What Is a Man What Is a Women

Try to imagine the challenges of poverty, the daily fears of victimization and the frustration of not being able to provide for a child, struggling every day just to survive. Poverty not only affects adults, but children as well. When we think of poverty in America what image comes to mind? An old rundown shack in southern Alabama? Or a rat infested tenement house in New York City? The United States defines poverty for a family of four as being less than $16,036 per year, or $4,009 per person (Leone 2000:12). People find themselves under this line for an innumerable amount of reasons. Poverty in America varies by age, race, region and family composition.

Oscar Lewis introduced the “culture of poverty” while studying poor families in Mexico and Puerto Rican families in San Juan and New York. “The theory maintains that culturally based attitudes or predisposition such as present-mindedness and obsessive-consumption is the major barriers to economic mobility for many of the poor.”

(Lewis 19 :1965). Lewis and others agree that poor people in such societies display certain characteristics and values that are not held by non-poor in those same societies.

“These characteristics are the absence of childhood as a specially prolonged and protected state in the life-cycle, early initiation into sex, free unions or consensual marriages, a relatively high incidents of abandonment of wives and children, a tend toward female or mother centered families, a strong predisposition toward authoritarianism, lack of privacy, verbal emphasis upon family solidarity which is only rarely achieved because of sibling rivalry, and competition for limited goods and material affection.”(Lewis 1965)

The official rate of poverty for children aged 0-17 is much higher than for other age groups. In 1998 the child poverty rate was 13.5 million children “Children under the age of six with single mothers are much more likely to be poor than those living with two parents” (Kozol 52). Women giving birth outside marriage has increased dramatically over the past three decades, and children born outside of marriage that grow up with single mothers are more likely to be poor for most of their childhood. Research shows that “61 percent of children who spend the first 10 years of life in a single-parent family were poor for the most of their life (Hammersley). “Early childhood experiences contribute to poor children’s high rates of school failure, dropout, delinquency, early childbearing, and adult poverty” (Kozol 74). Children who live most of theirs lives poor are at risk for many developmental problems. Poor children are more likely than non-poor children to be low achievers in school, to repeat one or two grades, and to eventually drop out of school. They are more likely to engage in criminal behavior, to become unmarried teen parents, and to be welfare dependent

and are less likely to earn less if they are employed. Reports of child abuse and neglect, as well as the severity of the maltreatment effects children from low-income families than for other higher income families. “The estimated incidences of maltreatment of all types was about seven times as great among children living in families with annual income below $15,000 as among those from higher income families”(Juskalian 5:2006)

The US government has aided many poor families with the help of welfare. Welfare is a public assistance program that provides at least a minimum amount of economic security to people whose income is insufficient to maintain an adequate standard of living. These programs generally include such benefits as financial aid to individuals, subsidized medical care, and stamps that are used to purchase food. People who need welfare feel as if they need to hide that they are on welfare so that society doesn’t put a label on them. Even on welfare families still struggle every day to try to make ends meet. Welfare brings an emotional struggle for men and women to live the normal life. Women feel the effects of society much more greatly then men.” As soon as they see you come out with that food stamp pack, it, their whole demeanor changes.” (Rogers-Dillion 115: 2006

Society looks down on people who use welfare calling them lazy such stereotypes are influenced from the protestant work ethic. Max Weber had a mission to uncover the causes of people who abandon their traditional religious value orientation and encouraged them to develop a desire for acquiring goods and wealth. The protestant work ethic provided religious sanctions that fostered a spirit of rigorous discipline, encouraging men to apply themselves rationally to acquire wealth. “The fulfillment of worthy duties is under all circumstances the only way to live acceptably to god. It and it alone is the will of God, and hence every legitimate calling has exactly the same worth