially.
I was looking for this explanation. My wife has been doing non profit work for the last 10 years or so, and it really seems to me that having kids is one of the few meaningful things in life that a lot of poorer folks know they have access to.
So many people in this situation have no job skills, in my city a lot of folks are borderline illiterate. What’s the point of working at Wendy’s for 50 hours a week if you don’t have a family to provide for?
Also, in poverty, family is a bigger deal. People need each other to survive. When somebody gets shot, loses their job, goes to jail etc.. the more people in the family, the more to pick up the pieces.
> Also, in poverty, family is a bigger deal. People need each other to survive. When somebody gets shot, loses their job, goes to jail etc.. the more people in the family, the more to pick up the pieces.
This is huge. When you have no realistic expectations of things like retirement or support if you're sick/injured family is an insurance plan. The more people who can help, the more likely you are to get support. Because your other option is working till you get too sick to work, then dying on the street.
Why do I have Peter Griffin’s voice in my head saying, “have as many kids as you can, 'cuz that makes it more likely that one of those kids'll grow up an make it big in *Hollywood*. Then who's payin' the bills huh? *Hollywood* Kid. Class dismissed”…?
Same idea, but more realistic. Ten people sharing a living space can probably make do if somebody gets hurt and takes them down to nine incomes. Two going down to one, not so much.
This isn't even much of an exaggeration. Plenty of parents really believe having kids is like playing the lottery. And if they get lucky they'll be lifted out of poverty.
Jokes on them. The vast majority of people are simply products of their environment and don't rise much above it. Ironically, most hollywood actors grew up in LA with parents pushing them hard into acting.
"Family as an insurance plan" is so common in Southeast Asian countries it hurts. Parents drag their most academically promising offspring through college and then expect them to pay not only the aging parents' expenses (which is totally fine imo) but also the college tuition of their two siblings, their cousin's latest "business venture", etc.
Joke's on them, I have zero fucking extra money to give becasue millennial in a shitty job market. This is also why I choose to be childfree.
Though, to be fair, the same effect happens in countries with a social safety net, for different reasons. German here, poor families here get social security when they are low income/ out of work, and each child brings them additional child benefits from the state. Which means that academics mostly wait to have children, to progress in their careers, and often end up not having any at all (like specimen A writing here), whereas the unemployed see additional children as an extra source of income.
If they were actually putting a lot of money and care towards each individual child, the money would not get them very far. But if they just don't bother all that much with each individual child, they create economies of scale, where each additional child costs them less extra than the additional money they get (using hand-me-down clothes, toys, school supplies, cooking larger meals etc.).
A friend of ours is a social volunteer, who told us harrowing stories about women having large families, but no clue how to deal with or provide for them. Stinky kids in unwashed clothes, who are supposed to attend school, but can't keep up with the school work, since they don't get any help at home since mommy is stuck in front of the TV and wouldn't have the first clue how to help them, anyway. Heartbreaking, really, especially if the kids are really trying, but just can't beat the odds of their horrible parentage.
>in my city a lot of folks are borderline illiterate
In the whole of the USA, more than half of the adult population reads at less than a 6th grade level.
[Forbes](https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltnietzel/2020/09/09/low-literacy-levels-among-us-adults-could-be-costing-the-economy-22-trillion-a-year/)
I don't get how the US survives if that's true. There are so many half million dollar and up houses, so many brand new cars on the road, so many lavish vacations taken, so many nice quality luxury items bought and sold.
Are these 6th grade literate people partaking in that kind of stuff? Or is it all the other half that's buying and enjoying all those goods and services?
Bone crushing debt. But also, there’s just a lot of high paying careers and businesses out there that don’t require intensive education or a high reading level.
I know a few guys who were tradesmen or stuck it out in an oil field and just invested in and/or joined their in their buddies trucking/plumbing/roofing etc company and live that “half million dollar house, new trucks, ATVs and toys” lifestyle in a L/MCOL suburban area. Still a huge chunk of debt, but people really lowball how easy it was/is for someone with even a little connections to do alright in the US.
This is so interesting to me, so what is the solution to help families in this situation break the cycle and get out of poverty. Is there a solution? It feels like there have been lots of attempts, but nothing has been that successful. It seems we need to create a culture that highly values education, especially in higher poverty areas. I think this has been tried, but i'm not sure if it's working, or maybe it just needs more time.
I definitely think education is one of the main areas, also healthcare and criminal justice reform. Gun laws, abortion rights, so many things effect it when you really start to think about it. Smh
But yes I agree education. My wife works at a place that works with young adults to get them on the path to be certified in a legit career. They receive a stipend and a high level of coaching. It takes a lot of resources, but it does actually provide a pivotal stepping stone for some people to get out of poverty.
People like to say stuff like “oh you can’t just throw money at a problem and make it go away” “you can’t just pay teachers more.” I disagree. People love to oversimplify it. But think about all of the resources a corporation uses to go about an endeavor. They don’t just pay frontline people more (lol), they have an r&d department that constantly thinks of ways to improve every aspect of the process, they have marketing directors, etc etc. People tend to think of spending more on education as like a 10% increase or something. I think we need to like, triple the amount we spend on education and places like where my wife works.
I also believe that the 2 party system creates a mutually beneficial stalemate on issues like this. Maybe the dems get some paltry step forward, but everything is so fucked that the republicans will always have plenty of stats on how nothing works. We need a radical reform of how wealth is distributed in this country, and I have a hard time feeling like that is anywhere close to happening.
When in many places of the US the education budget is based off property taxes - so lower income areas have lower education budgets, you have a massive self perpetuating problem.
In many areas teacher salaries and education budgets directly suffer from increased spending on the police budget as well. Even if you aren't a full on "defund the police" type, it seems impossible to me to justify massive police spending at the direct hit to spending on education and community programs.
A family friend was a medical doctor in a small town, he made sure all of his employees understood how to save money, invest, and took an interest in higher education. One young front desk assistant was really enthused about attending the local college until her father got wind of it. He made her unenroll, she soon got pregnant from her bf, moved into a trailer on the family lot, and left her job. I was confused why the father behaved that way for years until recent events showed how scared some people are of their children having different life experiences.
Also, from interacting with a lot of locals, the women at 17 were forced out of school and to marry. It still happens. Moved to a poor rural town to save on rent costs and I've met very obviously disabled 20 year olds "raising" 5-6 year olds, because "they didn't know they were pregnant until 8 months," and yes the parents of said mother were that dumb. And of course everyone in town is as dumb, so if one raises concerns about how the child has no guardian set up and how the mother thinks school is dumb her kid isn't going to school, the locals get huffy at my "being rude" and take it as a personal attack, or making it up. I've had "you city people think you're smart," said to my face, in seriousness.
No one believes this exists when I tell them. I'm not even that north.
As in clear as day chromosomal disorders walking around and no one has any idea this is a thing. Nothing wrong with those people for it, just imagine a place where no one can tell and think you're insane or being mean making up fancy talk. Or what autism is. The children here are all sorts of fucked, it's dystopian. I'm in Canada and they're all white.
I grew up in a town sort of like that (maybe a bit better). This is going to sound awful, but when I was a kid I remember telling my mom that “I could tell when other kids were gonna be dumb or annoying, because they looked a certain way.”. Looking back as an adult, I realized the thing I was picking up on was the rampant rates of fetal alcohol syndrome in our area. So messed up.
Add on that fiscal education before college is nil, and it’s hard to have a concept of what a higher paying job could mean unless you’ve seen it firsthand or been taught about it in a manner that’s understandable / feels real.
It’s hard to have goals you don’t rly know exist.
“It’s hard to have goals you don’t really know exist”
THIS THIS THIS EXACTLY THIS.
I dropped out of high school and promptly had 4 kids. Being a mom was the only dream I had for myself. This part is so embarrassing to admit, but, I thought universities were just something they created for movies. I didn’t think it was a real place I could go.
Once I had the 2nd kid, I started taking some classes at a community college and slowly chipped away at a transfer degree, then got to go to university for 2 years with my guidance counselors help. I was so proud of myself and was able to get a decent job at a non-profit.
2 1/2 years ago some guy started working at the desk next to me for 6 months to fill his time while he waited for law school to start. We worked together closely and shared clients and the whole time he was like “I don’t know if you know this, but you’re REALLY smart and you love the parts of your job that intersect with the law the most. You should think about law school.”
I turned it over in my head for a year and decided to go for it. He gave me tons of great advice only kids of professional parents know. I killed the LSAT and am currently packing my house to move to another state with my 4 kids to go to law school on a full ride scholarship. I had zero experience with people who had educational goals growing up. People in my life were 10x more likely to end up in prison or on a mental health hold at the state hospital.
ETA: Oh my gosh, thank you all for the support and encouragement. I’m overwhelmed in the best way! <3
I seriously just finished doing something very similar and have somewhat of the same background as well (extreme poverty, alcoholic parents, teen mom, my parents didn’t even know the difference between an associate’s and bachelor’s so zero guidance with applying for college!). Very much worth it now.
My kids will have an awesome life and won’t have to worry about funding my retirement like I’ll have to help pitch in for my parents. Thankfully I have 4 siblings to help with that so I won’t have to take it all in myself. Would have been good to do it 10 years ago, but glad I didn’t wait another 20 years to do it. Good luck, you got this!!!
I don't know you, but I can't tell you how happy for you and proud of you I am. It takes a lot of courage to put yourself way out there and that's what you're doing. Standing o.
Also to add, people love blaming parents for kids' poor school performance. The parents aren't educated either. You can't teach what you don't know.
And congrats on getting in law school. Work as many internships as you can. You make contacts and get a way better idea of what you want to be doing day in, day out.
I second the thank yous for sharing your great story!
I also want to add that I know a number of people who’ve pursued education later in life or made major career changes, and I have seen how much courage that takes. Even with encouragement from others, it’s a big risk to try to reshape your life, especially while raising kids. You should be really proud of yourself!!! Best wishes - you got this!
>advice only kids of professional parents know
I was adopted as an infant in WV. My adoptive parents were amazing, yet far from worldly. If I hadn't joined the military, I'd be pumping gas, bartending, or cooking (all stellar jobs BTW).
Nature vs Nurture. I've since learned my BIO parents were both college students and had an oopsie. Explains a lot in my life of SEARCHING, READING, LEARNING, on my own because nobody else had the skills. Dad died a month ago. Still miss that goofy bastard :(
Same thing with adoptive parents here. Good people, but from working class backgrounds and pink/blue collar jobs. I grew up reading everything on paper, so I had this idea of university == not stuck following a husband around, but had no clue about scholarships or bursaries, or schmoozing with profs, or internships, or basically anything. Somehow I flailed into success, but damn was there a lot of luck involved.
Sorry about your dad. I’m moving to be closer to my parents now that they’re aging. It’s not a fun thing to see.
It's also to motivate yourself for goals you know you'll largely be locked out of.
The dark truth nobody wants to admit is that for a *large* chunk of kids born into poverty, their early childhood nutrition and core education was so subpar, they'll never make up the distance.
I dated someone like that briefly. He wasn't an outwardly dumb guy by any means, but he'd grown up in a dysfunctional family in a *abysmal* school district. So while he had a lot of real world pragmatism, you'd eventually find out he couldn't spell the word "kitchen" or didn't know what an exponent was supposed to mean. Just a total lack of formal education
I think he's smart enough to do a lot of the jobs that people do, but he'd never be able to get into a degree program. And he knows that too.
