“Hi, Mom, I’m writing an article on the cycle of poverty, and I need to ask you a few questions about our finances during my childhood.”
For the next 45 minutes my mom pleasantly provided me with all the details I needed to accurately write my article. While the subject matter itself wasn’t delightful, she was happy to have an excuse to talk to me. This was the first time we’d spoken to each other over the phone in a little over two years. Once, a few months ago, I’d contacted her with a similar request regarding her work as a police officer for a segment I was doing on a TV show, but she’d missed my call, so she sent me a Facebook message with answers to my questions instead. That, a few Facebook comments on my stories and a dinner during a trip home once were the only contact we’d had since I permanently moved to Washington, D.C. from Kansas nearly four years ago. The dinner happened at the urging of my now-husband. He wanted to meet my parents before asking for my hand in marriage. After he saw what the encounter did to me, he vowed to never force me to talk to my mom again. And so I didn’t. Until now.
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The story of my conception is not one I am fond of telling. When my mother was 18 she became pregnant with me after getting “forced,” as she now describes it, into losing her virginity to her then boyfriend. After she confronted him with her unhappy news that she was carrying his child, she learned that not only did he not want a baby, he was engaged to someone else. Even worse, his ‘full-time employment’ was as a drug dealer. Thankfully, she chose life, even though she knew she would have to go it alone as a single parent if she decided not to abort her pregnancy, and my grandparents allowed her to continue living under their roof.
When I was born, I was the joint responsibility of my mother, grandparents and my mother’s brother, and while I don’t have any memories of my time as a baby, all video and photographic evidence show me to have been a very happy one. (At one point, my biological father did attempt to become a part of my life, but my mother determined his history with drugs would be more of a negative impact on my life than a positive one and turned him away. I’ve never met him, though one day I hope to.)
When I was three years old, my mother married the man whom I now call my dad, and together we moved into a small rented home in a town an hour outside of the city. Soon, I had a little brother on the way, so we moved into a real home just outside the gates of our town’s large park and fairgrounds. We later moved away for several years before coming back, and throughout that time we were generally happy as a family. The year I turned 12 my dad officially adopted me, and it was one of the happiest days of my life. I was finally a part of the family.
But just after my dad officially adopted me, my parents’ relationship began to deteriorate at lightning speed, and at the end of eighth grade year in school, my parents finally agreed to divorce. Unlike most kids, I was genuinely happy my parents were separating. I know at the time my dad saw my glee as betrayal, and it put a wedge in our relationship. But my reaction was based on the fact that we then lived in a depressing home where there were no conversations, only fights, and everyone was unhappy.
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Up until the point my parents divorced we were what I would consider a middle class family. While I was unable to shop at name-brand stores, my clothes weren’t from Goodwill.
As part of the divorce agreement, however, my dad took responsibility for my little brother’s day-to-day needs and my mother took responsibility for me. At first, I still visited my dad on the weekends, but weekend visits eventually dwindled to holidays. Immediately after filing for divorce from my mom, my dad met my now step-mom who had a daughter a year younger than me. We quickly found out we were not compatible, and so visits were miserable for everyone. After a couple years I started staying with my mom full time, and no one really complained. When my dad and step-mom finally bought their first home it had three bedrooms and none of them were for me.
During those years, my mom and I moved around a lot. First, we moved to a low-income apartment complex, then we moved to an even cheaper rental home in a nearby town (I commuted back and forth to school every day), then a nice rental home in the same town before my mom announced that she’d gotten engaged. My mom and her fiancé had only briefly been dating, and we’d be moving into a brand new home with him and his infant daughter in the big city across state lines. We lived there for four months before my mom realized she and he were not compatible long term. And after only one semester at my new school, I was yanked, kicking and screaming, back to my hometown where I was forced to reenter my old school halfway through my freshman year. My youth group pastor and his wife in the big city offered to take me in so I could finish out the school year at the better, nicer school in the city, but my mom wouldn’t allow it. So, two years, three houses and four of my mom’s boyfriends later, we were back in the low-income apartments we started in.
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By the time we were back living in low-income housing, we were undoubtedly ‘poor,’ though I didn’t know it at the time. My mother tells me we never received government assistance, but that was only because we didn’t qualify for it. We were living as it’s now being called “on the brink” of poverty. We ate so much Ramen noodle soup back then for meals that when I got into college I refused to eat the stuff on tastebud principle. I’d done my Ramen time. I’d rather have went hungry than had another bite of Ramen. The rare occasions we ate “nice” food – normal grocery store items – was when my grandma and my mother’s brother brought it to us. (By this time my grandmother and grandfather were also divorced.) While I didn’t get to go to the movies anymore (unless a friend’s parents took me), stopped having the sorts of birthday parties my friends in two-parent homes had, and didn’t get to shop at the mall (the one Abercrombie shirt I owned growing up was purchased for me by a friend’s mom who felt sorry for me), the two years we lived in those low-income houses were the happiest of my childhood after my parents’ divorce. We didn’t have a lot, but we made do with what we had, and life was good.
