posted
I grew up very poor. Me, my mom, my younger brothers and sister were literally the only white family in the projects. My teeth were rotting away, and they got fixed just in time because I joined the Army. I can't speak for everyone, but I will say that for my situation and for pretty much everyone who was in the projects for more than a few months, the main factors were irresponsible parenting, drug addiction and alcohol abuse. It wasn't the kids fault, it was the parents. We're not getting the whole story here, I guarantee it. That the kid didn't have to die is obvious. But trying to blame the government is simply more bleeding heart liberalism. I'm not going to go so far as to say that this woman is responsible for her childs death, any more than the mothe of a kid who gets hit by a car in front of the house is guilty. Sometimes things just happen. But this kid's mother is responsible for his not receiving treatment. If she was working 3 jobs an not paying for rent or bills, there is no reason all of her kids didn't get treatment.
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quote:Originally posted by Reshpeckobiggle: If she was working 3 jobs an not paying for rent or bills, there is no reason all of her kids didn't get treatment.
I did not get the impression she was working three jobs simultaneously.
quote:The bakery, construction and home health-care jobs she has held have not provided insurance.
That sounds more to me like she has gone from one job to another, none of which provided insurance.
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posted
I'm more than a little perturbed by the idea that failing to blame the mother equates to bleeding heart liberalism.
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quote:Originally posted by Reshpeckobiggle: I grew up very poor. Me, my mom, my younger brothers and sister were literally the only white family in the projects. My teeth were rotting away, and they got fixed just in time because I joined the Army. I can't speak for everyone, but I will say that for my situation and for pretty much everyone who was in the projects for more than a few months, the main factors were irresponsible parenting, drug addiction and alcohol abuse. It wasn't the kids fault, it was the parents. We're not getting the whole story here, I guarantee it. That the kid didn't have to die is obvious. But trying to blame the government is simply more bleeding heart liberalism. I'm not going to go so far as to say that this woman is responsible for her childs death, any more than the mothe of a kid who gets hit by a car in front of the house is guilty. Sometimes things just happen. But this kid's mother is responsible for his not receiving treatment. If she was working 3 jobs an not paying for rent or bills, there is no reason all of her kids didn't get treatment.
Okay, this is strange.
These are statements in your post.
1. You can't say it was necessarily the fault of the parent. 2. It's the fault of the parent. 3. You're not going to go so far as to say that it is the fault of the parent. 4. If she was working three jobs and not paying the rent or bills then there is no concievable reason why all the kids would not all have recieved treatment? 5. Not blaming the parent over the medical system is bleeding heart liberalism. 6. ??? 7. Profit!
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posted
I guess that could be confusing. It's her fault the kid's teeth weren't fixed. It's not her fault that,in spite of the extreme unliklihood of a tooth infection spreading to the brain, that is what happened and he died. The woman has my sympathy; I'm wouldn't be surprised if she was blaming herself somehow for this freak occurrence.
Lavalamp, not blaming the mother does not equate to bleeding-heart liberalism. Blaming the government, however, does. That's exactly what I said, and I don't know why you would change my words like that.
You think the government is responsible whenever something bad happens that could have been prevented? Do you think the government should be the ultimate provider of safety and success for its citizens? Do you think that poor people shouldn't have to work harder than everyone else to get themselves out of their situation, because life isn't fair and it's up to the government to fix that? Because life isn't fair, but I don't need the government, in its infinite wisdom, to decide what is best for me, and I don't need it to fix my problems. The government just makes things worse.
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How about you go read that book I linked to and then come back and explain how exactly you expect the working poor to somehow magically work harder to get themselves out of their situation?
Take off your blinders and open your eyes to reality.
Life isn't fair.
However, just because life isn't fair doesn't excuse anyone from turning a blind eye towards attempts to make life somewhat fair.
And in terms of a "extreme unlikelihood of a tooth infection spreading to the brain," have you looked at an anatomy book lately? If you have, you can see exactly how close the roots of your teeth are to your brain.