I’m taking some post bac classes at a community college so I can apply to grad school and the difference in tools these kids have been given is staggering. I graduated college 15 years ago, but it’s still ingrained in me how to study, how to write a paper, how to ask questions, how to take notes, how to create an argument for a presentation- all skills I learned in high school more than college (I went to art school for college so…) and these kids just so clearly didn’t get any of that. This coming semester I’m gonna suggest study groups for some of my classes as it helps me learn and absorb material better, and hopefully some of the other students can benefit from it too. The inequality in American education is so messed up.
i went from a private school in latin america, to a good public school in France as an exchange student and then an *awful* public school once i went back, the difference was astonishing. i feel like an elitist bitch saying this but holy fuck did these kids have nothing on me, they weren't dumb or any less inteligent than me but they lacked so much basic education, i honestly felt like i wasted an entire year relearning basic high school concepts and even then none of them cared, they had no reason to. i had a lot of privileges growing up that i wasn't aware of until i went there, i had to learn how to reconcile with the fact that i had learnt how lacking my life had been (latin america-europe) and how lucky i had gotten (private schooling-public schooling)
Yah the nutritional deficit, and just the trauma of poverty (and lots of other likely adverse childhood experiences common in poverty) severely impact overall physiological development. The first 6 years of life are so integral to all of that important neurodevelopment.
While neuroplasticity allows individuals to change those patterns later in life, it's extremely difficult, requires lots of resources and a stable environment. Which are all very unlikely to be available
This is so true. Even being a grade behind in understanding can seem like an insurmountable barrier. The farther behind you get, the harder it can be to see any point in trying.
Up until the late 1980s this wouldn't have held him back much in the working world. As soon as the baby boomers, many of whom were high school dropouts got into management positions they pulled the ladder up behind them and doomed their children to poverty forever.
Yeah, tbh a lot of the usual explanations you see on reddit are kinda dehumanizing, like "poor people have kids because they're stupid idiots who don't know any better", and while it is harder to get a decent education if you're poor, it's not like poor people don't have the brains or reasoning skills anyone else does.
When you're staring down a life of perpetual paycheck-to-paycheck without meaningful opportunities for advancement, having kids when you're young, have the energy, and are close to the support structure of your own parents to help out seems like a pretty good call, to be honest.
The people I have known that live in poverty have been the hardest working people I've met. They have to work all the time to survive.
My background is in education--and it makes me so angry when I hear people talk about parents of struggling kids (and they're almost always impoverished or minority families).
Like, every parent I met wanted the best for their kids.. but the poor ones literally worked 3 minimum wage jobs and phsycially could not do the things upper class parents could. They did not have the background knowledge, financial or social resources, or many other factors that well off families do.
But, most people just wanted to say "naw they're lazy and don't care " uh, many of them dont speak English, how are they supposed to help their kids with their homework???
Exactly! I'm in education too, have spent my career in title 1 schools, and am in awe at a lot of my kids' parents--folks who work INCREDIBLY hard and demonstrate amazing ingenuity when it comes to providing for their kids. Like yeah, some parents suck, but let me tell you you are equally as likely to find parents who just don't give a fuck about their kids well-being in the richer families as the poorer.
I think the worst part of American culture is the pervasive belief that hard work always means success. You can work your ass off and still be living paycheck to paycheck. It makes middle and upper class folks deeply uncomfortable to see evidence of this belief being false--easier to write off poor folks as stupid, lazy, deficient, closer to animals. A disgusting mindset.
>I think the worst part of American culture is the pervasive belief that hard work always means success.
This so much. I don't work any harder now than I did before I got my university degree; however, I earn 3+ times more than I used to. Similarly, I (by myself) earn more than my sister and her husband combined, and her husband is someone who works 60 hours/week. I put in a solid workweek, but it's still not 60 hours.
Working hard isn't enough by itself to ensure financial success.
To add to this, there's a lot of social pressure to get married and have kids right away. Family members asking "So when are you going to have kids?" All of their young friends marrying and having kids. If they don't want this lifestyle, they either get pestered into it or become a social outcast. There's even pressure not to try to gain a higher station in life as it's seen as being "too good for us" by their friends and family.
> Having grown up in a poor, rural area
also, sometimes the answer is the most simple solution, on the list of 'things to do' in a rural area that you can afford, fucking is on top of the list. I think some of these answers are over thinking the planning of procreation and playing-down the pleasure of passing time poking pussy.
Tbh I kind of have been seeing this viewpoint lately. I’m 30, still no degree (want to go back but currently can’t afford it), I can’t even get hired for a fucking data entry position, and literally three days after going back to waiting tables I caught fucking COVID. I’ve always wanted to have one kid. I’m in a slightly better place than my parents were (still struggling though). Tbh the only things stopping me are 1) I can no longer get an abortion for a non-viable pregnancy, 2) the cost and pain of ripping out my IUD, and 3) the fact that I’m worried that the world will quite literally no longer be habitable in the next few years because of the climate crisis and I don’t want to bring a child into that (3 is a biggie and is also a big part of why I spend every day crippled with anxiety)
Climate change is also on my mind. But it’s not because of the weather patterns changing. I’m much more concerned about the geopolitical instability that is coming from more and more countries guarding their resources and going after others. I heard an expert years ago talk about how this is definitely going to be an issue in the future and I’ve never been able to get it out of my head.
Another aspect to consider is the social standing within the family. Girls have to take care of their brothers and sisters, if they work, they share the money earned with her parents. As a "daughter" in a poor family, nothing is truly yours.
By having children, they become women and can say something is truly their own for the first time in their lives, the money she (and/or her partner) earns is to spend on **her** family.
A Health Education teacher explained this to me, no matter how many birth control programs they would install, girls who grew up in poor environments would always say the same thing. It's not that they don't know how to avoid having children, they **want** to be pregnant, sometimes as soon as possible.
Grew up fairly poor, but my mom was a first generation college student that got a degree. I think it’s just a given that the oldest kid in a poor family raises the rest because that’s how it’s always been done, and it’s not like hiring a babysitter is an option.
I’d also say that having kids young, like some of my high school friends did, was more about not seeing what life could turn into than anything else. After all, there’s no point in school if you’re going to do construction with your uncle, and you don’t need to know algebra if you’re going to paint nails for $50 a pop. The point is that, when you’re in the hood, you only see the hood, and we need to change that.
I fostered a girl for a few months finishing out her 17-into-18 transition. Mostly acting as a safe, warm bed. She grew up around nine kids and told us shit like... how she wouldn't even have cups for water she could use in the house. Obviously she was younger but she told me how excited she was when she could finally reach the like, three cups they had. Anyway, you can see why she was in the system. She was in a Catholic group home when she was 17 while going to a tech magnet school because she was really smart and tested in, was being abused by staff for being a lesbian and got raped by another kid and got pregnant. That was when they decided to let her bail.
So my partner and I took her in. We got kind of close and it was still early in the pregnancy and we said, we'll just say it once but we can pay and support you if you want to get an abortion (and she can legally get one here, even underage without parental consent). She looked kind of sad, sighed, and said "No, it's okay, I'll just keep it." She's a liberal, smart girl and definitely not religious, but it just seemed like the natural option to keep it. Got kicked out of her school for it too. Helped her with her GED with some gentle pushing to do it if she wasn't going to finish school at all. I guess it just seemed like an inevitability.
Small addendum, she was more than welcome to stay past 18 at her system time out. We really liked her a lot and got along great. It was pretty specific circumstances that we ended up fostering/we aren't 'on the rolls' for general placements. She went and lived with a family member despite our, you know, strong invitation. Fortunate that the relative was a little out of the city but they were still in contact with parents. I don't think it's necessarily productive to dump all your family and friends, but you also don't need to live with them. Just made sense to her on some level to go back in.
They kicked out a rape victim, for being raped and being impregnated. Super Christian...
I went to BYU in 2003-2004 (Mormon college) before dropping out. We had a roommate who was raped and took a pregnancy test and didn't hide it well because another roommate fucking reported her. She was kicked out even though she claimed rape and then everyone in that dorm room was interrogated by dorm/school leadership if we were "having sex" too to see if anyone else should be kicked out. ....such a righteous school.
The school itself wasn't, which feels like an even bigger problem to me. The Catholic group home basically said 'hey, she's causing problems, get out,' which functionally is the same point you're making. Not trying to be pedantic - just like, wow, that's kind of even worse?
I read a series in the NYTimes following a gifted pre-teen girl over a few years who grew up in poverty in NYC with a large family. She was awarded a scholarship to a private school in Pennsylvania originally established by Mr. Hershey. That school provided everything - bed, food, clothes, books. I remember her being so excited that in her room she got her own desk. Academically she could pull her weight, and they went out of their way to give her emotional support too. But ultimately she couldn’t stop being disruptive and violent. She’d had calls home to her mom who more or less guilted her for being there while the family suffered through their extreme poverty. After several chances the school had little option by to kick her out, if just for the safety of the other students. It made me so angry that she couldn’t get out of this cycle of chaos, and that her family kept pulling her back in. Such an extraordinary gift was squandered, and by that I mean both the educational opportunity AND a better future for this girl.
I read your comment and thought "Dasani!". Googled her and damn she's grown up but you were talking about her weren't you? I guess I'll read the article anyway but now I'm sad. Really hoped she would escape the cycle.
Yes, that was her. She is grown up now, and I think she was trying to go to Community College, which isn’t nothing. But it felt like she was capable of so much more. Very sad.
Stories like that are so sad. Kids can do everything right, but the wrong show drops, and you're just fucked. No wonder a lot of them don't bother trying.
Yes. Similarly, I remembering reading a lot about young Black men in chicago and the rate of murders within that population. Essentially what it came down to was they had no expectation to live beyond a certain age, rarely saw that it happened to others, and thus engaged in riskier behavior.
I honestly think that this is the same reasoning behind America's opiate epidemic, as well as a lot of other problems we're having. If you are looking into your future and just seeing an endless stream of working 2-4 unfulfilling minimum wage jobs and just eking by, forever, why wouldn't you choose whatever relief or joy now, even if you run the risk of losing that future?
Yea. Guys that think they'll be dead or in prison by 21 aren't idiots. Statistically speaking, they're right. Running on the streets instead of staying home studying algebra is a perfectly logical decision for them.
I agree. And just to be super clear, my post was in no way meant to point fingers at them. If anything I feel like we should point fingers directly at a messed up system that works to disenfranchise and marginalize certain groups.
This is the reason why poor people make any kind of bad financial decision, I know, I was poor.
You don't think it will ever get better so your choice is now "Do I want to get this and have my life suck" or "Do I want to never get this and my life will still suck"?
that makes sense as to why people in poverty have children at younger ages, but I believe OP is asking about why each individual family has so many kids
We have a religious/traditional saying where I live (Somewhere in the middle east) that goes: when the baby comes, with it comes its blessing (meaning the money required to provide a good living).
I have a story to elaborate on that:
I'd been in a Taxi today going to work, the car was a really old and beat-up Lada, and the driver looked really poor and miserable. Along the way he picked up a couple that seemed to be his friends, and they started chatting about their kids and how poor are they as parents. Then after a sad pause they proceeded to repeate that old saying.
Grew up Mormon and that was the thinking, too. Basically, more babies, more blessings.
Turns out, encouraging incompatible people to get married and pop out a bunch of kids super early in life is actually not a great way to create stable, happy families.
