This is something I've been thinking about recently, especially as a parent trying to raise my children to hopefully succeed in every aspect of life. Having been raised in the 60s and 70s gives me a little more insight than some of you younger posters, but some of you might have more insight into certain aspects of growing up more recently.
For kids in poverty, is financial success a reasonably attainable goal anymore?
For kids raised in the 60s and 70s, being "poor" brought certain life skills that rich kids were denied. It started when they were born and drank "mother's milk" rather than the financially unattainable baby formula. Poor kids were raised on healthy diets of inexpensive vegetables, many of which their own families grew, and less snack food which their families couldn't afford. Poor kids were more likely to eat the dietician-approved meals served at school. They didn't have 50 channels to choose from on cable TV so they were more likely to watch PBS educational programming, or walk to the library and check out a book. They couldn't afford video games so they participated in outdoor activities and sports. As teenagers, they got business experience mowing lawns, chopping wood, shoveling snow, etc. The consumption of expensive alcoholic beverages wasn't a part of their family life unless a parent had a cultural or genetic disposition to alcoholism, and everybody in the neighborhood knew who those people were. If they were sick they would take an aspirin and sleep it off (unless they were vomiting blood or suffering from a broken bone), rather than going to expensive doctors to be medicated.
As a result, kids from poor families during that time seemed to enter adulthood stronger, healthier, more skilled and more disciplined than kids from rich families. Rich kids were given certain advantages due to what they inherited, but it was not unusual for them to be overtaken by the superior poor kids in the working world.
Does poverty carry with it the same "advantages" today? Or were my experiences (and those of many of my friends) growing up poor unusual for the time?
For kids in poverty, is financial success a reasonably attainable goal anymore?
For kids raised in the 60s and 70s, being "poor" brought certain life skills that rich kids were denied. It started when they were born and drank "mother's milk" rather than the financially unattainable baby formula. Poor kids were raised on healthy diets of inexpensive vegetables, many of which their own families grew, and less snack food which their families couldn't afford. Poor kids were more likely to eat the dietician-approved meals served at school. They didn't have 50 channels to choose from on cable TV so they were more likely to watch PBS educational programming, or walk to the library and check out a book. They couldn't afford video games so they participated in outdoor activities and sports. As teenagers, they got business experience mowing lawns, chopping wood, shoveling snow, etc. The consumption of expensive alcoholic beverages wasn't a part of their family life unless a parent had a cultural or genetic disposition to alcoholism, and everybody in the neighborhood knew who those people were. If they were sick they would take an aspirin and sleep it off (unless they were vomiting blood or suffering from a broken bone), rather than going to expensive doctors to be medicated.
As a result, kids from poor families during that time seemed to enter adulthood stronger, healthier, more skilled and more disciplined than kids from rich families. Rich kids were given certain advantages due to what they inherited, but it was not unusual for them to be overtaken by the superior poor kids in the working world.
Does poverty carry with it the same "advantages" today? Or were my experiences (and those of many of my friends) growing up poor unusual for the time?
