Does coming from a deprived background really seal your fate?

[Pinkjenny]

Just wondering, really, listening to Nick Clegg on R5 live. I come from Anfield in Liverpool, not deprived really, but certainly not affluent. My mum worked in a shop, and my dad was (and still is) an engineer.

I credit all of my success (relatively speaking, of course) to the way in which I was brought up, and the attitude of my parents, who told me I could be whatever I wanted to be, as long as I put my mind to it.

Does giving children money for their first shoes and first suit really help break that poverty cycle?

Or does it depend on the attitude of their parents and their general upbringing?

Well I was poor. Now I'm not. Why does that make me privileged? I made myself not be poor. Should I have just stayed poor and given up, to obey the rules of the elitist way society is structured? Or should I have thought, bugger that, I don't want to be poor, and I don't want my children to be poor, so I'm going to do something about it.

Caveat: I feel pissed off about being poorer than I ought to be right now but I know it's not "poor", because we were poor, and now it's a squeeze.

I completely agree with you about people having little idea forever, but I disagree with your conclusion. I think education is the key.

And quite often they aren't, Appletrees. I guess you have to decide whether you assume the best of people or the worst, really.

Most people however are poor becuase that was the choice available to them. I can think of three children from my primary who went on to study past 16 (and I am one so no excuses from me). They were never given options- it was mapped out for them. School, under achieve hugely, get a job in the lingerie factory, married at twenty, council house by 23, kids then same job.....

You had to pay keep to your parents, they needed you to work. Somewhere there may have been a choice about being poor, but it was generations back: these famillies had been the same in living memory. Same house, same jobs, same everything.

Thoe that tried to break out weren't given real options: back theen ther was no EMA and there was a code that emant aprents refused to apply for a FE grant. I know someone who got social services to place them in care for a while so they could keep on with school but there was far, far more behind that.

The lack in those people- if anything- is an absence of ambition and it is bred from the first day of their life. It's one thing my aprents gave me: I had far from an ideal childhood and it certainly held me back but the ambition emant that when it was solved I was able to start putting it all back together again. It was a gift.

And even then- we planned, my parents planned- all to nothing. here I am a graduate, yes with plans buit also poor and having to be a carer; Dad's really great pension evaporated so the man who thought he had enough to buy Mum and him a little bungalow and pay for day to day comfort has a £2k compensation payout and a lifelong enforced benefits claim.

Which isn't going to motivate others around them (and us) to believe it's worth the effort is it?

Ultimately you can plan poverty support around the notion that people amde decisions that left them that way but you would be taking from an awful lot of innocent people along the line- and probably ones who contributed to NI and taxes as long as they posibly could (Dad still does, dh still does, I would if anyone would offer me a job around the boys). Whether that's fair, or something you (a wider you, not just AT) can stomach under the wider heading of deficit reduction is a choice. I personally cannot.

NO, you must accept that you are an exception. Nobody here knows your circumstances. You say you used to be poor, and we have to take your word for it.

Perhaps you did. Perhaps that's why you despise the poor so much.

ON the other hand, perhaps you have never been as poor as you think you have. You keep talking about it being a squeeze to pay for private, that you keep scraping by.

That most of the population were able to have the privilege to be squeezed in the way you are being...

"Although I can totally understand why it makes people with privilege feel better to blame poor people for their lack of privilege. It justifies the unfairness in their minds."

May I disabuse you of the misconception that the only people who care about social inequality are people who agree with you.

I care very much about social inequality and my mouth curls when I think of how so much was spent on education to so little effect in the Labour years.

Education is the key, state education is everything. It is being mightily screwed up with an "everyone achieves" agenda (ibid headless) and a resolute failure to give children the tools they need to progress.

Please don't make the superior assumption that you are the only one who cares Sakura. How smug of you.

Education is the key. WHich is why the two-tier elitist education system must be abolished for any fairness to take place. Or funding must be more equally distributed to all schools.

Have you read any of the other personal testimonies on this thread Sakura?

Are you calling me a liar? Why don't you believe me? Are you lying about your mother's brother? Why should I believe you?

I do not despise the poor -- I will not address any more of your superior, smug, self-righteousness any more.

sorry, Appletrees. I am getting tired of being attacked. YOu keep saying all sorts of things, such as I have no grasp on reality etc etc. I try not to look at those things you write, but it's getting to the point that it's PISSING ME OFF

I agree with you both on the last points, in different ways.

