Whoops, posted too soon.
It's anecdotal, I know, but I'm young enough to be counted as the younger generation. I was also adopted, as a baby, by a single, older woman on a low income. She was very much the make do and mend sort of woman and belonged to a generation older than herself. Pretty much everything was second/eighth hand, she used to darn my underwear, we didn't have a TV, food was mostly made from scratch, to give examples. We were not well off- she was providing for us, her elderly father and my younger brother (Also adopted). Any luxuries were saved up for in advance.
For my generation, the above is all quite unusual. I had a very Spartan, quite old fashioned childhood. However, I undoubtedly had a good one. I had calm and stability. There was value placed on education so that, even though I had a fairly standard state education, we were always encouraged to read, to learn, to be aware of current affairs, to think critically. I'm not sure this was a conscious decision on my mum's part but it has certainly paid off.
I have met my birth family. They are the sort of family who feature in the DM benefit bashing articles and I am certain of this because they have featured in a DM benefit bashing article.
As much as I loathe the daily mail, they weren't too far off with this one. Five children, not including me. Two of my sisters were pregnant before sitting GCSEs. One brother had a stint in prison, the other has never kept a job for more than a couple of weeks. With the exception of my eldest sister, each one has had more issues and mental health problems before their mid 20s than most people will have during their lives. Growing up, they had more toys, more clothes, more gadgets than I did. Income wise, my birth mum and step father aren't doing too badly. Step father's income was pretty decent, considerably more than adoptive mother's, both lived in cheap areas.
But, if you look at the usual factors between my birth and my adoptive family:
Neither owned their house.
Standard state education.
Income/number of dependants works out similarly.
All parents left school at 16.
What made their prospects, and their mental health, so much worse than mine and my adoptive brother's was not the fact that they were much poorer, they were not materially deprived. But they grew up in chaos because my mum (stepdad marginally better) had a plethora of her own mental health issues and lacked basic life skills. They never starved but lacked nutrition because parents didn't cook. They were always short of money because parents couldn't manage it. Nothing ever got done because parents were so disorganised. They did badly in school because my mum revelled in her "fuck it, who needs it" attitude to education...
Almost the entire family struggle and, although a bit of an extreme example, they are not too unusual. Their childhood was not abusive. Mostly, it was not neglectful. But it was in no way conducive to bringing up stable individuals.