Hand to Mouth: Living in Bootstrap America (9 page)

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Now let’s talk about health care, which obviously kids need. There’s a thing called the Children’s Health Insurance Program. Its income standards aren’t as stringent as Medicaid’s. Most kids who need it qualify. It’s not the same as being able to take your kid to the doctor for every sniffle, but if they have a serious fall or a scary spike in temperature, you can call a nurse. We can also take them to the ER, which is where the pediatrician tells you to go if it’s an acute situation anyway. In general, poor parents know what to do for minor maladies, and we know our kids will be taken care of if it’s catastrophic and we’re not working at a place that offers insurance.

But just because poor people can’t afford to be hysterical about our kids’ health doesn’t mean we’re blasé. I was sitting on a park bench one time when my daughter came screaming over to demand that I kiss her knee better. She’d scraped it somehow—it looked worse than it was.

So I kissed it and sent her back to play. Another mom, clearly in a different tax bracket, turned to me to ask whether I needed to borrow her antiseptic; I said we were fine. And then she told me how she’d really like to be able to be so nonchalant about her baby being hurt. I wasn’t sure whether she was trying to be cutting or really meant it; either way, my brain started demanding I cross the vast gulf between “not making a big fuss over a skinned knee” and “nonchalant about my child being hurt.” They’re different things. Way different
things. So, rich lady who thinks I’m nonchalant? Mind your own business. And maybe sometimes, when your little princess skins her knee, send her back out to play instead of acting as though she’d just lost a limb.

It’s good for them, you know.

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Once we move past all the daily subsistence-level stuff that we really need to worry about, the question seems to change from “Why do you have kids you can’t afford to take care of?” to “Why don’t you take care of your kids in the exact manner of which I approve?”

Take college, for example. Many rich people look at poor people and think it’s disgusting that we can’t afford to give our kids a good education. Or maybe they think we deserve it for being poor. Either way, I know they think that our kids’ educations are suffering because of our class status. As if we haven’t thought about this or don’t have a plan. Well, newsflash, we do. My husband and I will do what our parents did. We’ll make sure our kids are curious, well-read people. We’ll make sure they get good grades. We’ll make them study. And when it comes time, we’ll see what sorts of scholarships and grants they qualify for and then probably take out loans for the rest. I guess I don’t really see how my plan is that much different from a wealthier person’s until you hit the “we’ll just pay for it” level. Is it really the end of the world to go to a state school?

I think there’s also a judgment leveled at poor parents that
we give our kids a terrible quality of life, as if our children are deeply conscious of their poverty on a daily basis. And certainly, there are a lot of people who’ve been plunged into circumstances so bad that they can’t keep their kids ignorant of it. But lots of people are just struggling to get by, and they’re doing so without irreparably harming their children. Maybe things aren’t picture-perfect all the time, but I don’t see the value in that anyway. I promise that if, like I did, you paint rainbows on your kids’ walls, it’ll be a decade or so before they realize that it’s crooked and definitely not a professional job. You might notice. I notice. My kids? They think it’s a pretty fucking cool rainbow.

That’s what I love about kids—everything is magic for them. If you tell them the world is awesome, and you make sure awesome things sometimes happen, they will totally go with you on that one. Awesome, to a kid, is a rainbow wall or a tickle fight or a hiding place in the closet. They don’t realize that collecting every My Little Pony is awesome unless you tell them it is. Class, the relative having of things—that stuff doesn’t come up until later. Until we put it there. Kids will not notice worn spots in their clothes until they are socialized to. They simply don’t get social constructs, class included. We raise our children to believe whatever we decide they should. And like most poor people, I’ll raise my kids to be resourceful and aware. At some point, I will discuss class with them, just like every parent will discuss the real world with their children.

The point is that my kids are loved and they know it. I’ve heard a lot of young women give that reason for having their
babies, actually: love. I come from a culture where the girls marry young and the families are big. It’s just how we roll in Utah. I’ve actually seen people have numbered jerseys made for their kids when they made a full team’s worth. That is considered cute where I come from.