Education is one key: but not all people will be able to take advantage of that, and there will only ever be so many 'good' jobs anyway. Indeed, having an unemployed population is a central feature of a capitalist society is it not?

But there are ways to raise the odds of all famillies, and yes it is individualised. I think HomeStart has it about right, yet the scheme in thedeprivation index area which I worked was pulled because of a lack of funding. Case workers in job centres and benefits centres are tasl focussed and seen as the enemy (understandably in many cases).

You need to start by looking at the people and why theya re there. A wider understanding of poverty tells us HB claimants (as a broad selection criteria) are a mixed bunch but contains many unemployed, disabled, sick, low paid workers, lone aprents whoa re struggling with childcare and flexible work.

Pull out the pensioners and some of the very severely disabled (and you'd ned to assess each one individually- disabled people vary so much, add in all children,and you might just get your sample of people for whom working with is a viable option.

Yes, but to break the cycle of poverty you have to take a step back and look at the broaded picture.
The figures tell us that society is tiered. There is no meritocracy. The man who coined the term 'meritocracy' lived to see the term being misused as smug, middle-classes were patting themsevles on the back for being in the privileged positions they were. He dismissed it.

SO we do not have a meritocracy. We have a perpetuation of the class system.

Closing the gap between rich and poor has to be addressed at the political level. In other words, land tax, for example. Even job-creation wouldn'T go amiss. Japan creates fluff jobs. Blaming parents for this and that isn't going to cut it.

Oh some aprents can be blamed; if you walked into a hosue where child was eating quavers for breakfast and Mum drinking vodka out of an OJ bottle at 9am, you'd soon relaise that.

Personal responsiibility is one lesson worth teaching, absolutely.

but sometimes the most responsible decisions end up causing poverty- to elave school and contribute to a family income, to skive school so you can get your disabled mum to the shops, to care for a sick relative- can create poverty.

At the school we attend, a nice MC school, the poor childrena re increasibgly left out of things. If you cannot pay, you cannot play. Subsidies for trips, etc all pulled.

Thus, kids simultaneously miss out on educational chances and form a subconscious subgroup.

Because of where we live none of these famillies are 'classic claimants' of the type villified by the press; we have two carer famillies, a love parent whoc aouldn't get shift chidlcare cover for her work, a handful of recently redundant parents.

You can't prove anything so early on but I would guess that the cause of reducing poverty is severely ahrmed when kids are allowed to identify themselves with the non-achievers through no fault of their own.

A middle class woman can pay for a cleaner, whereas a poor woman cannot.
IF social services turns up at the door, the poorer woman appears disorganized because the place is a tip, when the truth is she simply does not have the practical and financial resources to cope with what is being required of her.
Money counts.

I believe you have to sort out the social policies first and then you can blame people for their circumstances.

Yes, there is a culture of identifying with non-achievers as a survival mechanism. The local drug dealer is regarded as an entrepreneur, he has all the latest clothes, maybe even a flash car. Then there's dad on the dole, drinking away his depression.
Who would you identify with? My guess is any kid with nouse would eschew a life of working on the check out for reasons other from than laziness. MAsculine culture is another problem. IF you have no job, no career, you can prove your masculinity by sleeping around and by NOT living with the mother of your child.
Does that make him evil? Is he bad?
Dorling says that the US incarcerates more people than any othe country in the world. Are North American children born more evil than other children?
Of course not. IT is the circumstances into which they were born that results in them making the choices they do.

But there are ways to raise the odds of all famillies, and yes it is individualised.

And yet on the thread about giving 15 hours free nursery places to those seen to be in poverty there was an outcry from those claiming to be poor but fcuking fantastic parents. Fantastic by who's standards and yes it probably is patronising but you cannot claim unfair disadvantage and yet object to the state intervening to help you to help yourself by teaching you the rules.

A middle class woman can pay for a cleaner, whereas a poor woman cannot.

And if she only had herself to care for she'd be fine. You don't take on more than you can cope with do you ?
I have 4 kids, my place is a tip but i don't attract the attention of social services because there is nothing for them to concern themselves with in my life, i make damn sure of that.

sorry, I don'T know what thread you're talking about mamatomany. COuld you elaborate? Was the state enforcing the 15 hours?