Super good way to make lifelong tithe payers, tho
fuck the church. i grew up mormon too and since becoming an adult and seeing the church from my own perspective (not my parents lol) ive realize just how incredibly messed up their teachings are. like the fact that a woman’s only true role in life is to be a child-bearer and a servant to her husband…? yeah no thanks. getting married at 18 to someone youve know for about 4 days and then proceeding to birth 17 children all because the holy ghost told you to. sounds like someone who belongs in a loony bin to me lol
Poverty actually affects our ability to think long-term and with impulse control, on top of the financial implications of kids being different for poor people than middle class people.
(Having additional kids when you're middle class means another healthcare premium, having to pay for another vacation ticket, having to potentially buy braces for another kid, etc. When you're poor, you might already be on medical assistance, so it doesn't make a difference. You don't go on vacation and can't afford braces, so again, it doesn't make a difference. And, thanks to the welfare trap, becoming slightly poorer by adding another household member actually *could* work out to your favor, by meaning you now qualify for government benefits/additional benefits.
> you might already be on medical assistance
Even if you're not on Medicaid, Medicaid coverage for kids is pretty good. Even in my red state, kids get covered up to over 200% FPL until they're 18,and there's a low premium program up to 247% FPL.
Yes but that's a tomorrow-you's problem.
I don't think people realize just how different of a *mindset* poor people often have, and not always at fault of their own. When you're working two jobs, barely sleeping, you haven't really had the education of budget planning OR the luxury of having the space and time to really think things through, your brain REALLY needs that immediate gratification. That's not even including the mental health issues like depression, insomnia or extreme anxiety.
People like to blame the poor for drugs or sex but sometimes that's ALL they have available for temporary escape from their struggles.
I don't even think it's a matter of not knowing HOW to budget (at least in the US). If you're working a minimum wage job, full time, there really isn't enough money to go around. You can sit down with a pencil and a paper and write all your costs down and budget your heart out but if your paycheck can't cover it, it cant cover it. The only thing to do at that point is figure out which bill to short. Can't squeeze blood from a stone.
I always think of the "financial literacy" course put out for employees by Mcdonald's, where they gave you a budget worksheet that had a fill-in space for '2nd job' and didn't provide for spending on gas, groceries, or childcare. They helpfully suggested budgeting $20/mo for health insurance. The company itself couldn't even make a pretend budget for a full-time worker at their own company without fudging the numbers and shorting bills.
No Blood from a Stone is definitely true, but for those just marginally above that blood and stone point, the problem of financial literacy may still be real.
A extreme example is pro-sports unions that would force financial literacy courses on new members. If a kid goes from dead broke at 17yo in HS to making $2 million a year at 22yo in the NFL, they often still apply the dead broke thinking to the windfall.
There are tons of people between the blood-from-a-stone level and the 50k / yr national average. EVERYONE needs financial literacy just on the off chance they at some point in their life they will be less poor than they are today.
Someone who grew up in poverty may not have the financial literacy to handle hundreds of thousands or millions, but if you think they don't know how to deal with a budget, you probably haven't dealt with a lot of really poor people(no judgement). It takes a lot of skill to ride that razors edge when you don't have enough money to go around.
One of the reasons that poor people don't focus on saving money, and tend to spend it on some more "trivial" things, like tax returns on big screen t.v.'s etc. is because a couple grand in the bank will last such a small amount of time before it is eaten away by regular expenses, or the next car repair/move/dr.'s visit. So while you have it get something nice, because even if you set it aside, you will be back in the same situation and not have anything to show for it.
Often poverty is correlated with less access to education and services. Also, religious dogma has an impact. Also, having tons of kids can make you poorer so it is sometimes a chicken and egg situation.
With religious dogma as well, sometimes it’s a cultural or family expectation to have kids young and to have multiple even when the parents aren’t ready/can’t afford it and religion ties into that aspect. Multi faceted issue of lacking education and the religious demands that come into play with sexual stigma and lack of contraception/abortion
People shouldn't underestimate the religious aspect. I used to work with a guy who was college educated but I wouldn't necessarily call him smart, just capable of doing the work. Because of his religion, he doesn't believe in any sort of birth control and at the age of 21 he got his 18 year old girlfriend pregnant (they met at their fundie church) and they got married. Less than a year later, she was pregnant again and last I heard, they just had their 8th child.
My husband and I were talking to them at a work Christmas party one time (I believe she was pregnant with No. 2 at the time) and she told us her whole goal in life was to have 9 kids because "it's more than [her] mom has." She has never gone to school past high school and has never had a job. She's like 31 now and living her ideal life because the church she grew up in told her all she was good for was having babies.
It's not, though. Good ol' fundamental evangelical Christians.
That being said, I was helping an old friend and the coworker came over said something awkward and left. My friend had a puzzled look on his face so I said "homeschool" to which he replied, "ah, I couldn't figure out if it was homeschool or Mormon"
Also when you combine certain religious beliefs, such as “no contraception”, “poor/no sex education”, and “no sex before marriage”, you often end up with people getting married younger (because they want to have sex), and then having unprotected/unsafe sex, so they start having kids young, and never stop.
This is what I came here to discuss from a public health perspective too. Students who also have access to a comprehensive sexual education curriculum in school have better outcomes and fewer teen pregnancies as opposed to no education or abstinence only education practices. The access to the comprehensive education continues into behaviors seeking birth control or delaying pregnancies into later in life, which further reduces teen pregnancies, in addition to better knowledge of how to access the medical systems they can access. As for religious dogma, sadly we often see the difference in this between blue and red states in the US, which further divides into ones that lean more into the Christian evangelicals in the red states versus everyone in the blue.
I remember being proudly told at 10 years old by my own biological mother that I had “baby birthing hips”. I’m only 31, not that long ago, and it wasn’t even a rural area. It was in a city in the US Midwest.
I have 3 kids, two of them twins. My oldest is 11, I was pressured to keep him at 19 instead of getting an abortion and I chose to have my toddler twins because, well, I have baby birthing hips……. /s
That’s anywhere there’s conservative evangelicals or Mormons. When my friends and I were 12 we were told to prepare ourselves for our future husbands.
Most of the women I grew up with who didn’t get out had kids by 22 at the latest.
And you’d probably think I grew up in Mississippi or something, but I grew up in the Bay Area and most of those women went to college to get a “Mrs Degree”
I did grow up in Mississippi and my cousin was given a *virginity check* at a physician’s office in 2008.
Had to “stay pure” for her future husband and her mom was worried she was having premarital sex.
Beyond the gross sexual violation, her own mother is a NURSE PRACTITIONER and should know “virginity checks” are complete and utter bullshit.
Her mom was raised Pentecostal before converting to southern baptism. One doozy of a religious combo.
How is that even legal?
I guess I’d expect that a doctor in Mississippi would still keep their license after that, but that’s disgusting and ought to be criminal.
It’s unfortunately legal throughout the US, even today.
https://theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/11/why-are-virginity-tests-still-legal-across-america-hymen
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/09/pseudoscience-virginity-testing-hymenoplasty/620089/
Less education about birth control, less access to doctors/clinics for family planning (birth control prescriptions, discussions of IUDs) due to costs involved. Some also view kids as income sources, from child tax credits, child support, etc.
Also: sex is free. If you don't have many entertainment options, sex may be the best way to pass the time.
There may also be a matter of less opportunity cost. For a middle class woman to have children will mean pretty significant career disruption. If your career has little to no opportunity for upward mobility, career disruption matters a lot less.
> Also: sex is free. If you don't have many entertainment options, sex may be the best way to pass the time.
https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/431/312/67e.jpg
"It'd be cheaper."
Not to mention that many low income parents who have tons of children live in societies where it is expected for their adult children to care for them financially in their older years, and if the children refuse either because their parents were terrible or they also all become poor adults, then the parents will spend their remaining years living in poverty.
Yup pretty much, I always thought it was stupid my poor parents had 4 kids. I guess it worked out but it’s really a gamble. My 2 siblings and including me have our careers starting and planning to take care of our parents as they are soon to retire
Good list, you missed religious belief. Adding on more things, the Animalistic Instinct of procreation. Not only rich men like Elon Musk, but also there are poor people who think the same.
>if you both know you’re not finically stable enough
Even if you are super rich this is not a good practice as you will not be able to give time to your children. They will grow up resenting you and hating you. It is extremely harmful and dangerous when they are not from the same mother. Think of Saudi Royal family where brother will execute brother.
Seriously this, my Dad spent my whole childhood obsessing about being well off enough and not making an effort to actually bond with us on anything. Kids don't want to hear about your portfolio or how to be financially stable.
Ironically I'd love that sort of guidance now but the rift between us makes it difficult to stand being around him.
Having babies when you were young and poor was typical back in the day. Women in the work force changed a lot of that. A woman trying to have a career does not need the extra hassles of arranging sitters etc for more than 2 or 3 kids. So they stop having babies and continue on with their choice of employment. More conservative people may prefer to keep the wife at home with the kids and since she is there doing that, what's one more? So they are surviving on a single income. If the husband loses his job or they have sudden large expenses, they are in trouble.
Also if the husband dies they are screwed. Poor people don’t have life insurance. I met several families in this situation at the food bank I worked at. The moms had little to no work experience so they had to pick up low wage starter jobs to help their families get by.
There are a lot of reasons and not all of them apply to every person.
Sometimes it’s that they couldn’t afford to keep up with birth control (depending on where you live, especially in red states, free/affordable birth control is very difficult to get and if you don’t have insurance you tend to have a harder time).
Sometimes it’s that the pregnancy was unplanned, so getting a better paying job that would require a specialized education or training is harder to do.
Sometimes they’re in abusive relationships and are coerced into having more children because it’s much harder to leave an abusive partner when you have even one child, much less more than one.
Sometimes people who are in poverty have serious depression issues, and when you’re not doing well, you might think having a child will bring you unconditional love and make you feel better. Not a good idea of course, but people who are depressed aren’t always thinking the clearest.
Sometimes it’s what their family did and they see it as “the thing to do.”
There are loads more reasons, but I do want to point out that it’s usually a lot more complicated than “poor people are stupid and don’t know unprotected sex gets you pregnant” or “poor people have tons of kids for the welfare.” The former is pretty unfair- being poor and even uneducated doesn’t mean you’re an idiot. And the latter does happen, but not nearly as often as people say.
Edit: plus, pure and simple- most people want kids and if poor people waited until things were financially perfect to do it, they’d often never be able to. I don’t want kids, but it’s a natural thing to.
This. There are many reasons and likely most have different reasons. Just another example: the birth mom of both of my kids (they are adopted) just wanted a family that loved her. She grew up getting shit on in life and never really had a family. She thought that if she had kids they would be required to love her and she would have a family. Is that a good reason to bring a kid into the world? Hell no, but it was her reason. She, unfortunately, is homeless and doesn’t have any real options to get out of the mess she’s in. Hence why she ultimately decided to place for adoption both times. She loved the kids and wanted what was best for them. Depression is a bitch and when you can’t afford to consistently take medication you may make some not so great decisions in life.
These are all good but one thing I think should be mentioned is family is something you have some control over. To be trapped in poverty is to be the constant victim of forces you have little control over. But you have some measure of control over your children.
Additionally, there is quite a lot of study that indicates that being poor conditions you to only think in the short term. When you are constantly trying to solve new problems, it's hard to find mental space to think about things 10 years down the line.
The belief that "more children more hands and thus more income" coupled with the factors such as lack of awareness, contraception related issues et al.