I’ve heard it said that poor people have kids because they want someone to love them unconditionally. But I think it’s more nuanced than that. I think that the stereotypical teenage wannabe mom who gives that reason wants someone she can safely love, someone who is predictable and steady and will stick around no matter what. And yes, it’s sad for a young girl to feel that way. That said, I can understand it. In Utah, where we often marry young and have babies young, young women might think, “I may as well get started being an adult and having a family.” Is it the wisest course? No. But it’s not crazy. It’s not even unrealistic. It’s not like these girls have brilliant futures in the Ivy League that they’re passing up to have babies; those are typically reserved for the children of brilliant Ivy Leaguers. They are deciding to have their toddlers while they themselves are young and have the energy. And plenty of people, no matter where they are from, simply have love to give.

What really riles me is this idea that poor people are somehow inherently more selfish when we have children. There are plenty of rich people who have kids for exactly the same reasons I just described—because they want someone who will love them unconditionally, and with whom they can share that kind of all-encompassing love. But somehow, because they
have money, rich people are entitled to feel that way without being derided. Let’s not kid ourselves, though, that it’s any less selfish or self-centered.

What, after all, is Baby Gap and its ilk appealing to, if not parents who enjoy dressing up their kids as little mini-mes? Trust me, no infant has a serious desire to wear a cable-knit V-neck sweater with a collared shirt underneath, no matter how adorable they look. Preschool prep classes? Not meant for the kid’s self-esteem. So the problem of childbearing as an extension of your own personal brand sort of transcends social class.

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Truth time: We do not breed for sweet, sweet government cheese.

I understand that some people will say, “But you just said that everything was cool because of welfare!” I can see how one might come to that objection if you’re only working on what you have read in this book so far. But trusting that you will always at least be able to feed your family, even if it is at food banks and with SNAP, is a whole different ball game from actively deciding to have a child specifically for the money.

Okay, quick lesson time. Welfare isn’t a thing. That is to say, welfare is a lot of things as opposed to one thing. And each of these things has different requirements. It’s not hard to qualify for some things, relatively speaking. If you’re
starving, you can pretty much count on qualifying for SNAP or food bank services. Now, access to those things can be sketchy, but that’s a different point. The point here is that food benefits can be spent only on food; the benefit card blocks anything that isn’t approved. Cash benefits, the ATM-withdrawal kind of welfare—money that you can use on rent, gas, the water bill, clothing—are actually damn near impossible to qualify for. And to get them, you’ve got to jump through a lot of extra hoops. Cash benefits are the ones tied to work or looking for work or training for work or working for the state.

If you are desperate enough to be breeding for cash benefits, you are for all practical purposes having kids in order to be poor enough for the government to give you a full-time job. See, the reason everyone says that you get more money for having kids is that your benefits are determined by both your income and household size. So, to make it an income stream, you have to decrease your non-benefit income and/or increase your household size sufficiently. That, I think, is probably pretty rare. And if you think about it for a few seconds, I think you will see how ridiculous the whole idea of it is. It would be like breaking your leg so you can go to the hospital because they’ll feed you while you’re there.

I definitely have told that joke once or twice—that I was having kids for the sweet, sweet government cheese—but hello? I
meant
it as a joke. Granted, I do think there are many stupid people out there. There are stupid rich people and there are stupid poor people. The stupid rich people think that welfare queens are breeding like rabbits. And sure, there are
probably a few people out there who did not realize even after Kid One that kids are a giant pain in the ass. Maybe a few of those idiots thought they’d make an easy paycheck by having another kid. But I’d argue that there are a lot fewer of these poor idiots than those rich idiots think there are. And by a “lot fewer,” I mean a statistically insignificant number of poor people are doing this. Can I prove this? No. But nor can I prove that people aren’t breaking their legs just to get some lunch.

I’m not even certain how people think it’s possible that someone would have kids for welfare benefits. Do these people not have kids of their own? Did they manage to sleep through the colic somehow, or did they simply block it out? I mean, if you’re going to pay me in multiple tens of thousands of dollars a year to have a kid, okay, maybe it’s worth thinking about. But a few thousand dollars extra, best-case scenario, and that’s my entire income and I’ll still be living this desperate life? Yeah, no, I’ll pass on that deal.

