Urban Poverty

There are so many things that contribute to urban poverty. Those of us that do not live in poverty would most likely look at the situations and say that these people could help themselves. However, nothing could be farther from the truth in many cases.

We already studied Julia, from the New York City area. She was finally successful in bettering conditions for her family, but it was a very long, very hard struggle. It seemed that many of her problems were caused by government and their lack of speed.

A big concern for poor working mothers is often crime in their neighborhood. Because they have very little money, they are forced to live in neighborhoods that are not nice at all. A term for these neighborhoods is “Outcast Ghetto.” (Chaudry Powerpoint “Putting Children First”) These neighborhoods often have high crime rates, drug use, and gang violence. Mothers are concerned that their daughters may become pregnant at a young age. They are also concerned that their sons may impregnate girls at a young age.

As concerns drug use, it is probably rather easy for these poor working mothers to become drug addicts even though they may think they are going the opposite direction. Here is the scenario: A mother is working two or three jobs at minimum wage to support her family. She just does not have the energy to do it, so someone offers her something just to give her a pick me up so she can continue her many jobs in addition to taking care of her family. As her system gets more and more used to the drug or drugs, she needs more and more to give her the energy she needs. Next thing you know, she is addicted without meaning to become that way. Along these same lines, a mother might “need” her drugs so bad that she would then enter into illegal ways of getting the money such as drug selling and prostitution. I would tend to see this as a major problem. It is also a very sad one because the mother is only trying to help her family, and yet she ends up hurting them and herself.