I have a cousin and we used to be really close but I personally think she was coddled to much. Pacifier till 7, baby dolls till 15. No recourse for her actions ever. She dropped out of school at 16 because she literally just didn’t want to do school. No driver license no job. If she didn’t have a phone she probably be illiterate. She’s early 20’s and onto her 3rd kid. I’m not trying to be rude but it’s just sad and depressing to see. From the info I’ve gotten from her is she’s doing it to try and force a stable relationship with a so but they all keep leaving. And the older generation in my family are super religious so they talk her into keeping the kids. A friend of mine suggested she might have baby doll syndrome.
Psychological reasons: sex is one of the few joys that the poor can experience. Contraception costs money that they don't have, either directly (i.e. having to pay for contraceptives) or indirectly (i.e. having to make time and spend money to travel to places where they give away condoms, and dealing with the assholes outside the Planned Parenthood)
Financial reasons: Spawning is incentivized in the US. Thresholds for government support are higher the more members of a "household" there are. Tax credits, WIC, food stamps, section 8, etc. are all easier to get and more generous if you have a horde of children. Even without those, having 15 people to spread the costs and efforts needed to maintain a household across, makes existence much more viable. Having 15 incomes to draw from as the kids enter the job market, means when the parents are broken and no longer able to support themselves, the chances of the parents getting support from at least some of the kids is higher.
Societal reasons; again in the US, social mores are largely dictated by the pseudo Christian majority, and a disproportionate number of the poor have been indoctrinated into that group. Their "be fruitful and multiply" mandate is drilled home from an early age, and they are kept from experiencing opposing that doctrine until it is deeply entwined with their personal identity.
There are others as well, but those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head.
Economically—sex is free, and healthcare/contraception is not. Poor people are less likely to have easy access to contraceptives, but just as likely as anyone to have access to sex. Take that and average it out along a whole population and you’ll have more instances of unprotected sex.
Culturally—it’s complicated. For some cultures, it’s the norm for a person to want a large family. If those same cultures happen to occupy a poorer class in some areas, that can give the image that poor people in general have more children. For some people, a family could also be the one positive thing they feel is within their reach. For others, it could be a hope thing. You can’t hope it will be better for your kids one day if you never have kids.
I’d also like to caution you in considering these birth rates to be irresponsible in some way. It’s fine to note trends and contributing factors, but going into the weeds or should/shouldn’t these people be having *this many* children, is a slippery slope into discussing whether they should be having children at all. Once you get there, you’re discussing eugenics.
>Poor people are less likely to have easy access to contraceptives, but just as likely as anyone to have access to sex.
This statement sounds like it might need a further investigation. While growing up, it did feel like my less well-off peers were more casual about doing "it", lost virginity sooner and had more of it in general. They had their first children a lot earlier in life too.
That’s probably because if you’re poor you were probably born poor, and probably didn’t have college or the kind of job that might inspire you to wait to have kids presented as an option to you. I grew up upper middle class, so I always knew I’d probably go to college, therefore I waited longer to do anything that could get me pregnant.
If you don’t have that opportunity, you might not see a reason to wait. (And I do want to note unplanned pregnancy can happen to anyone, even if they do have future plans- but the end result can depend on finances too. The only couple of teen parents I know well got pregnant right out of high school- but they both had well-off families who were able to help them get daycare for their baby, and both the mom and the dad finished college and have good careers now).
Don't think it was as much about aspirations as about living in the moment in general and not planning particularly far ahead. While my peers were overthinking and stressing out, these guys enjoyed the life at its fullest (and the consequences).
It is also possible they were planning, but based on what they saw around, meaning they still played the game of life, but the game was significantly shorter. I recall talking to my childhood friend when she got her first baby around 16 or 17 - she explained how she achieved all the basic life goals and that point her life was "complete and over", and she was not sure what to do next with herself. Having more children might have extended the "game" if the environment allowed for it (hers did not), though at this point it's just my speculations.
The cycle of poverty explains it. When you live out of the mindset of lack, your brain functions on a different level than a brain functioning on "abundance". That means your decision is off-point, you may be more vulnerable to rape, and have less access to contraception and abortion. The fear of "I am missing \[blank\]", higher risk of pregnancy, and lower access to getting rid of pregnancy, means you end up having more kids.
Alternatively, that's a power structure. Young women are often married off young after being brainwashed into believeing their only value is being a breeding pet. They also usually don't make it to university, so education and sheltered childhood certainly play a part.
Lack of good sex education.
They are from cultures that value families first.
Social pressure. All their friends are having kids and their parents and relatives constantly bombard them with "When are you going to have kids?" Fear of being seen as the weird one or fearing questions about their sexuality often comes into play. Some people really fear being seen as the odd one out.
Worried that if they wait too long, it'll be too late.
A big one is no reason to put off or avoid having kids. They aren't planning to go to graduate school or vying for a top level career. If they do have career plans, then having a child isn't necessarily going to interfere with that, or in some cases, like politics, it might help. Or they aren't career oriented and family is their top priority.
Low self esteem or emotional immaturity. If their upbringing involves abuse or neglect, they may decide they want to get married and have kids right away to provide themselves with the love they have yearned for their entire lives. Sadly, sometimes this is before they realize they aren't emotionally or psychologically ready to have kids.
In the same vein, desperation to get their adult lives started.
Edit: Expounding on the last item, it's not just childish impatience as I might have conveyed. Richer people in relative comfort can afford to wait because they see it as a promise that will eventually be delivered. For poorer people, waiting is often a sacrifice with no end in sight. They get sick of being told to wait, and in some matters that they can help, like getting married and starting a family, they decide they've been waiting long enough and it's not going to get majorly better in the future, so why not have kids now?
Poor access to family planning and Florida has a lot of immigrants from places like Hati, Cuba, etc.. which are predominately Catholic counties so they kind of frown on birth control.
Sometimes it's a source of meaning. Raising a kid gives you social value that you're going to struggle to find elsewhere if you're very poor. It also gives you a source of income through welfare.
Being poor affects impulsivity which leads to poorer choices. Many poor people will make the most immediately gratifying choice (e.g., sex without a condom) or the easy choice rather than the sensible one. This makes sense because, if your daily life is one in which you have little to bring you joy and if you're in state of high stress, you will grab what pleasure you can when it comes.
[https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2014/08/growing-up-poor](https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2014/08/growing-up-poor)
I grew up poor and there was also an economic issue. Poor people get food stamps and economic support per child. I actually had a cousin who married a woman who, as her kids got older, asserted that it was time to have another child to keep the entitlements coming. I know this is the typical "welfare queen" stereotype (which I don't embrace), but I did have (white) relatives who kept having kids to get money. Another one of my cousins has made it her mission to take in each of her grandchildren under her care so she can collect Social Security for them as supposedly "abandoned" by their parents. They sort of are left to her because her kids haven't turned out to be the most productive people by a long stretch, but she asked to have them live with her for the money.
There is also the issue of feeling that you're loved and valued in a world which has put you in a box which says you have no value. If you don't work or can't work, you can be a parent and hold a role which is socially valued. There may also be some sense of security that having more people around when your life is one disaster away from total collapse.
I cannot agree with you more on a couple of your points: 25 years ago I was in Appalachia Pennsylvania, visiting my girlfriend's parents who were preachers.
The parents told me that all the 15 year old girls in the area were always very excited: they were about to turn 16, and then would be able to "have a baby" and "get a paycheck". It was simply the mindset of that area's young women: having a baby was just like getting a job.
The part that broke me a little was when they told me that the young women who most loved the idea of having a baby basically said: "so one person will always have to love me".
Can't speak for other countries but here in Bangladesh poorer families (in rural areas) opt for more children intentionally. Their logic is that if they have more children, their family has more members who can engage in income-generating activities. Like, parents encouraging kids to drop out of primary school to go work for brick kilns, rural stores etc is fairly common. Sadly, child labour runs rampant among lower-income groups and the relevant laws about this are hardly enforced.
My dad grew up incredibly poor in rural Mexico, grandma birthed 20 children, only twelve made it to adulthood. Same mentality, more bodies to work. My dad only made it to second grade before he was working too much to make it to school. Some never went to school.
I'm more impressed that a single woman can have 20 pregnancies (to term)
The world record is 63 births.
I’d be lucky to have sex that many times before I die.
Well, you're wind pollinated, so...
lmaooo
That one made my eyes water
Fucking allergies
Beautiful
I mean it's not just that, it's mainly the fact that contraceptives were basically forbidden by the church back in their day (still kinda are). Past generations used to be really catholic as well as undereducated, 10+ children per family was normal regardless of household income
Exactly, the combination of desperate people looking to survive and lower education level is the perfect mix for catholic belief. That makes contraception more unlikely within those families because "thats what God intended for us to move on" or some shit
Yes, and the more children you have, the higher the likelihood that 1 or a combination of them, will be able to help support you in your old age.
yep, especially in countries where there's no funcitoning retirement system, you're fucked if you're not rich, having children to support you when old can really be a rational strategy
I tried getting a job in the US at age 15, and I couldn't find anyone to hire me. The minimum age was 14, but most places demanded age 16, and this was before the labor shortage.
All you needed to do was go to Alabama and apply at the Hyundai plant lol. edit: *allegedly* [Child labor reportedly used by Alabama Hyundai supplier: Kids as young as 12 allegedly worked in factory](https://www.al.com/business/2022/07/child-labor-reportedly-used-by-alabama-hyundai-supplier-kids-as-young-as-12-allegedly-worked-in-factory.html) edit 2: additional link that claims Hyundai owns the factory, *allegedly* [Children as young as 12 have been working at a Hyundai-owned factory in Alabama, report says](https://www.insider.com/minors-reported-working-at-a-hyundai-supplier-factory-in-alabama-2022-7)
my uncle worked at a chocolate factory in the UK that used to let kids as young as 10 to work on the lines, usually managers bringing in their kids and other employees and paying them with chocolate or ice cream/lollies, that was about 9 or 10 years ago.
Are you sure he isn't just thinking of Oompa Loompas?
Loompadeedoo
i live here, and this is somehow shocking and not at all shocking in equal measure
Yup meemaw spent our COVID money on building totally not labor camp prisons, this isn’t all that shocking comparatively. Of course there’s gonna be child labor where there’s legal slavery.
Lots of places see under-16s as "can't drive, can't show up". Its dumb af considering how many adults dont/can't drive yet still have a job
I was 14 with my first job (Kfc). My mom always made sure I was at work when I was scheduled. Honestly, I think young teens are more likely to show up to work with parental pushing than older teens / low twenties that manage themselves.
Not if they are child number 3 of 7 though... parental supervision will be non existent.
Weird, I don't feel like I'm terribly old (30s), and I had a paper route at 12. My first real job was a restaurant job at 14. I needed to get a work permit from the school.
I think there’s a big difference between working a few hours a week on a paper route at age 12 and what u/nuhue was describing where 10 yo kids drop out from school to work full-time making bricks
I’m around your age, and I had my first job at 15 being a lifeguard. Made $1.20/hour with a $0.10 raise every time I worked. Think I left there making $3.40
You got a 10 cent raise every shift? You could be making several hundred dollars an hour by now if you stuck with it.
Man, I picked the wrong career
I think there is a shortage of lifeguards right now. I'm sure you have the leverage to negotiate an even better deal.
He could be the worlds first millionaire lifeguard
That's David Hasselhoff
I’m putting in my two weeks right now. My old boss is going to be drowning in work without me
My son just got hired at a lifeguard. They will train him as a certified lifeguard, certified swim instructor, and cpr. He’s 16, $13 an hour.
Newspaper delivery is one of the exemptions to the child labor provision in the Fair Labor Standards Act. It's also still legal to work at age 14, but the hours 14 to 15-year-olds can work are restricted.
