Stressors: The Effects of Poverty on Childhood Development

Poverty can be precursor for so many other stressors like hunger, disease, isolation, and violence. A child living in poverty can easily feel alone in the world since no one seems to be coming to their rescue. A child living in poverty often does not have enough to eat, and definitely does not have adequate nutrients in their diet. Chances are their living arrangements are unsafe, and environmentally unsound; and theirs is a community infested with criminal activity and violence. According to United States Census Bureau information gathered in the 2011 census taking, “shows the number of people living in poverty in the US to be 46.2 million, having increased for the fourth consecutive year. The poverty rate for children also increased from 20.7% in 2009 to 22% in 2010” (United States Census Bureau, 2012).

When I was in kindergarten I remember having a classmate who was obviously much poorer than the rest of us in the class. She was always hungry and her clothes were worn, and sometimes not so clean. Back then kindergarten was only a few hours, a half day, and all we received in the way of food was juice and crackers or pretzel sticks. My mother worked in the school and sometimes she would take my old clothes and give them to Maria’s mom, along with food. There was a movie a few years back called City of God that dealt with poverty in Brazil and showed how the poorest people were moved to the suburbs of Rio de Janeiro, beyond the city limits so they would not come into contact with or interfere with the glamorous tourism. At its core is a story of children who turn to lives of crime to eat and survive. As I watched that movie I thought about all the unseen communities here in the United States filled with families like Maria’s. Maria never became a criminal, though I heard one of her older brother went to jail, she survived her poverty and is now a nurse.

Today in the City of God, government officials use police units to take the slums out of the control of the drug dealers.  “These units must act as police and social workers as they devote themselves to winning over the residents, scarred by violence – some at the hands of the police” (de Almeida, 2010). Maria did not live in a lean to or play in streets filled with garbage and animals, next to a river filled with more garbage and smelling of human an d animal waste, but just as the government turned their back on City of God, and tried to pretend those people did not exist, on some level we in this country do the same thing. the new units is part traditional policing, part social work. They devote themselves to winning over City of God residents scarred by decades of violence — some at the hands of the

References:

De Almeida, L. (2010, October 10). In rough slum, Brazil’s police try soft touch. The New York               Times. Retrieved from                                                                                                                        http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2010/10/10/world/americas/20101010-BRAZIL-

 United States Census Bureau. (2012). Social, Economic, and Housing Division; Poverty.                                     Retrieved from  http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/index.html