The Many Faces of Poverty

I chose to write about poverty because it is so prevalent and childhood poverty can lead to a lifetime of biosocial and emotional issues. It’s a reality that affects children in the United States as well as in other countries.

My older, half-sister, has vivid memories of living in poverty as a child and teenager. She is a generation older than I am and she is now seventy-four years old. I also have two other half-siblings who are seventy-two and seventy-three years of age. My mother had three children in two years and nine months and was widowed when they were just four, five and six years old. Their father, my mother’s first husband, was killed in world war two. Our mother was in her mid 20’s with three very young children and no income to support them. This was in the early 1940’s and there wasn’t any aid to dependant children programs or anything similar at that time. There were no food stamps or assisted housing programs. Though in my growing up years I would not describe my mother as a strong person, when I hear about stories from my sister’s generation and the way they managed on very little money, without a father, I see my mother as a very strong and courageous woman indeed.

Once her husband was buried the United States government offered her a one time payout of $2,000.00, which must have seemed like a fortune to a penniless widow in the 1940’s. The other option was to get $37.00 monthly for the rest of her life. She chose that small monthly installment. When I asked her why she told me that she felt she could depend on that small monthly check, regardless of how small it was, she knew she would be getting it for the rest of her life. In the long run it was a good decision because the payout was far greater over her lifespan. Still, that was her only income for awhile. My mother and her children went without basic necessities for awhile until she landed a job baking sweet rolls and pastries for the train’s cook car. She would have to wake up in the middle of the night and walk through the North Dakota snow and be at work at four in the morning and bake for a few hours before she could come home and get the kids ready for school. I cannot even imagine how difficult this must have been. She was lucky that she had the wonderful baking and cooking skills she had. She learned them from her parents, who owned a restaurant in Minnesota, when she was a young child. Charles Lindberg used to come into the restaurant to eat on a regular basis when my mother was a child and he even took her up for a plane ride before he made his famous flight!

I believe the way poverty affected my sister was that it gave her an appreciation for how different life could be. She scrimped and saved as a teenager from her babysitting jobs to put herself through secretarial school. She didn’t have much food to eat while at school, only what our mother sent back to school with her each week, after she had returned from the weekend. She landed decent jobs in her 20’s and 30’s. In her 30’s and beyond she began treating herself to things she never had, yet at the same time she was vigilant about saving money for a rainy day. She allowed herself the gift of travel and helping others out financially now and then. At age 74, now retired, she lives rather modestly, yet comfortably. She spends money on herself now and then, which I find to be very healthy since she went without nice things for so long and she is entitled to enjoy the fruits of her labor now. She also is generous in giving to me, my siblings and others in need. She continues to save, even through retirement. I really think she felt the effects of not having enough when she was young, and it has greatly influenced the way she lives today.

I chose to research poverty in India, since I have an affinity for this country due to my daughter being adopted from there. I have known for decades that poverty was rampant there but I was surprised by the statistics of the poverty level being as high as it was. Nearly fifty percent of people are living below the poverty line and illiteracy is at forty percent. Child malnutrition is very high in some regions of India (Trickle Up, 2001). I know this first hand because of all the information that was given to us through our adoption process as well as being presented with a very severely malnourished infant.

The good news is Trickle Up is an organization in India who works exclusively with women to help them have a better life by moving them from chronic food insecurity to economic self-sufficiency. This agency combines livelihood training, weekly mentoring and a Spark Grant that helps grow a family’s income. They also have a program that teaches women how to save money and overall how to become self sufficient (Trickle Up, 2011).

Resources

Trickle Up. (2011). Trickle Up India. Retrieved from http://trickleup.org/solution/asia.cfm?gclid=CI6l2fjj1KwCFQZbhwodg0uJqQ

The Importance of Proper Nutrition

The public health issue that affects children that is most meaningful to me is nutrition and malnutrition. I believe that we take for granted that all children are provided with proper nutrition, which isn’t the case. The country I chose was India to report on malnutrition.

India’s Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) needs to undergo significant changes to address the current malnutrition crisis in India, according to a World Bank report. The prevalence of underweight children in India is among the highest in the world, and is nearly double that of Sub-Saharan Africa, the report says. It also observes that malnutrition in India is a concentrated phenomenon. A relatively small number of states, districts, and villages account for a large share of the burden – 5 states and 50 percent of villages account for about 80 percent of the malnutrition cases (The World Bank, 2005).

This has become a personal topic for me since I adopted a severely malnourished infant from India over a decade ago. It seems that in India malnutrition is prevalent in the poorer areas and many of the non private orphanages. Even if there is knowledge about proper nutrition, there may not be enough food for all the people who need it. I found this to be the case with my adopted daughter. She came to us from India at thirteen and three quarters months of age weighing just thirteen pounds. She came with a bevy of problems that I won’t go into now, but proper nutrition played a big part in allowing her to reach the milestones she was behind in. When she arrived she was very weak and her normally sleek, straight, dark brown hair was red, course and a bit kinky. It looked very over treated by chemicals, but it was the malnutrition causing it.