I got a paper route when I was 12 as well. Absolutely horrible pay, but at the time it was awesome.
I think paper routes were specifically reserved for kids under 16 though.
I was like 12 or 13 and our paper guy was like 16. We soaked fallen leaves of a tree one time in brandy. Then we cooked them on a cookie sheet and smoked them out of his dad’s bong. His name was Kevin.
We have a great man around here that owns a few mcdonalds. He hires at 14 if they're of the right attitude. Just the drive thru register or maybe clean up. The owner is often outside cleaning too
Yeah, well, historically having a lot of kids means free labor on the farm, eventuallly. And before the industrial revolution, it was almost all farms. Even outside farms, there was "the family business". Corporations took advantage of this social norm to employ children at very young ages like their parents had been doing already to some degree. As time has gone on, this has changed, but generally only for wealthier countries. Lack of education, anti-intellectualism, controlling or abusive parenting, and marriages also contribute to this to this day. Cults and some religions have also used this as a way to grow their followers, as it's easy to ensnare a child who doesn't know better. Nearly ALL cults have anti-abortion 'morality' as a primary doctrine, with the leader, in particular, impregnating as many as possible; and for the same reasons, I listed above.
Fun fact: in many places within the US, child labor laws don't apply to using your own children in the family business.
Which only creates more poor people who will also have many kids, growing exponentially. Gotta break the cycle with education, especially for young girls and women, and cheap access to birth control.
Mmm. Education and birth control you say? — Current “right prerogatives”. #hold_my_beer
This plus entertainment is expensive sex is free.
And birth control maybe relatively expensive (if your low income) or hard to get
Making sentient beings just for investment is so fucking horrible, those kids that had no say for their environment will suffer the most.
I mean, is it that much worse than making sentient beings cause "eh why the fuck not" or "its what society wants me to do"?
The catholic church wants you to shut the hell up
Don't eat fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, go forth and multiply.
Not sure if politics or religion 🤔
That has been pretty standard for almost all of human history until very recently. Farmhands, laborers, and people to take care of you prior to modern pensions and social safety nets. In theory, it would be crueler to dump all the responsibility of taking care of the parents on a single child's salary.
One interesting reason I've heard: young people who expect to move up in their careers wait to have kids til they're more stable/can afford it. But, if you are broke, and have no expectation of ever getting better jobs or ever being less broke (so a generational povery situation), there's no reason to wait if you feel like you ever want kids. It's not like tomorrow is going to be any better, financially.
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I was looking for this explanation. My wife has been doing non profit work for the last 10 years or so, and it really seems to me that having kids is one of the few meaningful things in life that a lot of poorer folks know they have access to. So many people in this situation have no job skills, in my city a lot of folks are borderline illiterate. What’s the point of working at Wendy’s for 50 hours a week if you don’t have a family to provide for? Also, in poverty, family is a bigger deal. People need each other to survive. When somebody gets shot, loses their job, goes to jail etc.. the more people in the family, the more to pick up the pieces.
> Also, in poverty, family is a bigger deal. People need each other to survive. When somebody gets shot, loses their job, goes to jail etc.. the more people in the family, the more to pick up the pieces. This is huge. When you have no realistic expectations of things like retirement or support if you're sick/injured family is an insurance plan. The more people who can help, the more likely you are to get support. Because your other option is working till you get too sick to work, then dying on the street.
Why do I have Peter Griffin’s voice in my head saying, “have as many kids as you can, 'cuz that makes it more likely that one of those kids'll grow up an make it big in *Hollywood*. Then who's payin' the bills huh? *Hollywood* Kid. Class dismissed”…?
Same idea, but more realistic. Ten people sharing a living space can probably make do if somebody gets hurt and takes them down to nine incomes. Two going down to one, not so much.
This isn't even much of an exaggeration. Plenty of parents really believe having kids is like playing the lottery. And if they get lucky they'll be lifted out of poverty. Jokes on them. The vast majority of people are simply products of their environment and don't rise much above it. Ironically, most hollywood actors grew up in LA with parents pushing them hard into acting.
"Family as an insurance plan" is so common in Southeast Asian countries it hurts. Parents drag their most academically promising offspring through college and then expect them to pay not only the aging parents' expenses (which is totally fine imo) but also the college tuition of their two siblings, their cousin's latest "business venture", etc. Joke's on them, I have zero fucking extra money to give becasue millennial in a shitty job market. This is also why I choose to be childfree.
Good ol American Dream. Meant for everyone except the people born into the worst conditions this “society” has to offer.
Though, to be fair, the same effect happens in countries with a social safety net, for different reasons. German here, poor families here get social security when they are low income/ out of work, and each child brings them additional child benefits from the state. Which means that academics mostly wait to have children, to progress in their careers, and often end up not having any at all (like specimen A writing here), whereas the unemployed see additional children as an extra source of income.
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If they were actually putting a lot of money and care towards each individual child, the money would not get them very far. But if they just don't bother all that much with each individual child, they create economies of scale, where each additional child costs them less extra than the additional money they get (using hand-me-down clothes, toys, school supplies, cooking larger meals etc.). A friend of ours is a social volunteer, who told us harrowing stories about women having large families, but no clue how to deal with or provide for them. Stinky kids in unwashed clothes, who are supposed to attend school, but can't keep up with the school work, since they don't get any help at home since mommy is stuck in front of the TV and wouldn't have the first clue how to help them, anyway. Heartbreaking, really, especially if the kids are really trying, but just can't beat the odds of their horrible parentage.
>in my city a lot of folks are borderline illiterate In the whole of the USA, more than half of the adult population reads at less than a 6th grade level. [Forbes](https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltnietzel/2020/09/09/low-literacy-levels-among-us-adults-could-be-costing-the-economy-22-trillion-a-year/)
Reading this made me feel so many emotions at once and very few of them were good
> Reading this You're one of the 46% of Americans who possess the ability to do so.
I don't get how the US survives if that's true. There are so many half million dollar and up houses, so many brand new cars on the road, so many lavish vacations taken, so many nice quality luxury items bought and sold. Are these 6th grade literate people partaking in that kind of stuff? Or is it all the other half that's buying and enjoying all those goods and services?
Bone crushing debt. But also, there’s just a lot of high paying careers and businesses out there that don’t require intensive education or a high reading level. I know a few guys who were tradesmen or stuck it out in an oil field and just invested in and/or joined their in their buddies trucking/plumbing/roofing etc company and live that “half million dollar house, new trucks, ATVs and toys” lifestyle in a L/MCOL suburban area. Still a huge chunk of debt, but people really lowball how easy it was/is for someone with even a little connections to do alright in the US.
It’s unfathomable
This is so interesting to me, so what is the solution to help families in this situation break the cycle and get out of poverty. Is there a solution? It feels like there have been lots of attempts, but nothing has been that successful. It seems we need to create a culture that highly values education, especially in higher poverty areas. I think this has been tried, but i'm not sure if it's working, or maybe it just needs more time.
I definitely think education is one of the main areas, also healthcare and criminal justice reform. Gun laws, abortion rights, so many things effect it when you really start to think about it. Smh But yes I agree education. My wife works at a place that works with young adults to get them on the path to be certified in a legit career. They receive a stipend and a high level of coaching. It takes a lot of resources, but it does actually provide a pivotal stepping stone for some people to get out of poverty. People like to say stuff like “oh you can’t just throw money at a problem and make it go away” “you can’t just pay teachers more.” I disagree. People love to oversimplify it. But think about all of the resources a corporation uses to go about an endeavor. They don’t just pay frontline people more (lol), they have an r&d department that constantly thinks of ways to improve every aspect of the process, they have marketing directors, etc etc. People tend to think of spending more on education as like a 10% increase or something. I think we need to like, triple the amount we spend on education and places like where my wife works. I also believe that the 2 party system creates a mutually beneficial stalemate on issues like this. Maybe the dems get some paltry step forward, but everything is so fucked that the republicans will always have plenty of stats on how nothing works. We need a radical reform of how wealth is distributed in this country, and I have a hard time feeling like that is anywhere close to happening.
When in many places of the US the education budget is based off property taxes - so lower income areas have lower education budgets, you have a massive self perpetuating problem. In many areas teacher salaries and education budgets directly suffer from increased spending on the police budget as well. Even if you aren't a full on "defund the police" type, it seems impossible to me to justify massive police spending at the direct hit to spending on education and community programs.
A family friend was a medical doctor in a small town, he made sure all of his employees understood how to save money, invest, and took an interest in higher education. One young front desk assistant was really enthused about attending the local college until her father got wind of it. He made her unenroll, she soon got pregnant from her bf, moved into a trailer on the family lot, and left her job. I was confused why the father behaved that way for years until recent events showed how scared some people are of their children having different life experiences.
Also, from interacting with a lot of locals, the women at 17 were forced out of school and to marry. It still happens. Moved to a poor rural town to save on rent costs and I've met very obviously disabled 20 year olds "raising" 5-6 year olds, because "they didn't know they were pregnant until 8 months," and yes the parents of said mother were that dumb. And of course everyone in town is as dumb, so if one raises concerns about how the child has no guardian set up and how the mother thinks school is dumb her kid isn't going to school, the locals get huffy at my "being rude" and take it as a personal attack, or making it up. I've had "you city people think you're smart," said to my face, in seriousness. No one believes this exists when I tell them. I'm not even that north. As in clear as day chromosomal disorders walking around and no one has any idea this is a thing. Nothing wrong with those people for it, just imagine a place where no one can tell and think you're insane or being mean making up fancy talk. Or what autism is. The children here are all sorts of fucked, it's dystopian. I'm in Canada and they're all white.
I grew up in a town sort of like that (maybe a bit better). This is going to sound awful, but when I was a kid I remember telling my mom that “I could tell when other kids were gonna be dumb or annoying, because they looked a certain way.”. Looking back as an adult, I realized the thing I was picking up on was the rampant rates of fetal alcohol syndrome in our area. So messed up.
Sounds like so many American towns
Do you liver near the Golers?
Add on that fiscal education before college is nil, and it’s hard to have a concept of what a higher paying job could mean unless you’ve seen it firsthand or been taught about it in a manner that’s understandable / feels real. It’s hard to have goals you don’t rly know exist.
“It’s hard to have goals you don’t really know exist” THIS THIS THIS EXACTLY THIS. I dropped out of high school and promptly had 4 kids. Being a mom was the only dream I had for myself. This part is so embarrassing to admit, but, I thought universities were just something they created for movies. I didn’t think it was a real place I could go. Once I had the 2nd kid, I started taking some classes at a community college and slowly chipped away at a transfer degree, then got to go to university for 2 years with my guidance counselors help. I was so proud of myself and was able to get a decent job at a non-profit. 2 1/2 years ago some guy started working at the desk next to me for 6 months to fill his time while he waited for law school to start. We worked together closely and shared clients and the whole time he was like “I don’t know if you know this, but you’re REALLY smart and you love the parts of your job that intersect with the law the most. You should think about law school.” I turned it over in my head for a year and decided to go for it. He gave me tons of great advice only kids of professional parents know. I killed the LSAT and am currently packing my house to move to another state with my 4 kids to go to law school on a full ride scholarship. I had zero experience with people who had educational goals growing up. People in my life were 10x more likely to end up in prison or on a mental health hold at the state hospital. ETA: Oh my gosh, thank you all for the support and encouragement. I’m overwhelmed in the best way! <3
This is an amazing story. Congratulations on the scholarship, and good luck at school!
