Most Americans are insulted from the hapless; it is difficult to conceive of the challenges of poorness, the day-to-day frights of victimization, the defeat of non being able to supply for a kid. Poverty is something that non merely effects grownups, but kids every bit good.
When we think of poorness in America what is the image that comes to mind? An old dilapidated hovel in southern Alabama? Or a rat infested tenement house in New York City? Harmonizing to the book Faces of Poverty, the writer, Jill Berrick says that? Both images are right, for poorness exists in the back countries of Appalachia every bit good as in the bosom of the interior metropolis. In places across America hapless parents are raising hapless kids. Even in our in the back yard, we are faced with poorness. In Palm Beach County, more than 50 per centum of individual parents who have kids under the age of 5 are populating in poorness. (Hammersley).
In the book Homeless Families In America, Jonathan Kozol focuses on four of import issues on hapless kids under six: Who they are, where they live, why they are helpless, and the hazards hapless kids face. The information presented pertains to kids who live in houses and flats because this is the population founded by family studies. Harmonizing to three national surveys homeless kids aged 16 and under, someplace 41,000 and 106,000 kids are literally stateless at any given clip. Homeless intending they live in shelters, churches, or public topographic points with no permanent abode. ? Between 39,000- 296,000 are precariously housed, intending them live with either relations or doubled up with friends.
Why are hapless households with immature kids hapless? It is believed that kids are helpless because their parents are hapless. Child poorness can merely be reduced by assailing the multiple causes of household poorness. Children under the age of six with individual female parents are much more likely to be hapless than those populating with two parents? (Kozol 52). Part of this job is due to the proportion of adult females giving birth outside matrimony has increased dramatically over the past three designers, and kids born outside of matrimony who grow up with individual female parents are likely to be hapless for most of their childhood. 61 per centum of kids who spend the first 10 old ages of life in a single-parent household were hapless for the most of the period, and merely 7 per centum avoided poorness wholly. (Hammersley).
The last issue that Kozol focuses on are the hazards hapless kids face on a day-to-day footing. Early childhood experiences contribute to hapless kids’ high rates of school failure, dropout, delinquency, early childbirth, and grownup poorness? (Kozol 74). The degree of developmental hazard that hapless kids experience varies tremendously and it is influenced in of import ways by the deepness and the continuance of household poorness. However, even among the long term hapless, hazards to child development vary harmonizing to the physical and mental wellness of parents, the handiness of societal support from outside the household, the topographic point of abode, the resiliency of kids, and other fortunes.
Poor kids are more likely than non-poor kids to be low winners in school, to reiterate one or two classes, and to finally drop out of school. They are more likely to engage in condemnable behavior, to go single teen- parents, and to be welfare dependent and are less likely to earn less if they are employed? (Kozol 86).
There are reported incidences of kid maltreatment and disregard, every bit good as the badness of the ill-treatment reported, is much greater for kids from low income households than for others. The estimated incidences of ill-treatment of all types were approximately seven times as great among kids populating in households with one-year income below $ 15,000 as among those from higher income households? (Hammersley). The kinetics of kid ill-treatment would propose that we should happen higher rates of ill-treatment in hapless households as a consequence of the many hazards associated with life in poorness.
Poverty is a turning job every twenty-four hours. The opportunities of halting it are few. It is set upon non merely the grownups, but most unluckily the kids. It seems like the affluent stay affluent and, all but the few, hapless stay hapless. Why do guiltless kids have to populate so miserably? Why do the kids have to populate in danger? These inquiries cannon be answered in this paper. These inquiries may ne’er be answered.