I feel lucky that I work at a school where nutrition is a top priority. They are very conscious to serve a balanced, organic menu. I will be aware of the effects of malnutrition and what to look for if I find myself working in a different place eventually.

Reference

The World Bank. (2005, August). India's Undernourished Children: A Call for Reform and Action. Retrieved from http://siteresources.worldbank.org/SOUTHASIAEXT/Resources/223546-1147272668285/IndiaUndernourishedChildrenFinal.pdf

The Wonderful Forms of Birth!

I have two birthing experiences that I would like to relay to all of you. The first one, who I call "daughter of my body" is Brianne, age 25. The second one, who I lovingly will refer to is "daughter of my heart", is Tessa, age 14. Both are my daughters, both I love equally and dearly. Both were very difficult birth experiences in totally different ways.

I became pregnant with Brianne when I was twenty six years old. I had planned this pregnancy for a couple of years and was delighted to learn I would have a baby. Within the first two months of pregnancy I became very ill due to asthma and at that time smoking in the work place was a common occurrence. This made my asthma even worse. Ironically, I worked for a health insurance company and over 30 people in my office smoked at their desks. I was entrenched in a grey haze. My asthma doctor and ob doctor assured me the baby was getting enough oxygen in spite the cigarette smoke. However, I wasn't getting enough. Instead of providing a smoke free place for me to work, my employer chose to disable me for the duration of the pregnancy. The subsequent few months were better, I enjoyed being home and anticipating the arrival of what I HOPED would be a baby girl. However, all along I had to take several medications to keep my asthma under control. By the last trimester my breathing problems went from being very uncomfortable to very serious. I was monitored constantly. I was on five medications just to breathe, having to set my alarm for waking up every three hours in the night to take medication. I was sent to a genetics doctor which was rare for the mid 80's. He told me all of the medications I was taking were safe for the baby except they could not tell if one of them was or not. However, I needed it, so they kept me on it. There was an unanswered question...would this medication affect my child? Finally my breathing got so severe, that at 36 weeks of gestation they attempted to perform an amniocentesis to see if my baby's lungs were developed enough for delivery. She was fine, but I was in distress. However, all the fluid was behind her body, so they didn't feel comfortable with using the needle, thus the test wouldn't work for me. Instead they gave me large doses of prednisone via IV every few days. It helped my oxygen starved body and would help mature her lungs they said. Back in the 80's they considered full term 40 weeks of gestation so they were concerned about delivering a 36 week fetus. Finally at 36 weeks and 5 days they delivered my daughter via a planned c-section. My pelvis was too small for the normal birthing method and labor would have made my breathing worse. I had an epidural for anesthesia, which only worked on the right side. As a result I had about ten local injections into my left side to get it numb. However, I still felt a lot of sensation in that side, such as tugging during cutting the incision, etc. Finally once she was born, they gave me twilight sedation which sent me in and out of la la land. I kept asking "what did I have?"...hoping it was a girl. It was a girl!!!!!!! My dream come true. I was in the hospital for four and a half days with Brianne, on morphine two of those days and so out of it I really wasn't concerned about the fact that I had a newborn. After just two days of being on morphine I had severe withdrawals which made me miss an entire half day of being a mom while I tried to fight the very uncomfortable sensations. Finally on Christmas Eve morning I brought my new daughter home. She was healthy, I was healthy, and I could breathe without the aid of any medications.

Daughter of my heart, Tessa, came to me via a very long and difficult East India adoption. I did not give physical birth to her, but I went though birthing pains that equal those of women who go through labor. Foreign adoption is not for the faint of heart from countries who would rather not see their children going to a "Christian" country. We lost one of our adopted children, who died of an illness, while trying to come to the USA. She would have been fifteen this week. We named her Jennika. Whereas we do not know Tessa's exact birth experience, and if we did I would want to talk in generalities here for the sake of her privacy. What I can say is that the birth process in India is very different depending on whether the family is rich or poor. If they are a family of means they might have the baby in a hospital setting that is very sterile and the mother is confined to bed from the very beginning of labor and command pushing is the norm. If a baby is delivered at home they might have a traditional birth attendant and men would be excluded from birth. Women could experience a period of confinement after the birth. Also, many rituals surrounding the birth of the child very likely would take place. Many times if a female was born there would be disappointment within the family. Some of the time these female children would end up in orphanages because they were female, and other times because the family couldn't feed one more child. The newborn might be dropped off in the dark of night or might be brought in by the police.