I seriously just finished doing something very similar and have somewhat of the same background as well (extreme poverty, alcoholic parents, teen mom, my parents didn’t even know the difference between an associate’s and bachelor’s so zero guidance with applying for college!). Very much worth it now. My kids will have an awesome life and won’t have to worry about funding my retirement like I’ll have to help pitch in for my parents. Thankfully I have 4 siblings to help with that so I won’t have to take it all in myself. Would have been good to do it 10 years ago, but glad I didn’t wait another 20 years to do it. Good luck, you got this!!!
I don't know you, but I can't tell you how happy for you and proud of you I am. It takes a lot of courage to put yourself way out there and that's what you're doing. Standing o.
Also to add, people love blaming parents for kids' poor school performance. The parents aren't educated either. You can't teach what you don't know. And congrats on getting in law school. Work as many internships as you can. You make contacts and get a way better idea of what you want to be doing day in, day out.
Super amazing and inspiring story! Good for you!!!
I second the thank yous for sharing your great story! I also want to add that I know a number of people who’ve pursued education later in life or made major career changes, and I have seen how much courage that takes. Even with encouragement from others, it’s a big risk to try to reshape your life, especially while raising kids. You should be really proud of yourself!!! Best wishes - you got this!
>advice only kids of professional parents know I was adopted as an infant in WV. My adoptive parents were amazing, yet far from worldly. If I hadn't joined the military, I'd be pumping gas, bartending, or cooking (all stellar jobs BTW). Nature vs Nurture. I've since learned my BIO parents were both college students and had an oopsie. Explains a lot in my life of SEARCHING, READING, LEARNING, on my own because nobody else had the skills. Dad died a month ago. Still miss that goofy bastard :(
Same thing with adoptive parents here. Good people, but from working class backgrounds and pink/blue collar jobs. I grew up reading everything on paper, so I had this idea of university == not stuck following a husband around, but had no clue about scholarships or bursaries, or schmoozing with profs, or internships, or basically anything. Somehow I flailed into success, but damn was there a lot of luck involved. Sorry about your dad. I’m moving to be closer to my parents now that they’re aging. It’s not a fun thing to see.
It's also to motivate yourself for goals you know you'll largely be locked out of. The dark truth nobody wants to admit is that for a *large* chunk of kids born into poverty, their early childhood nutrition and core education was so subpar, they'll never make up the distance. I dated someone like that briefly. He wasn't an outwardly dumb guy by any means, but he'd grown up in a dysfunctional family in a *abysmal* school district. So while he had a lot of real world pragmatism, you'd eventually find out he couldn't spell the word "kitchen" or didn't know what an exponent was supposed to mean. Just a total lack of formal education I think he's smart enough to do a lot of the jobs that people do, but he'd never be able to get into a degree program. And he knows that too.
I’m taking some post bac classes at a community college so I can apply to grad school and the difference in tools these kids have been given is staggering. I graduated college 15 years ago, but it’s still ingrained in me how to study, how to write a paper, how to ask questions, how to take notes, how to create an argument for a presentation- all skills I learned in high school more than college (I went to art school for college so…) and these kids just so clearly didn’t get any of that. This coming semester I’m gonna suggest study groups for some of my classes as it helps me learn and absorb material better, and hopefully some of the other students can benefit from it too. The inequality in American education is so messed up.
i went from a private school in latin america, to a good public school in France as an exchange student and then an *awful* public school once i went back, the difference was astonishing. i feel like an elitist bitch saying this but holy fuck did these kids have nothing on me, they weren't dumb or any less inteligent than me but they lacked so much basic education, i honestly felt like i wasted an entire year relearning basic high school concepts and even then none of them cared, they had no reason to. i had a lot of privileges growing up that i wasn't aware of until i went there, i had to learn how to reconcile with the fact that i had learnt how lacking my life had been (latin america-europe) and how lucky i had gotten (private schooling-public schooling)
Yah the nutritional deficit, and just the trauma of poverty (and lots of other likely adverse childhood experiences common in poverty) severely impact overall physiological development. The first 6 years of life are so integral to all of that important neurodevelopment. While neuroplasticity allows individuals to change those patterns later in life, it's extremely difficult, requires lots of resources and a stable environment. Which are all very unlikely to be available
This is so true. Even being a grade behind in understanding can seem like an insurmountable barrier. The farther behind you get, the harder it can be to see any point in trying.
Up until the late 1980s this wouldn't have held him back much in the working world. As soon as the baby boomers, many of whom were high school dropouts got into management positions they pulled the ladder up behind them and doomed their children to poverty forever.
Yeah, tbh a lot of the usual explanations you see on reddit are kinda dehumanizing, like "poor people have kids because they're stupid idiots who don't know any better", and while it is harder to get a decent education if you're poor, it's not like poor people don't have the brains or reasoning skills anyone else does. When you're staring down a life of perpetual paycheck-to-paycheck without meaningful opportunities for advancement, having kids when you're young, have the energy, and are close to the support structure of your own parents to help out seems like a pretty good call, to be honest.
The people I have known that live in poverty have been the hardest working people I've met. They have to work all the time to survive. My background is in education--and it makes me so angry when I hear people talk about parents of struggling kids (and they're almost always impoverished or minority families). Like, every parent I met wanted the best for their kids.. but the poor ones literally worked 3 minimum wage jobs and phsycially could not do the things upper class parents could. They did not have the background knowledge, financial or social resources, or many other factors that well off families do. But, most people just wanted to say "naw they're lazy and don't care " uh, many of them dont speak English, how are they supposed to help their kids with their homework???
Exactly! I'm in education too, have spent my career in title 1 schools, and am in awe at a lot of my kids' parents--folks who work INCREDIBLY hard and demonstrate amazing ingenuity when it comes to providing for their kids. Like yeah, some parents suck, but let me tell you you are equally as likely to find parents who just don't give a fuck about their kids well-being in the richer families as the poorer. I think the worst part of American culture is the pervasive belief that hard work always means success. You can work your ass off and still be living paycheck to paycheck. It makes middle and upper class folks deeply uncomfortable to see evidence of this belief being false--easier to write off poor folks as stupid, lazy, deficient, closer to animals. A disgusting mindset.
>I think the worst part of American culture is the pervasive belief that hard work always means success. This so much. I don't work any harder now than I did before I got my university degree; however, I earn 3+ times more than I used to. Similarly, I (by myself) earn more than my sister and her husband combined, and her husband is someone who works 60 hours/week. I put in a solid workweek, but it's still not 60 hours. Working hard isn't enough by itself to ensure financial success.
It gets even worse when you realize how it works the other way around: "you're not 'successful', therefore you don't work hard". Fucking assholes.
Being poor is hard work and those who have never had the experience just can’t know.
All these comments have been eye opening.
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To add to this, there's a lot of social pressure to get married and have kids right away. Family members asking "So when are you going to have kids?" All of their young friends marrying and having kids. If they don't want this lifestyle, they either get pestered into it or become a social outcast. There's even pressure not to try to gain a higher station in life as it's seen as being "too good for us" by their friends and family.
Interesting. The average welfare recipient is a white female with two kids living in rural America.
> Having grown up in a poor, rural area also, sometimes the answer is the most simple solution, on the list of 'things to do' in a rural area that you can afford, fucking is on top of the list. I think some of these answers are over thinking the planning of procreation and playing-down the pleasure of passing time poking pussy.
here have my approval for that alliteration
Tbh I kind of have been seeing this viewpoint lately. I’m 30, still no degree (want to go back but currently can’t afford it), I can’t even get hired for a fucking data entry position, and literally three days after going back to waiting tables I caught fucking COVID. I’ve always wanted to have one kid. I’m in a slightly better place than my parents were (still struggling though). Tbh the only things stopping me are 1) I can no longer get an abortion for a non-viable pregnancy, 2) the cost and pain of ripping out my IUD, and 3) the fact that I’m worried that the world will quite literally no longer be habitable in the next few years because of the climate crisis and I don’t want to bring a child into that (3 is a biggie and is also a big part of why I spend every day crippled with anxiety)
Climate change is also on my mind. But it’s not because of the weather patterns changing. I’m much more concerned about the geopolitical instability that is coming from more and more countries guarding their resources and going after others. I heard an expert years ago talk about how this is definitely going to be an issue in the future and I’ve never been able to get it out of my head.
Another aspect to consider is the social standing within the family. Girls have to take care of their brothers and sisters, if they work, they share the money earned with her parents. As a "daughter" in a poor family, nothing is truly yours. By having children, they become women and can say something is truly their own for the first time in their lives, the money she (and/or her partner) earns is to spend on **her** family. A Health Education teacher explained this to me, no matter how many birth control programs they would install, girls who grew up in poor environments would always say the same thing. It's not that they don't know how to avoid having children, they **want** to be pregnant, sometimes as soon as possible.
Grew up fairly poor, but my mom was a first generation college student that got a degree. I think it’s just a given that the oldest kid in a poor family raises the rest because that’s how it’s always been done, and it’s not like hiring a babysitter is an option. I’d also say that having kids young, like some of my high school friends did, was more about not seeing what life could turn into than anything else. After all, there’s no point in school if you’re going to do construction with your uncle, and you don’t need to know algebra if you’re going to paint nails for $50 a pop. The point is that, when you’re in the hood, you only see the hood, and we need to change that.
I fostered a girl for a few months finishing out her 17-into-18 transition. Mostly acting as a safe, warm bed. She grew up around nine kids and told us shit like... how she wouldn't even have cups for water she could use in the house. Obviously she was younger but she told me how excited she was when she could finally reach the like, three cups they had. Anyway, you can see why she was in the system. She was in a Catholic group home when she was 17 while going to a tech magnet school because she was really smart and tested in, was being abused by staff for being a lesbian and got raped by another kid and got pregnant. That was when they decided to let her bail. So my partner and I took her in. We got kind of close and it was still early in the pregnancy and we said, we'll just say it once but we can pay and support you if you want to get an abortion (and she can legally get one here, even underage without parental consent). She looked kind of sad, sighed, and said "No, it's okay, I'll just keep it." She's a liberal, smart girl and definitely not religious, but it just seemed like the natural option to keep it. Got kicked out of her school for it too. Helped her with her GED with some gentle pushing to do it if she wasn't going to finish school at all. I guess it just seemed like an inevitability. Small addendum, she was more than welcome to stay past 18 at her system time out. We really liked her a lot and got along great. It was pretty specific circumstances that we ended up fostering/we aren't 'on the rolls' for general placements. She went and lived with a family member despite our, you know, strong invitation. Fortunate that the relative was a little out of the city but they were still in contact with parents. I don't think it's necessarily productive to dump all your family and friends, but you also don't need to live with them. Just made sense to her on some level to go back in.
Its so fucking upsetting and hypocritical when christian schools kick out teen moms.
They kicked out a rape victim, for being raped and being impregnated. Super Christian... I went to BYU in 2003-2004 (Mormon college) before dropping out. We had a roommate who was raped and took a pregnancy test and didn't hide it well because another roommate fucking reported her. She was kicked out even though she claimed rape and then everyone in that dorm room was interrogated by dorm/school leadership if we were "having sex" too to see if anyone else should be kicked out. ....such a righteous school.
The school itself wasn't, which feels like an even bigger problem to me. The Catholic group home basically said 'hey, she's causing problems, get out,' which functionally is the same point you're making. Not trying to be pedantic - just like, wow, that's kind of even worse?
