Generational Poverty

Session 4: Why I believe People are poor in the United States
As I continued to read the book assigned to us for this course, I came across a very interesting concept that I was exposed to, but didn't quite know how to address. That of course, is generational poverty. The idea that poverty can be passed down, like a fortune can, from generation to generation. This is something that I see on a regular basis, but I just didn't know enough about it, or fully understood how such a thing could happen. But now that I have read into it, I can clearly see how it could come to existence. As humans, we are beings that learn from examples and things taught to us, such as talking, walking, learning to drive, etc. Such learned behaviors shape and mold us, and though everyone learns the same basic behaviors, it depends on those that raise us and that we are surrounded around to teach us other behaviors that will make us individuals. So just as a young girl could have both parents in the house hold raising her, both parents have gone to college, graduated, and have successful careers, it is more likely that she will grow to have aspirations, and ultimately attain said aspirations, to be as successful as her parents, and marry someone that has the same goals and values. Well, the same could be said for the young girl on the other side of town, that grew up in a single parent home, where her mother works hard as well, but didn't have the resources, i.e. poor education, financial resources, and adequate child care, to go to college and enter a field of study that would allow her to attain jobs that would pay higher amounts of money. Therefore, the young girl will work hard just as does her mother, but will be more likely not to go to college, and will not be as pressed to marry before having children. This is not to say that this is an inevitable fate for the young girl, but learned behavior usually wins out over other types of education that we receive in our life time U.S. and why minorities anywhere in the World would continue to experience poverty. It is passed down, from generation to generation, and while there are the few that break that cycle, for the most part, many of those that were born into poverty remain in poverty, not because they consciously choose to or because they are too lazy to do anything about it, because often times these are the hardest working people in the entire World, but because it has been embedded into their brains and minds that this is how it is supposed to be. You see your grandmother is poor, your mother is poor, your aunts and uncles are also poor, you think its the norm. But the question is, how do you break out of that state of mind?