To accept the idea that someone would have babies just for the money, you have to assume that they see their children as stock rather than as kids. The more temperate assumption that follows is that poor people neglect their kids. But what wealthier people view as neglect is pretty shallow stuff and to me is just a matter of taste. My kids have dirty faces sometimes. Unless we’re going somewhere or expecting someone, my husband and I really don’t bother making sure they’re spotless. It’s a losing battle with toddlers. Our kids are both fascinated with baths, so they’re always pretty clean overall, but their faces and hands are a different story. Most people I
know are the same way; we just don’t have the time or energy to chase little kids down and demand that they keep their hands clean. They’re little, they’re
supposed
to ignore the lawn in favor of the mud puddles.

That said, I’d be horrified if they left the house like that. I think most people are that way in secret, inclined to be a bit lax at home. It doesn’t speak to your actual parenting skills, I think, although the state of your children’s faces when nobody’s watching is a clear indicator of whether or not you lean toward OCD.

I’m not saying that there are no standards, just that maybe some of them could use some loosening. And of course there’s a line you’re just not supposed to cross. There’s being a bit lax, and then there’s being legitimately a kind of awful parent. Don’t worry, poor people disapprove of those people in Wal-Mart screaming empty threats at their kids at top volume too.

But I think it’s a little misguided when wealthier people turn up their noses at the parenting style of poor people who don’t necessarily treat their children like precious china that would break if looked at sideways. I’m not preparing our kids for a gentle world, full of interesting and stimulating experiences. I’m getting them ready to keep their damn mouths shut while some idiot tells them what to do. I’m preparing them to keep a sense of self when they can’t define themselves by their work because the likeliest scenario is that (unlike doctors and lawyers and bankers) they will not want to. I’m getting them ready to scrap and hustle and pursue happiness despite the struggle.

I think a lot of what people see as bad parenting is simply that our kids have different expectations. It wouldn’t make any sense to take wealthy kids and prepare their brains for drudge work. And it doesn’t make much sense to take poor kids and prepare them to seek fulfillment from work. That’s not how it goes for us. If they find it, that’s fantastic. But odds are, they will work just as many zombie jobs as they will good ones.

I’ll teach my kids to be curious, to learn stuff for themselves because learning is kind of awesome for its own sake, to find what interests them and get obsessive about it. But learning and thinking is only a hobby for the working class, and I think it’s best they’re prepared. You never know what their lives will be. The happiest people are the ones who can simply block out the worst of it.

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When I gave birth to my oldest daughter, I was visited more than once in the hospital by authorities because I’d had no prenatal care. They asked invasive are-you-an-idiot questions. All the questions seemed designed to make me look like an unfit parent: One of them was “Do you have a job?” My answer was “Not at the moment.” (True—I’d quit work just before giving birth and didn’t intend to look for more work for another two weeks.) Another was “Do you have a permanent home?” My answer to that was also no. (This was during the time when our apartment was flooded and we were fighting with our landlord about our housing.) I was asked my education
level (college dropout), and I was even asked if anyone in my home had a diagnosed mental disorder. Yep. After all this, I was pretty convinced they weren’t going to let me take my daughter home. Luckily, I dodged that bullet. She was healthy enough, and it’s not like I was the first uninsured woman to get pregnant in a century or anything.

A neighbor of mine was investigated because she was at work
too much
. And they asked her the same sorts of questions, meant to find fault: How many hours are you gone? Have you considered cutting back? She said that they spoke a lot about marriage during her sessions, like making her boyfriend a permanent fixture was some kind of panacea. (The dude was useless, and as far as I could tell, he was her one indulgence.) The whole time these authorities were shaming her for working so much, she was thinking about nannies. See, if she’d been wealthy enough to hire a nanny, it wouldn’t matter how much she was gone. She was talking to the authorities only because she didn’t get paid enough.