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The summer I turned 16 my dad announced that he and his long-time girlfriend would finally wed. My mom responded by announcing that she and her four-month boyfriend would also wed. The two couples were married within a month of each other, and my mom, my brother (who split time between my parents’ houses) and I moved to a brand new home in another nearby town with my now step-father.
Our new home was by far the nicest place I’d ever lived up to that point. It was two and a half stories with a finished basement and a backyard and located in a fancy new subdivision on the outside of town. For the first time I could remember, we could afford real food and real clothes, and that year I got nearly everything on my Christmas list. But the happiness of our former, meager lifestyle had disappeared. My mom’s new husband resented both of us children and constantly told me that if I wanted to attend college, I was going to have to do it on my own dime, because he wasn’t paying for a single cent. Outside of school activities and my job at the local Burger King, I hardly spent any time hanging out with kids my age because I was constantly grounded for minor offenses like forgetting to make my bed, leaving a DVD in the DVD player, or leaving a towel on the bathroom floor. I had straight As, was a high school debate champ, sang in the school choir, made almost every school theater production, and later joined a swing dance team, but ever I was the ‘bad’ child who needed to be punished for her bad behavior.
After my grandmother and my mother’s brother tried to intervene they were banished from the premises through an enforceable restraining order. When your mother works for the local police station, pieces of paper like that are easy to get and impossible to undo. I had a serious boyfriend for awhile who was a few years older than me, but my mom and step-dad eventually banned him from seeing me as well even though he’d never done anything to that point to disrespect their wishes. I was trapped, and no one would listen because the police are above the law.
Throughout my senior year in high school my step-dad’s threats turned from ‘You’re out of here the day you turn 18’ to ‘If you keep acting like this, you can live on the street.’ I was constantly terrified that I was going to be homeless. I reached out to my dad, who is also a cop, and step-mom for help. They talked to my mom and my mother told me they refused to take me in. (I found out years later this was a lie.) Once, I ran away to a coworker’s house. Her parents were nice enough to let me stay the night before ratting out my whereabouts to my parents the next day. My step-dad showed up the next afternoon, mad as hell I’d embarrassed him like that and hauled me back home. When he finally made good on his threat to kick me out the following month, I was no longer scared. I’d found a new courage to survive. With two months left until graduation, I entered temporary foster care with a nice woman I still to this day visit and stay with when I’m back home, and graduated salutatorian with a full-ride to the University of Kansas.
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My story is both unique and yet the same as many other young people who are raised by single moms “living on the brink.” Conservatives say marriage is the answer. Progressives say more government programs are the answer. While marriage does bring more economic stability, as it did for my mom and I, a bad marriage can bring a level of unhappiness that supersedes any economic benefits. On the other hand government assistance wouldn’t have gotten to the root of our problem, which is cultural and societal more than it is economic. During our phone chat, my mom told me that while she would have appreciated having government assistance, it wouldn’t have affected her ability to meet my and my brother’s basic needs. Living on the “brink” of poverty meant we had no ‘fun’ money to spend, but we were never without food on the table or clothes on our backs. And while it would have been ‘nice’ to be able afford more ‘things,’ seeing more movies and wearing designer clothes wouldn’t have fundamentally improved my childhood.
Additionally, the problem with money and ‘things’ is that it’s human nature to always want more and better things, regardless of what you have. In terms of employment and business, this desire is a necessary evil. If people only bought the things they needed, fewer businesses would exist and thus fewer people would have jobs. However in terms of social policy, this desire drives people to demand more assistance from the government. Oftentimes people forget government money doesn’t grow on trees. It comes from other people. Other people like me, now age 25, who also want to be able to buy more things and live in nicer homes in better areas and have more financial stability. Through hard work and the private charity of others, I have achieved the upward mobility my parents weren’t able to. My husband and I are not what I consider well off, but we’re more fortunate than I was growing up. Recently we saved up enough money to move out of our mouse-infested apartment a block outside a bad part of town and into a nice rodent-free condo in a crime-free area (as crime free as anywhere in D.C. or any major city can be, that is.)
If we had to pay higher taxes to pay for government funded ‘social justice’ programs like childcare, Head Start, universal healthcare, and the other programs progressives believe single moms should be provided with, my husband and I would still be living in that disgusting dump, where a mouse once crawled in my bed while I was sleeping.
While I empathize with those people who haven’t yet found a path off the brink, I don’t think anyone should be forced to trade their safety and security so someone else can watch more movies and have nicer clothes. I did my time on the brink of poverty. I worked in fast food. I studied hard so I could get a private scholarship. Then I took out and paid off student loans so I could afford to go to college after my tuition rose while the amount of my scholarship stayed the same. I did unpaid internships. I worked my way into a good paying job. I earned everything I have, and I am not ashamed to say I am now living the American Dream.
Isn’t that what ‘social justice’ is all about?
