Approaching The Other

The Silent Struggle 

Part I: 

Socioeconomic classes have been around since basically the start of civilization. Only now, we’re not divided into peasants and nobles. Socioeconomic classes are divided into upper, middle, working, and lower. With the recent economic crisis the world is facing as we emerge from the pandemic, the middle class is slowly shrinking. People are starting to fall under the poverty line. The already suffering lower class is expanding and reaching a breaking point. According to the Pew Research center you would be considered lower class if you made less than 48,000 dollars a year. The lower class in American society faces a lot of challenges, like not being able to afford rent or not having enough money to spend on basic necessities. Kids who are born into lower class families will most likely stay in low-income families. It’s a vicious cycle. People from lower socioeconomic classes face a variety of barriers that keep them marginalized like lack of access to education, financial instability and food insecurity.  

As I mentioned before, people from the lower socioeconomic class don’t really have access to education as much as people from higher social classes. The American Psychology Association states that children of lower socioeconomic class attend schools that are underfunded which lack teachers that are as competent and experienced as schools of higher socioeconomic status. Kids who attend lower class schools learn slower and are more likely to display learning related behavior problems. Kids whose parents can’t afford to send them to college will end up with a job with a below average salary which will end up trapping them in the cycle of poverty.

Additionally, people from lower social classes face financial instability. The lack of a stable income causes families to struggle to pay rent and make ends meet. The PBS documentary titled “Growing Up Poor In America” mentions the experience of a family that struggles to settle down in a single home and has to move around because of failing to afford rent. One member of that family also suffers from cavities, but the family can’t afford a dentist. This shows how financial instability causes lower socioeconomic class families to suffer. Financial instability is also one of the primary causes of food insecurity. According to the United States Department of Agriculture, 12.8% of American Households faced food insecurity sometime during 2022. The Department of Agriculture defines food-insecure households as: households that were uncertain of having or unable to acquire enough food to meet the needs of all their members because they had insufficient money or other resources for food. In other words, food insecure families are families whose income is limited to a point where they struggle to afford food. Food-insecure families may have to rely on food stamps provided by the government to make ends meet.  Miracle, a 16-year-old child interviewed on the PBS documentary “ Growing Up Poor In America” states that most of her mother’s paycheck goes towards bills instead of food. The cheapness and availability of unhealthy food also makes low-income families at risk of obesity and diabetes. Food insecurity causes a lot of problems for the family like malnutrition and developmental problems, especially among young children.

Most of the children interviewed on the PBS documentary “ Growing Up Poor In America” were children of single parents. According to the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention: in 2021, 9.5% of children living with two parents lived below the poverty level, compared to 31.7% of children living with a single parent. Single parent households are more likely to be of lower socioeconomic status because the family income is literally slashed in half. Additionally, some children interviewed on the documentary state that their parent couldn’t work during covid which massively affected the family’s income and financial stability. Aside from the effect it has on the kids, single parent households place so much pressure on the parent to work and secure bread for the family. With no one else to help them, single parents have to balance between taking care of the kids while also providing for the family. Not to mention the effects of growing up with one parent on the children. Males that grew up without their father might not know how to shave or even how to deal with puberty. This just goes to show the importance of having both parents in the picture and how low socioeconomic classes often lack both parents.

In conclusion, low socioeconomic classes face numerous barriers that withhold them and keep them marginalized like lack of access to education, stable income, and food insecurity. Low socioeconomic classes are trapped in a cycle of poverty and unless new solutions are developed nothing is really changing.

Part II: 