Are you married mamatomany? Married women tend not to attract the attention of the state, on the whole.

I agree with everything that foreverastudent said, but again, it comes back to taking some responsibility for planning out your own life. (not that I am suggesting that everyone will become CEO of a global company just by waiting until 30 to have a baby!)

I know that it is not feasible for everyone who is decent and well-intentioned to end up affluent or self-sufficient, for a million good reasons, and many will end up living in the horrible conditions she describes in spite of all their best efforts. They need constructive support, (but not patronising hand-outs for ever more with no expectations that they will aim to help themselves where possible).

It is sad that good but struggling people need to live around the squalour and anti-social behaviour created by others, just because they are poor. But we must remember who it is that is creating the squalour and indulging in the anti-social behaviour in the first place. We need a way of separating the 'deserving' and the 'undeserving' poor - but how? And at what point do we acknowledge that someone is only 'undeserving' i.e., feckless, lazy, criminal, or anti-social because they are a product of a dysfunctional hopeless environment? And how do we stop it without resorting to eugenics?

But we must acknowledge that many of those people who feel hopeless, helpless, trapped, would not be where they were had they not made poor choices at some point. It is well-intentioned but naive to think that all people living in disadvantage have just had 'bad luck' and that all affluent people have had 'good luck' though undoubtedly it is true for many. But we cannot outlaw 'luck' so we have to put it to one side and focus on what people make happen for themselves.

Many people who are trapped on benefits or in over-crowded poor quality housing are there because they have chosen to have more children than they can support, and to enter into parenthood when they are ill-equipped to do so, on a multitude of levels. Maybe without ever having had a day's work experience first. They have the well-intentioned but WRONG assumption that they can manage all alone in the world with no means of financial or emotional support, becuase if they love their babies enough, they can give them the world. They can't. What they can give them, sadly, is a one-way ticket to disadvantage.

People make bad choices by playing truant, fighting, laying in bed smoking weed all day, getting expelled, failing to do what is required to hold down the job the do have, etc, etc. Not all people, admittedly - but many. And if we toughened up on making people accept at least a degree of personal responsibility for their own outcomes and opportunites it would be a start. and less money spent on them would always mean more for the truly deserving.

There is no undeserving poor.

There are a LOT of undeserving rich, however

Bankers bonuses, anyone?

Scary: your comment about children being left out because of the trips.

It shouldn't happen. The school should pay or it shouldn't happen. Quite frankly they need the in school time. How they can claim they don't have time to listen to children read when they can take them on exclusive trips to the zoo and help them dress up as chimney sweeps I really don't understand.

Was the state enforcing the 15 hours?

I think the term was referring families who they felt needed extra support, one of those it's optional, but really it's not optional situations.

I am married now but I've been a single parent and I agree I probably would have been in situations where I would have asked for help from the state and therefore put my head above the parapet. But equally, then as now there would have been nothing to see because I made one mistake if you call having a baby with a multimillionaire who fucked off, a mistake, I suppose it was but I wasn't going to make the same mistake twice and got the ring on my finger before I had any more children. Again it's down to planning and not letting stuff happen to you, taking control, now anyone rich or poor can do that.

The assumption that all middle class children are bright and don't smoke weed etc or coast in their 6th form colleges is frankly laughable,I could give you many examples of what these wealthy ,aspiring children get up too..but they are not vilified are they ,because they speak in the correct accents and daddys a Doctor

Children in bad circumstances usually have a whole heap of reasons. There have always been children brought up in that way, Victorian children on the street, or parents addicted to gin or on the streets and many reformers over the years have tried and to an extent helped. Now the state pays benefits in theory children are fed. Now is it better they are with parents who do not care for them and are out of it on drugs all the time and the money spent on drugs or that the state pays very little so chidlren are given up to the state and cared for when at least they'll be fed or are children better off with a parent of some kind given the poor outcomes for children in care?

usual - you are right but there's a but. If you look at the Marmot review, you'll see thick middle class children overtake bright working class children between the ages of two and 11. Money buys advantage. Lack of money holds children back. The scale of disadvantage and what it does to children is appalling for a civilised country in the 21st century.

Were you trying to break the record for the longest sentence there, Xenia?

Out of all my ds's friends the biggest stoners of them all, are the children of wealthy parents ..ignore that fact if you want