Reflective Reflections On Poverty

Reflecting on Poverty As a child my father was the breadwinner of the family, while my mother stayed at home trying to raise my brother and I. My father’s salary was not making ends meet and bills had to be paid. One day my mother decided she would apply for welfare and see if that would make up for her being unemployed at the time. The first check came in the mail, and it was forty dollars. This was the moment where my mother decided she had to leave my brother and I behind to land a job as a housekeeper and help my father with the living expenses. This is the story that is told by my mother who constantly reminds us of the financial burden she had dealt with. My 21 years of life I have lived in a neighborhood that does not have the best reputation, and is poverty-stricken. Poverty has always been present in my life whether it has been personal or from the outside world. …show more content…
As I was younger I thought it was easy to judge the life of others and why they decide to live it in such a way. Living in a neighborhood that has high rates of crime, gangs, homelessness, then you tend to see the world at such a young age. Growing up I would question myself occasionally, “Why do people make these poor decisions to end up in situations that they cannot seem to get out of?” Raised in a family that emigrated from Mexico with no clear idea of how there future lied ahead of them was difficult. Till this day, I have extended family that are immigrants and live in poverty but continue with their culture’s expectations where the male is the provider for the household while the woman stays at home raising the children. The realization is that many will conform to those roles and never make the intent to make it out of living in