[lit-ideas] Re: Poverty of Heritage

From: Carol Kirschenbaum <carolkir@xxxxxxxx>
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Thu, 25 May 2006 14:48:08 -0700
A nugget from the article in today's NYT, which Judy previously posted 
(thanks!):

"...Census officials say multigenerational families are most common in 
states like California, where the high cost of housing forces families to 
double up, and in states where high rates of out-of-wedlock childbearing 
lead to home sharing by the mother, her children and her parents.

A variety of cultural factors also draw and keep relatives together. 
Multigenerational living, especially those in which grandparents care for 
their grandchildren, have long been common in Asian and Hispanic countries, 
and the arrangement is popular among immigrants from those nations...."

ck: Three related topics--poverty, housing, and immigration--that we've 
discussed recently, in two succinct paragraphs. I was referring to 
"multigenerational housing" when I posted about new immigrants pooling their 
resources to buy a house here--a savvy use of limited resources. But as this 
article also reports, immigrant families shove themselves into what used to 
be called "tenements"--crowded, substandard (for America's standards) 
housing.

People seem to accept crowded digs for immigrants, when they read about it 
in the NYT, but the arrangement is not nearly as acceptable to families of 
citizens who are booming into old age. There's not much literature on this 
phenomenon, but I'll bet that the surge in elder abuse in the US is related 
to younger people feeling burdened by their old parents, and having no 
recourse. (Boomers may be the younger, working child, or the aged, disabled 
ones.)

Lack of affordable housing--affordable to low incomes (in what used to be 
middle-class jobs, perhaps)--plays a huge role here. Again, I'll use a 
cheapo town in California as an example of costs for "assisted living": 
$15,000 PER MONTH. (This was out of the question even for a former LA 
attorney with a reasonable pension, btw.) I'm not talking about nursing 
homes, either. Anyway, the adult child steps up to the plate more and more, 
since living alone isn't financially possible for either generation. But 
living with one's mother, for whatever reason, is not a culturally 
acceptable thing for a 30ish white person to do. In an instance that comes 
to mind--my friend the attorney--elder abuse was a chronic concern.

There's a lot of talk of "family" in these parts--in America, in general. 
But the ideal of a family that takes care of each of its infirm, elderly, 
and infantile members is not especially American at all. No, Americans have 
aspired to individualism, to go-it-aloneness. That's our cultural heritage. 
Now, though, we're asked to shift our priorities because, for one, the 
government refuses to restrict runaway capitalism. So we've been sold this 
sentimentality bit about "family values" instead of paying decent wages to 
caregivers for children and older people, instead of subsidizing housing for 
disabled people, instead of having easy access to healthcare before the 
situation is a more expensive emergency, etc.

Carol





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[lit-ideas] Re: Poverty of Heritage

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