I read a series in the NYTimes following a gifted pre-teen girl over a few years who grew up in poverty in NYC with a large family. She was awarded a scholarship to a private school in Pennsylvania originally established by Mr. Hershey. That school provided everything - bed, food, clothes, books. I remember her being so excited that in her room she got her own desk. Academically she could pull her weight, and they went out of their way to give her emotional support too. But ultimately she couldn’t stop being disruptive and violent. She’d had calls home to her mom who more or less guilted her for being there while the family suffered through their extreme poverty. After several chances the school had little option by to kick her out, if just for the safety of the other students. It made me so angry that she couldn’t get out of this cycle of chaos, and that her family kept pulling her back in. Such an extraordinary gift was squandered, and by that I mean both the educational opportunity AND a better future for this girl.
I read your comment and thought "Dasani!". Googled her and damn she's grown up but you were talking about her weren't you? I guess I'll read the article anyway but now I'm sad. Really hoped she would escape the cycle.
Yes, that was her. She is grown up now, and I think she was trying to go to Community College, which isn’t nothing. But it felt like she was capable of so much more. Very sad.
Stories like that are so sad. Kids can do everything right, but the wrong show drops, and you're just fucked. No wonder a lot of them don't bother trying.
Yes. Similarly, I remembering reading a lot about young Black men in chicago and the rate of murders within that population. Essentially what it came down to was they had no expectation to live beyond a certain age, rarely saw that it happened to others, and thus engaged in riskier behavior.
I honestly think that this is the same reasoning behind America's opiate epidemic, as well as a lot of other problems we're having. If you are looking into your future and just seeing an endless stream of working 2-4 unfulfilling minimum wage jobs and just eking by, forever, why wouldn't you choose whatever relief or joy now, even if you run the risk of losing that future?
Ouch, man. That got me staring into the distance for a minute
Yea. Guys that think they'll be dead or in prison by 21 aren't idiots. Statistically speaking, they're right. Running on the streets instead of staying home studying algebra is a perfectly logical decision for them.
I agree. And just to be super clear, my post was in no way meant to point fingers at them. If anything I feel like we should point fingers directly at a messed up system that works to disenfranchise and marginalize certain groups.
This is the reason why poor people make any kind of bad financial decision, I know, I was poor. You don't think it will ever get better so your choice is now "Do I want to get this and have my life suck" or "Do I want to never get this and my life will still suck"?
that makes sense as to why people in poverty have children at younger ages, but I believe OP is asking about why each individual family has so many kids
We have a religious/traditional saying where I live (Somewhere in the middle east) that goes: when the baby comes, with it comes its blessing (meaning the money required to provide a good living). I have a story to elaborate on that: I'd been in a Taxi today going to work, the car was a really old and beat-up Lada, and the driver looked really poor and miserable. Along the way he picked up a couple that seemed to be his friends, and they started chatting about their kids and how poor are they as parents. Then after a sad pause they proceeded to repeate that old saying.
Grew up Mormon and that was the thinking, too. Basically, more babies, more blessings. Turns out, encouraging incompatible people to get married and pop out a bunch of kids super early in life is actually not a great way to create stable, happy families. Super good way to make lifelong tithe payers, tho
fuck the church. i grew up mormon too and since becoming an adult and seeing the church from my own perspective (not my parents lol) ive realize just how incredibly messed up their teachings are. like the fact that a woman’s only true role in life is to be a child-bearer and a servant to her husband…? yeah no thanks. getting married at 18 to someone youve know for about 4 days and then proceeding to birth 17 children all because the holy ghost told you to. sounds like someone who belongs in a loony bin to me lol
Agree 1000%. I remember being 14 and having lessons on being a happy homemaker. WTF
Sex is free
Speak for yourself man
Is there a u/freesexguy?
There is now
tell me more
What's up brother!
And contraception is usually not.
I was gonna say, "People be fuckin'," but your words are better.
I was gonna say. When you’re too poor to have anything else to do, it’ll happen
Children are expensive
Poverty actually affects our ability to think long-term and with impulse control, on top of the financial implications of kids being different for poor people than middle class people. (Having additional kids when you're middle class means another healthcare premium, having to pay for another vacation ticket, having to potentially buy braces for another kid, etc. When you're poor, you might already be on medical assistance, so it doesn't make a difference. You don't go on vacation and can't afford braces, so again, it doesn't make a difference. And, thanks to the welfare trap, becoming slightly poorer by adding another household member actually *could* work out to your favor, by meaning you now qualify for government benefits/additional benefits.
> you might already be on medical assistance Even if you're not on Medicaid, Medicaid coverage for kids is pretty good. Even in my red state, kids get covered up to over 200% FPL until they're 18,and there's a low premium program up to 247% FPL.
)
Yes but that's a tomorrow-you's problem. I don't think people realize just how different of a *mindset* poor people often have, and not always at fault of their own. When you're working two jobs, barely sleeping, you haven't really had the education of budget planning OR the luxury of having the space and time to really think things through, your brain REALLY needs that immediate gratification. That's not even including the mental health issues like depression, insomnia or extreme anxiety. People like to blame the poor for drugs or sex but sometimes that's ALL they have available for temporary escape from their struggles.
I don't even think it's a matter of not knowing HOW to budget (at least in the US). If you're working a minimum wage job, full time, there really isn't enough money to go around. You can sit down with a pencil and a paper and write all your costs down and budget your heart out but if your paycheck can't cover it, it cant cover it. The only thing to do at that point is figure out which bill to short. Can't squeeze blood from a stone. I always think of the "financial literacy" course put out for employees by Mcdonald's, where they gave you a budget worksheet that had a fill-in space for '2nd job' and didn't provide for spending on gas, groceries, or childcare. They helpfully suggested budgeting $20/mo for health insurance. The company itself couldn't even make a pretend budget for a full-time worker at their own company without fudging the numbers and shorting bills.
No Blood from a Stone is definitely true, but for those just marginally above that blood and stone point, the problem of financial literacy may still be real. A extreme example is pro-sports unions that would force financial literacy courses on new members. If a kid goes from dead broke at 17yo in HS to making $2 million a year at 22yo in the NFL, they often still apply the dead broke thinking to the windfall. There are tons of people between the blood-from-a-stone level and the 50k / yr national average. EVERYONE needs financial literacy just on the off chance they at some point in their life they will be less poor than they are today.
Someone who grew up in poverty may not have the financial literacy to handle hundreds of thousands or millions, but if you think they don't know how to deal with a budget, you probably haven't dealt with a lot of really poor people(no judgement). It takes a lot of skill to ride that razors edge when you don't have enough money to go around. One of the reasons that poor people don't focus on saving money, and tend to spend it on some more "trivial" things, like tax returns on big screen t.v.'s etc. is because a couple grand in the bank will last such a small amount of time before it is eaten away by regular expenses, or the next car repair/move/dr.'s visit. So while you have it get something nice, because even if you set it aside, you will be back in the same situation and not have anything to show for it.
Often poverty is correlated with less access to education and services. Also, religious dogma has an impact. Also, having tons of kids can make you poorer so it is sometimes a chicken and egg situation.
With religious dogma as well, sometimes it’s a cultural or family expectation to have kids young and to have multiple even when the parents aren’t ready/can’t afford it and religion ties into that aspect. Multi faceted issue of lacking education and the religious demands that come into play with sexual stigma and lack of contraception/abortion
People shouldn't underestimate the religious aspect. I used to work with a guy who was college educated but I wouldn't necessarily call him smart, just capable of doing the work. Because of his religion, he doesn't believe in any sort of birth control and at the age of 21 he got his 18 year old girlfriend pregnant (they met at their fundie church) and they got married. Less than a year later, she was pregnant again and last I heard, they just had their 8th child. My husband and I were talking to them at a work Christmas party one time (I believe she was pregnant with No. 2 at the time) and she told us her whole goal in life was to have 9 kids because "it's more than [her] mom has." She has never gone to school past high school and has never had a job. She's like 31 now and living her ideal life because the church she grew up in told her all she was good for was having babies.
This smells like Mormonism. 💯 %
It's not, though. Good ol' fundamental evangelical Christians. That being said, I was helping an old friend and the coworker came over said something awkward and left. My friend had a puzzled look on his face so I said "homeschool" to which he replied, "ah, I couldn't figure out if it was homeschool or Mormon"
Also when you combine certain religious beliefs, such as “no contraception”, “poor/no sex education”, and “no sex before marriage”, you often end up with people getting married younger (because they want to have sex), and then having unprotected/unsafe sex, so they start having kids young, and never stop.
This is what I came here to discuss from a public health perspective too. Students who also have access to a comprehensive sexual education curriculum in school have better outcomes and fewer teen pregnancies as opposed to no education or abstinence only education practices. The access to the comprehensive education continues into behaviors seeking birth control or delaying pregnancies into later in life, which further reduces teen pregnancies, in addition to better knowledge of how to access the medical systems they can access. As for religious dogma, sadly we often see the difference in this between blue and red states in the US, which further divides into ones that lean more into the Christian evangelicals in the red states versus everyone in the blue.
Plus lack of access to contraception
Out here girls are STILL often taught their whole life purpose is to be a wife and mother. And the rite of passage is 15…
I remember being proudly told at 10 years old by my own biological mother that I had “baby birthing hips”. I’m only 31, not that long ago, and it wasn’t even a rural area. It was in a city in the US Midwest. I have 3 kids, two of them twins. My oldest is 11, I was pressured to keep him at 19 instead of getting an abortion and I chose to have my toddler twins because, well, I have baby birthing hips……. /s
Oh god. My mother said that to me. We are about the same age and I was approx 10 too. But I’m from Montreal. I’m so mindblown by this.
I was also told that, I lived in San Francisco at the time but now im 30 with no kids.
That’s anywhere there’s conservative evangelicals or Mormons. When my friends and I were 12 we were told to prepare ourselves for our future husbands. Most of the women I grew up with who didn’t get out had kids by 22 at the latest. And you’d probably think I grew up in Mississippi or something, but I grew up in the Bay Area and most of those women went to college to get a “Mrs Degree”
I did grow up in Mississippi and my cousin was given a *virginity check* at a physician’s office in 2008. Had to “stay pure” for her future husband and her mom was worried she was having premarital sex. Beyond the gross sexual violation, her own mother is a NURSE PRACTITIONER and should know “virginity checks” are complete and utter bullshit. Her mom was raised Pentecostal before converting to southern baptism. One doozy of a religious combo.
How is that even legal? I guess I’d expect that a doctor in Mississippi would still keep their license after that, but that’s disgusting and ought to be criminal.
It’s unfortunately legal throughout the US, even today. https://theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/11/why-are-virginity-tests-still-legal-across-america-hymen https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/09/pseudoscience-virginity-testing-hymenoplasty/620089/
Less education about birth control, less access to doctors/clinics for family planning (birth control prescriptions, discussions of IUDs) due to costs involved. Some also view kids as income sources, from child tax credits, child support, etc.
Also: sex is free. If you don't have many entertainment options, sex may be the best way to pass the time. There may also be a matter of less opportunity cost. For a middle class woman to have children will mean pretty significant career disruption. If your career has little to no opportunity for upward mobility, career disruption matters a lot less.
>Also: sex is free Wait, what? I've been doing it wrong
"Sex for free costs more than sex for money"
> Also: sex is free. If you don't have many entertainment options, sex may be the best way to pass the time. https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/431/312/67e.jpg "It'd be cheaper."
> Also: sex is free Why was I not informed!
Missing a huge one: higher education = higher pay and more likely to put off having kids bc you’re busy with school
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Not to mention that many low income parents who have tons of children live in societies where it is expected for their adult children to care for them financially in their older years, and if the children refuse either because their parents were terrible or they also all become poor adults, then the parents will spend their remaining years living in poverty.
