Poverty in my life

The stressors that came along with living in those conditions as a child have made me the person I am today. Psychologically, living in these conditions broke me down as well as other members in my family but we had each other to support ourselves. My family was and is united and this was the main factor that helped me cope with the poverty.  

My parents taught me that an education would provide me with the opportunity to have a job that would pay  a decent amount for me to live in better conditions as I had growing up. I value education as it was the able to prepare me for the job I have now and with the help of my sister, we both succeeds and brought our family out of poverty.

While growing up, my parents were never able to buy me new clothes. We would go to yard sales and second hand stores to shop for clothes. I was always embarrassed to go shopping for clothes. Before I was old enough to understand the meaning of poverty, I would resent my parents. I would think that they did not love me because they would not buy me the toys or name brand tennis shoes that I wanted. How I coped with it. I don’t know that it is because I just learned to make the best out of my situation or it’s just that I was lucky to have fallen in love with a certain style of clothing. I now enjoy going to various second hand stores to look for inexpensive used vintage clothing.  I typically dress in the style of the decades of the forties and fifties and I am no longer embarrassed to say where I shop.

The country in the world that I would like to know more about is the United States. I know many families that are struggling through life and trying to end poverty in lives through education as my family succeeded. The factor that hinders these families is that they are undocumented. Healthcare or any government assistance is either limited or not available to these families. In California, a bill known as AB 540 currently allows undocumented students to attend universities if they have attend at least three years of high school in the this country. This is great as I meet many classmates that were able to gain the knowledge and get educated. My parents as theirs taught them that the way out of poverty was to get an education and be able to succeed in a career where they would be financially stable later in life. The problem with these students is that after they received their degrees, they were yet in the same boat or worst than before. Since they do not have a social security number, they are not able to practice their degrees. They cannot get hired. These students did not receive financial aid for their education. The family must pay for all the expensive and go into an even worst level of poverty as they invested in the youth’s future. What the state of California is doing to minimize the harm is to pass more laws that will allow undocumented students to receive financial aid. California is the first state to enact a bill called the “California Dream Act” which allows undocumented students to receive privately funded scholarships to enroll in the states public colleges. A number of other states have considered implementing this law but as a country, I see that many families are unable to break free from poverty generation after generation.

Nutrition/malnutrition

The nutritional gain an infant receives from being breast feed versus by formula in a bottle is evident. Access to clean water can be linked to having a better nutrition and even if an infant does have the proper immunizations, if malnourished, he/she may not enough body reserve to protect itself from even common diseases. The public health measure that impacts children’s development all over this world is malnutrition. If chronic, it hinders brain and body development.

This topic of malnutrition is meaningful to me because both my parents came from an upbringing of poverty and malnutrition. My grandmother told me the hardships she went through as to have two of her children die due to not having the proper nutrition to help them fight off an illness.

More than half of Afghanistan’s children under the age of five do not get enough to eat, leading to developmental problems. They are a still developing nation with war making it harder to find abundance of food to eat. In comparison to the United Sates where the percent of malnourished children is less, sadly parents induce their young to poor food selections like fast food/junk food diets that have poor nutritional value.

This topic has and will continue to impact my work.  Since my family has experienced deaths and the pain associated with the deaths due to malnutrition, I feel I need to inform as many families of the risks they are taking in not providing adequate nutrition to themselves and to their children. I have created a reference and referral folder that I share with families that need support in these areas. An example of this is that I link families with food drive centers and agencies that provide nutritional guidance within the community. Improving the well-being of infants, children and their families has become important public health goal for me.  

Childbirth––In My Life and Around the World

The most wonderful experience I encountered during a birth took place two years ago. My older sister had a baby boy and I became an uncle for the first time. She called me around ten at night and she said that she would be going into labor. She was very calm. I was the person that was to drive her and I was so nervous. She had called our mother along the way to the hospital. Since she took all night, it gave our family time to gather in the lobby. It soon became a family reunion. She was in labor all night and had Jesse a little before noon the following day. During the first three hours of being born, baby Jesse got to meet three of his great grandparents, all of his grandparents, three aunts and uncles, five cousins his dad, mom and me. I felt my family got more unified from this point on as we had all not had welcomed a new addition to our lives for almost four years. Jesse was born in December since then we are all now meeting for the holidays in remembrance of his birth.   

I have several thoughts regarding birth and its impact on child development. I feel that if the baby comes into the world with welcoming arms, this will assist him or her to bond better to others, as their first reaction to others is a welcoming one. I think that from the first moments that the child id born, it reacts to its environment. Birth complications can definitely have an effect on the child’s development where in some instances cause long term handicaps.

My dad was born in the state of Guerrero, Mexico. I had the opportunity to visit this small town last year. It is 15 minutes from the coastline and is about two hours away from the closest city. Babies are born in the same conditions as my father was born in, 53 years ago. No signs of modern medicine have been introduced to this region of the state. Not one family owns a car so to transport someone to get medical checkups is not done. There are no hospitals near by so babies are born within the home. Usually the oldest woman of the home serves as the midwife. In the case of my father, it was his grandmother who assisted his mother. The families are usually composed of more than five siblings. The town is known for its agriculture and farming. Since the land needs to be worked, men are boys are valued more than girls. Men do not partake in the birthing process. When the baby is born, the father goes out to kill a pig or goat to make a feast to welcome the new addition to the family.

In comparing my experience of being apart of my sister giving birth in a hospital and that of how a child coming into the world where my father is from makes me wonder how women and their families in that area cope with the loss of an infant due to no or immediate medical attention? After so many generations, is it part of culture and a part of life?