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posted
Even if the mother was irresponsible, was it the kid's fault? Should we as a society allow children to die for the sins of their parents? We don't get to choose our parents, and children are helpless to care for themselves. Even if we don't have a responsibility to adults who screw up (and I think we do, some) we do have a responsibility to their children.
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Of course it's not the kid's fault and where has anyone suggested it was?
But children in America cannot get medical attention for themselves - they can't drive themselves to the doctor and they can't pay for it so medical care for children is a responsibility that falls to the parents.
This is a case where I'm disappointed in several entities. I'm disappointed in the Medicaid system for making it virtually impossible for dentists to accept Medicaid without going bankrupt. I'm disappointed in a beaureacracy that makes it difficult for families to obtain the coverage they qualify for, and, yes, I'm disappointed in a mother who let things get to this state. She had a duty to act to protect her children, and that included insisting on good oral hygiene and in staying on top of the medical coverage situation and getting the emergency care her son needed before it had escalated so far out of control.
I am not saying she bears all the responsibility here, but I do think she bears some. I'm not blaming her for being poor or for needing government assistance, but she had two children with teeth so badly decayed they were life-threatening - that implies some neglect on her part.
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posted
There is a reality television show called 30 Days and although the show is generally remarkably good for a reality show the first episode is excellent. The host of the show and his girlfriend try to live for a month on a very limited budget (minimum wage for each of them, I believe).
If you've never seen you should try and watch it, but I'll explain some of their key problems.
Finding a place to live, free furniture and jobs wasn't a problem. However, they had massive issues with exhaustion, and injury pertaining to the jobs that the man got. These injuries led to a necessary trip to the hospital. The hospital bill negated their entire budget, thus giving them nothing to live off for the rest of the month.
It's not the everyday expenses that get you, it's the surprising ones and the constant exhaustion.
For a weekend, they try to look after children. They find it's hard to *not* get things for the children.
I read your post as basically setting up a dichotomy where we either blame the mother or we blame government. Now that I see Samp's summary of your post, I realize that I missed some of the complexity of what you were saying.
I still don't get the use of a phrase like "bleeding heart liberalism" in the context of the discussion here. Basically, there exist government programs, some of which contributed to, rather than relieved the situation. If, as I'm sure it occurs to many, there is value in focusing on the things that we might be able to fix, it seems at least reasonable to focus on the things our government does (or fails to do) with our money.
It's awfully tempting to simply look at the end of this situation and say "well, obviously this woman is to blame." But, really rather than affixing blame, if we try to take a constructive approach that says whatever assistance we do offer as a society should be effective assistance, it's certainly going to steer the discussion away from her "adult" situation and towards things like:
- health care programs that are affordable and don't get people bogged down in red tape.
- easy sufficient access to health care providers who accept payments from whatever programs we fund.
- education (for parents who might not really be all that "up" on the dangers of poor hygeine).
- social services that might've noticed that a sick kid wasn't getting treatment, perhaps look into the mother's competence, and possible sources of treatment for the kid.
Or I suppose we should just decide that whatever happens to the children of the poor, the ill-informed, the just plain stupid, incompetent, (or whatever we ultimately decide is this woman's core problem), is just what we'd want in our society and leave it at that.
Sure...she shouldn't have expected government to solve her problem. But she is also pretty obviously lacking in resources (both financial and otherwise), so we may actually be dealing with a "learned helplessness" situation here. Get beat down enough times and the lesson for most mammalian brains is to expect it. It works the same in rats as it does in humans. It's not an excuse, but it does provide at least one plausible explanation as to why a person at the bottom of our particular social ladder might not look very resourceful or have a lot of drive or energy to devote to solving problems that we can sneer at on a Bulletin Board as we live lives quite removed from her situation.
And before anyone says it...yes...there are people in such situations who overcome them. But expecting that to be the "norm" for people in that situation is ridiculous. The norm is going to be defeat and basic helplessness...the exceptional ones succeed in spite of it.
