Though I imagine the prevalence is much higher in black youth, this is a general issue that goes beyond race.
A stable upbringing with a family that you can use as role models. If you don't have that, you're in for an uphill struggle.
If everyone around you is unemployed, or works in part time unskilled labour - if you're moving from home to home all of the time - if you have no bedroom - if your family argues, or you don't have proper food so your blood sugar is all over the place - these are tremendous things to overcome in isolation never mind all at the same time.
People talk about 'privilege' in upbringing because it's actually kind of rare to have a functional family.
This is what the class system really is. Some people can jump the gap after their formative years, but most people are going to be stuck in those patterns if they've spent 20 years in the trenches.
I grew up in a poor family; my father left when I was young. The one thing we had (aside from the absolute warrior-woman of my mother), provided by the government back in the day, was a council house. A low rent secure tenancy. So whilst everything else was a struggle, my mother was able to provide a relatively stable housing situation for us.
Without that I'm sure I would be a complete fuck-up now.
>Though I imagine the prevalence is much higher in black youth, this is a general issue that goes beyond race.
It certainly does. I'm having trouble digging up primary sources I've read on this before (there's a ton of secondary by searching "Consequences of fatherless childhoods", "consequences of single-parent households" and similar on DuckDuckGo), but studies are showing that children being brought up in single-parent or "fragile" households fare worse than their counterparts brought up in two-parent, comparatively stable households.
The issue is likely significantly compounding generation after generation. It's not really a surprise that children need a stable household with good role models at the helm though, and the absence of which being damaging.
FWIW, historically most researchers have not adequately dealt with genetic confounding. That is, people who grow up in single parent households experience the environment that their parents create for them (which is what everyone focuses on), but they also share their parents genes. And, if there is a significant genetic component that leads parents to create dysfunctional environments for their children, their children are likely to possess the same genes.
> People talk about 'privilege' in upbringing because it's actually kind of rare to have a functional family.
I’m not sure how rare it is overall, but it definitely varies by region. Where I grew up (and where I live now, I moved back a couple of years ago) the traditional/stereotypically American “atomic family” seems to be the norm. Sure, I knew lots of peers as a child whose parents had divorced, but by and large they still had a functional family. The rate of so-called “broken homes” seems to have increased dramatically in the past few decades, but around me most people have an extended family to rely on. It doesn’t seem uncommon for a child to be raised by their mother (or grandmother), but even if the father is a failed person, drug addict, or criminal the kids generally have several male role models to turn to who aren’t self-destructive: uncles, grandfathers, cousins, etc.
> This is what the class system really is. Some people can jump the gap after their formative years, but most people are going to be stuck in those patterns if they've spent 20 years in the trenches.
I think you’ve absolutely nailed something here. I don’t necessarily see myself as a “mentor” - at least not formally - but I do what I can for people around me. The fact that I’m able to sit down and speak openly about my experiences and provide my perspective on their situations without coming from a place of “I’m right, you’re wrong, and this is what you should be doing” has lead to my hearing the stories of many seemingly random people who don’t have anyone else to turn to. Sometimes that has lead to their making significant improvements in their own life; sometimes it hasn’t. In every case though, I try to make sure they know that they have someone to talk to that is going to take them seriously and isn’t trying to get something from them.
I’m looking for ways to make a bigger impact in my community like this, but haven’t really found my place yet.
> I grew up in a poor family; my father left when I was young. The one thing we had (aside from the absolute warrior-woman of my mother), provided by the government back in the day, was a council house. A low rent secure tenancy. So whilst everything else was a struggle, my mother was able to provide a relatively stable housing situation for us.
My situation seems similar at least at first glance. My mother was 17, and my biological father was basically a burnout and petty criminal. I never knew him, but perhaps paradoxically respect him for that - he corresponded enough with my mother to know that I was safe and was being raised in a stable environment, so he explicitly made the decision to stay out of my life. Because of that my impression of him is of someone who was intelligent and empathetic, but flawed and misguided.
Where it sounds the state was a force of stability in your life, extended family took that role in mine. I lived with my grandparents until I was six years old because my mother was single and couldn’t afford to provide a healthy environment for me at the time. She was always there for me, and present as often as she could be, but she prioritized getting herself into an economic and social position to care for me over herself and what she wanted. I’m sure it was very difficult and painful for her to only see me on the weekends when I was young, but in that time she met my dad (my “real” dad, not my biological father), built a career, and got to a place where she could care for me. Eventually, she was able to care for my grandparents as well. I look at her life story so far as an inspiration; there are many parts that I wouldn’t want to experience and things she’s striven for that I don’t want for myself, but her sheer force of will and persistence is something I try to live up to.
The kids who were raised under the shadow of the opioid epidemic are now reaching their child-bearing years. Hopefully the cycle of drug dependance can be broken once firmer opioid prescribing regulations take effect.
EDIT: Not trying to generalize your situation but to illuminate the problematic environments some children are born into.
You do know that arguing is normal and that suppressing it or hiding it from children fucks them up even more right? Part of being a functioning member of society requires being able to argue.
Different people have different definitions of arguing, especially when it comes to family. There is healthy debate and there is dishes flying through the air, name calling, screaming, and slammed doors. Leaning towards the former can be healthy. The latter? I don't think so.
You wouldn't be a fuck-up. No one should be regarded as a fuck up. You'd be the result of a fucked up society. In a healthy society, people should end up nominally productive, cooperative and happy or content. We've taken the dog eat dog mentality and sell-something modus operandi too far, powered by unnecessary and unhealthy levels of greed, even for the winners.
Most of our time over the last million years of evolution was spent completely in contrast to this. It's nurture influencing nature and I think we're about to turn the page and start using all of our information and abilities to bring the best out of people instead of the worst.
Those ancient people without stable homes also didn't get education or jobs beyond basic skills and tribal fighting. A hostile childhood environment is probably useful for making hostile tough men who can survive in a hostile world. But not for a happy life in civilization.
Do you need to be from an unstable to be tough? I don't think so. I was neglected and ignored, and I do think it helped make me persistent, resilient and self-sufficient but that's a lot of genetic nature coming through, simply influenced by environment.
Ancient people didn't have massive food supply industries making sure things were relatively plentiful. If you didn't have a stable home or tribe in east Africa in 100,000BC, you were probably dead. I don't think our industrial society and pre-industrial times can be compared 1:1. You can be sent a welfare card with some fiat currency put on it, and get everything you need to survive. That's a new concept, charity usually came from the church, and before the church, the tribe. But the tribe (100,000BC) might have chosen to simply let you die instead, depending on their culture.
A stable upbringing with a family that you can use as role models. If you don't have that, you're in for an uphill struggle.
If everyone around you is unemployed, or works in part time unskilled labour - if you're moving from home to home all of the time - if you have no bedroom - if your family argues, or you don't have proper food so your blood sugar is all over the place - these are tremendous things to overcome in isolation never mind all at the same time.
People talk about 'privilege' in upbringing because it's actually kind of rare to have a functional family.
This is what the class system really is. Some people can jump the gap after their formative years, but most people are going to be stuck in those patterns if they've spent 20 years in the trenches.
I grew up in a poor family; my father left when I was young. The one thing we had (aside from the absolute warrior-woman of my mother), provided by the government back in the day, was a council house. A low rent secure tenancy. So whilst everything else was a struggle, my mother was able to provide a relatively stable housing situation for us.
Without that I'm sure I would be a complete fuck-up now.