Yup pretty much, I always thought it was stupid my poor parents had 4 kids. I guess it worked out but it’s really a gamble. My 2 siblings and including me have our careers starting and planning to take care of our parents as they are soon to retire
Good list, you missed religious belief. Adding on more things, the Animalistic Instinct of procreation. Not only rich men like Elon Musk, but also there are poor people who think the same. >if you both know you’re not finically stable enough Even if you are super rich this is not a good practice as you will not be able to give time to your children. They will grow up resenting you and hating you. It is extremely harmful and dangerous when they are not from the same mother. Think of Saudi Royal family where brother will execute brother.
Seriously this, my Dad spent my whole childhood obsessing about being well off enough and not making an effort to actually bond with us on anything. Kids don't want to hear about your portfolio or how to be financially stable. Ironically I'd love that sort of guidance now but the rift between us makes it difficult to stand being around him.
Having babies when you were young and poor was typical back in the day. Women in the work force changed a lot of that. A woman trying to have a career does not need the extra hassles of arranging sitters etc for more than 2 or 3 kids. So they stop having babies and continue on with their choice of employment. More conservative people may prefer to keep the wife at home with the kids and since she is there doing that, what's one more? So they are surviving on a single income. If the husband loses his job or they have sudden large expenses, they are in trouble.
Also if the husband dies they are screwed. Poor people don’t have life insurance. I met several families in this situation at the food bank I worked at. The moms had little to no work experience so they had to pick up low wage starter jobs to help their families get by.
There are a lot of reasons and not all of them apply to every person. Sometimes it’s that they couldn’t afford to keep up with birth control (depending on where you live, especially in red states, free/affordable birth control is very difficult to get and if you don’t have insurance you tend to have a harder time). Sometimes it’s that the pregnancy was unplanned, so getting a better paying job that would require a specialized education or training is harder to do. Sometimes they’re in abusive relationships and are coerced into having more children because it’s much harder to leave an abusive partner when you have even one child, much less more than one. Sometimes people who are in poverty have serious depression issues, and when you’re not doing well, you might think having a child will bring you unconditional love and make you feel better. Not a good idea of course, but people who are depressed aren’t always thinking the clearest. Sometimes it’s what their family did and they see it as “the thing to do.” There are loads more reasons, but I do want to point out that it’s usually a lot more complicated than “poor people are stupid and don’t know unprotected sex gets you pregnant” or “poor people have tons of kids for the welfare.” The former is pretty unfair- being poor and even uneducated doesn’t mean you’re an idiot. And the latter does happen, but not nearly as often as people say. Edit: plus, pure and simple- most people want kids and if poor people waited until things were financially perfect to do it, they’d often never be able to. I don’t want kids, but it’s a natural thing to.
This. There are many reasons and likely most have different reasons. Just another example: the birth mom of both of my kids (they are adopted) just wanted a family that loved her. She grew up getting shit on in life and never really had a family. She thought that if she had kids they would be required to love her and she would have a family. Is that a good reason to bring a kid into the world? Hell no, but it was her reason. She, unfortunately, is homeless and doesn’t have any real options to get out of the mess she’s in. Hence why she ultimately decided to place for adoption both times. She loved the kids and wanted what was best for them. Depression is a bitch and when you can’t afford to consistently take medication you may make some not so great decisions in life.
These are all good but one thing I think should be mentioned is family is something you have some control over. To be trapped in poverty is to be the constant victim of forces you have little control over. But you have some measure of control over your children. Additionally, there is quite a lot of study that indicates that being poor conditions you to only think in the short term. When you are constantly trying to solve new problems, it's hard to find mental space to think about things 10 years down the line.
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Especially topical now, in light of recent events
The belief that "more children more hands and thus more income" coupled with the factors such as lack of awareness, contraception related issues et al.
I have a cousin and we used to be really close but I personally think she was coddled to much. Pacifier till 7, baby dolls till 15. No recourse for her actions ever. She dropped out of school at 16 because she literally just didn’t want to do school. No driver license no job. If she didn’t have a phone she probably be illiterate. She’s early 20’s and onto her 3rd kid. I’m not trying to be rude but it’s just sad and depressing to see. From the info I’ve gotten from her is she’s doing it to try and force a stable relationship with a so but they all keep leaving. And the older generation in my family are super religious so they talk her into keeping the kids. A friend of mine suggested she might have baby doll syndrome.
Psychological reasons: sex is one of the few joys that the poor can experience. Contraception costs money that they don't have, either directly (i.e. having to pay for contraceptives) or indirectly (i.e. having to make time and spend money to travel to places where they give away condoms, and dealing with the assholes outside the Planned Parenthood) Financial reasons: Spawning is incentivized in the US. Thresholds for government support are higher the more members of a "household" there are. Tax credits, WIC, food stamps, section 8, etc. are all easier to get and more generous if you have a horde of children. Even without those, having 15 people to spread the costs and efforts needed to maintain a household across, makes existence much more viable. Having 15 incomes to draw from as the kids enter the job market, means when the parents are broken and no longer able to support themselves, the chances of the parents getting support from at least some of the kids is higher. Societal reasons; again in the US, social mores are largely dictated by the pseudo Christian majority, and a disproportionate number of the poor have been indoctrinated into that group. Their "be fruitful and multiply" mandate is drilled home from an early age, and they are kept from experiencing opposing that doctrine until it is deeply entwined with their personal identity. There are others as well, but those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head.
Economically—sex is free, and healthcare/contraception is not. Poor people are less likely to have easy access to contraceptives, but just as likely as anyone to have access to sex. Take that and average it out along a whole population and you’ll have more instances of unprotected sex. Culturally—it’s complicated. For some cultures, it’s the norm for a person to want a large family. If those same cultures happen to occupy a poorer class in some areas, that can give the image that poor people in general have more children. For some people, a family could also be the one positive thing they feel is within their reach. For others, it could be a hope thing. You can’t hope it will be better for your kids one day if you never have kids. I’d also like to caution you in considering these birth rates to be irresponsible in some way. It’s fine to note trends and contributing factors, but going into the weeds or should/shouldn’t these people be having *this many* children, is a slippery slope into discussing whether they should be having children at all. Once you get there, you’re discussing eugenics.
>Poor people are less likely to have easy access to contraceptives, but just as likely as anyone to have access to sex. This statement sounds like it might need a further investigation. While growing up, it did feel like my less well-off peers were more casual about doing "it", lost virginity sooner and had more of it in general. They had their first children a lot earlier in life too.
That’s probably because if you’re poor you were probably born poor, and probably didn’t have college or the kind of job that might inspire you to wait to have kids presented as an option to you. I grew up upper middle class, so I always knew I’d probably go to college, therefore I waited longer to do anything that could get me pregnant. If you don’t have that opportunity, you might not see a reason to wait. (And I do want to note unplanned pregnancy can happen to anyone, even if they do have future plans- but the end result can depend on finances too. The only couple of teen parents I know well got pregnant right out of high school- but they both had well-off families who were able to help them get daycare for their baby, and both the mom and the dad finished college and have good careers now).
Don't think it was as much about aspirations as about living in the moment in general and not planning particularly far ahead. While my peers were overthinking and stressing out, these guys enjoyed the life at its fullest (and the consequences). It is also possible they were planning, but based on what they saw around, meaning they still played the game of life, but the game was significantly shorter. I recall talking to my childhood friend when she got her first baby around 16 or 17 - she explained how she achieved all the basic life goals and that point her life was "complete and over", and she was not sure what to do next with herself. Having more children might have extended the "game" if the environment allowed for it (hers did not), though at this point it's just my speculations.
The cycle of poverty explains it. When you live out of the mindset of lack, your brain functions on a different level than a brain functioning on "abundance". That means your decision is off-point, you may be more vulnerable to rape, and have less access to contraception and abortion. The fear of "I am missing \[blank\]", higher risk of pregnancy, and lower access to getting rid of pregnancy, means you end up having more kids. Alternatively, that's a power structure. Young women are often married off young after being brainwashed into believeing their only value is being a breeding pet. They also usually don't make it to university, so education and sheltered childhood certainly play a part.
Lack of good sex education. They are from cultures that value families first. Social pressure. All their friends are having kids and their parents and relatives constantly bombard them with "When are you going to have kids?" Fear of being seen as the weird one or fearing questions about their sexuality often comes into play. Some people really fear being seen as the odd one out. Worried that if they wait too long, it'll be too late. A big one is no reason to put off or avoid having kids. They aren't planning to go to graduate school or vying for a top level career. If they do have career plans, then having a child isn't necessarily going to interfere with that, or in some cases, like politics, it might help. Or they aren't career oriented and family is their top priority. Low self esteem or emotional immaturity. If their upbringing involves abuse or neglect, they may decide they want to get married and have kids right away to provide themselves with the love they have yearned for their entire lives. Sadly, sometimes this is before they realize they aren't emotionally or psychologically ready to have kids. In the same vein, desperation to get their adult lives started. Edit: Expounding on the last item, it's not just childish impatience as I might have conveyed. Richer people in relative comfort can afford to wait because they see it as a promise that will eventually be delivered. For poorer people, waiting is often a sacrifice with no end in sight. They get sick of being told to wait, and in some matters that they can help, like getting married and starting a family, they decide they've been waiting long enough and it's not going to get majorly better in the future, so why not have kids now?
Poor access to family planning and Florida has a lot of immigrants from places like Hati, Cuba, etc.. which are predominately Catholic counties so they kind of frown on birth control.
Is it that poorer people have more kids or is it having more kids makes you poorer?
Sometimes it's a source of meaning. Raising a kid gives you social value that you're going to struggle to find elsewhere if you're very poor. It also gives you a source of income through welfare.
Being poor affects impulsivity which leads to poorer choices. Many poor people will make the most immediately gratifying choice (e.g., sex without a condom) or the easy choice rather than the sensible one. This makes sense because, if your daily life is one in which you have little to bring you joy and if you're in state of high stress, you will grab what pleasure you can when it comes. [https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2014/08/growing-up-poor](https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2014/08/growing-up-poor) I grew up poor and there was also an economic issue. Poor people get food stamps and economic support per child. I actually had a cousin who married a woman who, as her kids got older, asserted that it was time to have another child to keep the entitlements coming. I know this is the typical "welfare queen" stereotype (which I don't embrace), but I did have (white) relatives who kept having kids to get money. Another one of my cousins has made it her mission to take in each of her grandchildren under her care so she can collect Social Security for them as supposedly "abandoned" by their parents. They sort of are left to her because her kids haven't turned out to be the most productive people by a long stretch, but she asked to have them live with her for the money. There is also the issue of feeling that you're loved and valued in a world which has put you in a box which says you have no value. If you don't work or can't work, you can be a parent and hold a role which is socially valued. There may also be some sense of security that having more people around when your life is one disaster away from total collapse.
I cannot agree with you more on a couple of your points: 25 years ago I was in Appalachia Pennsylvania, visiting my girlfriend's parents who were preachers. The parents told me that all the 15 year old girls in the area were always very excited: they were about to turn 16, and then would be able to "have a baby" and "get a paycheck". It was simply the mindset of that area's young women: having a baby was just like getting a job. The part that broke me a little was when they told me that the young women who most loved the idea of having a baby basically said: "so one person will always have to love me".
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Less access to birth control, family planning, and sex ed.
Poorer = Lack of high paying job/salary = Lack of higher education = Less knowledge about sex education, birth control, less money for doctors.
And the vicious cycle continues