I was awoken by a faint sound of crying and gasping. I sat up in my bed and rubbed my eyes as I tried to make sense of the situation. When I was fully awake the sound still persisted, I decided to leave my creaky bed and walk down the hallway. There I found my mother sitting on the kitchen table with a pile of receipts and documents in hand. She was crying nonstop with her head resting on the table. She kept repeating the same phrase, she kept saying: “ I can’t do this anymore!”. I approached the kitchen table slowly and put my hand on her back. She lifted her head up, wiped off her tears and told me everything was okay, and I should go back to bed. My mom is not the type of person to vent about her problems, and she’s mostly reserved. Being too young and naïve, I went back to bed. When I came back from school the next day, I decided to look into her closet when she was at work. I found all sorts of bills that were way past their dues. I also found an eviction letter from our landlord. As I rummaged through stacks of papers, I began connecting the dots. Mom wasn’t crying about some stupid show yesterday, she was worried about the bills. All of a sudden, I started to regret asking for a tutor and I started to blame myself for being a needy child. I remembered all the times I threw a temper tantrum when she wouldn’t buy me that toy I really wanted. The next day, I talked to my teacher about what I saw last night. My teacher’s face shifted from a smile to visible signs of worry. She told me that I should talk to the administration about what had happened with my mother. Confused, I decided to go there anyway. When I told the school administration about my mom’s struggle to pay the bills, they told me that they were going to call her. When I came back from school, my mom had a visible smile on her face. When I asked her what happened, she told me that the school added me to the free lunch program, and I was allowed to eat a free meal at school. At the time, I didn’t think much of it, but now after I graduated, I truly understood what my mom was happy about. My mom had one less problem to worry about, she had one less meal to worry about providing for her kids.

Part III:

When I was writing part II I started to struggle, I tried my best to be neutral and to avoid being offensive as much as possible. I started to recall all the interviews that took place in the PBS documentary as I was writing. I mixed all the people’s experiences and made my own fictional scenario. I tried to put myself in the shoes of a person who struggled to make ends meet. I tried to put myself in the shoes of someone that doesn’t know where they’ll be sleeping next month or even next week. I found myself struggling to get past my prejudice and to actually relate to these people’s experiences. 

While I was writing I had to constantly change words and tweak sentences so as not to sound offensive. I avoided mentioning my character’s gender and their race, I wanted this to be as objective as possible. I also avoided talking about my character’s father. I know it’s a touchy subject that might invoke some negative emotions in some people. There are also some points that didn’t really fit into the story. I didn’t really mention the quality of the education of my character. I didn’t feel like it was related to the point of the story.

 The prompt of this assignment also mentioned intersectionality, where a person belongs to multiple different disadvantaged groups. I tried to limit my character to a single group so as to not get out of my area of research. I didn’t mention their race, their physical health or even their gender. I mentioned previously that I wanted to minimize my chance of being offensive and I also wanted to stick to my area of research. With that in mind, the story I wrote in part II involves a child that is in the care of their mother, a single parent. My character recalls the night they woke up and found their mother crying because she felt helpless, and she struggled to pay the bills. My character approaches their teacher and talks to them about the situation. My character’s problem reaches the school administration which decides to accept them into the school’s free lunch program. My character didn’t really understand why their mother was happy at the time but when they grew up, they realized how massive it was of a relief to have one meal taken care of. My character realized that in the situation their mother was in, any help mattered.

 I’m not minimizing these people’s struggles by any means. I know that they face a lot of different challenges in their daily lives, but I decided to focus on one so as not to go out of my area of knowledge. I know that there are way more challenges that a person from a low socio-economic status might face. I didn’t even go into the mental health problems and the trauma that can form when a person is brought up in such dire circumstances. I think I did a fair job representing a fraction of what these people really go through every day. Not everyone faces the same set of challenges though, someone might be born poor because of their circumstances, some might even become poor because of an injury that prevents them from working. In general, I tried to represent one of the more prevalent cases of poverty that I found in my research. 

I picked this topic because I felt like I could relate to it the most. I have this friend back in Lebanon, my home country. He was drastically affected by the economic crisis the country is facing, more than any other friend I have. When I was researching this topic, I recalled the long rants he would go through every time the topic came up. He would curse being born into this country and he wished his circumstances could change. When I visit Lebanon, I try to bring him gifts to help alleviate his situation. I always feel like I’m being careful with my words when I’m around him. I feel like his situation is not really as dire as the children interviewed in the documentary, but I just felt like I was reminded of him. If he read this piece, I don’t think he would be offended. I feel like he would relate to it in a way. To wrap up this part, I feel like I did an ok job living in the shoes of a person that is from this disadvantaged group. I tried to avoid dipping into stereotypes as much as possible. I also tried to stick to what I researched and avoided going into topics that are emotional or offensive.