Demanding that the government programs we do put in place actually be effective is NOT bleeding heart liberalism. Nor is focusing on government programs in the face of seemingly intractable problems like this. We have resources in this country which, through our taxes, we combine in ways that could prove to be remarkably effective in addressing all sorts of terrible ills created by our own system of greed/capitalism. So...yeah, I focus on the government side of the equation and don't necessarily care about blame.
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That's why places like Sweden are cesspools of misery and failure and the people there are not actually happier than us.
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posted
Sam, we're not a little postage stamp country like Sweden. Socialism can work in small populations, but it won't work here.
Lava, I'm not proposing a solution. If the system can be fixed and things like what happened to that kid can be prevented in the future, I'm for it. I'm only giving my opinion of what the situation likely was, based upon my own experience. I've never seen anyone so poor and be unable to extricate himself or herself from poverty; not in this country. You just gotta work hard. Welfare gives people a reason to not work as hard as required.
Mac, maybe your anatomy book tells you a different story, but a tooth infection spreading to the brain is very rare, regardless of the proximity of the tooth to the brain. The mother could hardly have expected that is what could happen if she didn't get her son's tooth fixed.
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quote:Sam, we're not a little postage stamp country like Sweden. Socialism can work in small populations, but it won't work here.
I hear this more times than I can count, but I am never shown anything that is convincing proof that this is indeed the case! It's sort of a mantra at this point, used to excuse the higher happiness indexes of other countries who experience a lot of success with a more democratically socialist model.
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Poverty is not a result of laziness. Poverty mostly is the result of the following: - having poor parents - high medical bills - unemployment/under-employment
You are aware, I hope, that America's financial health actually requires a non-zero unemployment percentage. Right? Otherwise, when unemployment gets too low, the Fed raises interests rates to head off inflation.
And that's REAL unemployment (people looking for work who can't find it). People with no pay.
Now, let's also look at the working poor -- something our National statistics do a pretty darned awful job of capturing. It's pretty flippant of you to tell someone working two jobs that they need to work harder. Oh, and by the way, they should also spend more time with their kids and.
What percentage of the working poor families are in that boat because they're lazy?
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posted
So I went to visit my in-laws this weekend and I learned some things about the ways companies treat the working poor that I had real trouble with. (My in-laws are working poor.) Apparently, it is common practice to fire employees for taking time off work for illness. When I pointed out that this was illegal they said, "So? Who's got the money to fight them?"
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posted
Are you sure that's illegal, Christine? I know it is in certain circumstances, but I'm not aware of a law that makes it illegal as a blanket rule.
(Some states may have such laws, of course.)
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I suppose I could be wrong, but I thought that once you worked for a company for a certain period of time that they couldn't fire you for valid medical conditions. I thought it was related to the laws protecting pregnant women. Now you're going to make me go and do research...
If it isn't a law, though, it's still a crappy thing for a company to do.
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It grants up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave in a 12 month calendar period for birth of a child, to care for a seriously ill immediate family member and for the employee's own serious health issue.
However, the employer must be a covered employer and meet certain obligations, among them having 50 or more employees. So if it's a small business with less than 50 employees, it's probably not illegal.
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posted
Oh no, these are large companies I'm talking about. I knew there were exceptions for small businesses. I won't mention names here but trust me, there are thousands of employees involved in the cases they were citing.
Thanks for doing the legwork for me. I've turned up sick today and have been too bleary-eyed to spend much time in front of the computer.
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posted
Words keep getting put into my mouth. I never said lazy. A poor person can work as hard as the next guy and never get out of poverty. It's not laziness. You gotta work a lot harder to get out of poverty than you need to to just stay out of poverty. But life isn't fair, and the one thing about this country that is not the case in most of the rest of the world is that it is far from impossible to lift yourself up by your own bootstraps. I cannot envision a situation where a poor person is prevented from extricating himself from pverty by anything except his own lack of motivation. And the driving force that removes that motivation is welfare.
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posted
You keep saying blatantly contracictory things. You are not making any sense.
quote:A poor person can work as hard as the next guy and never get out of poverty.
quote:I cannot envision a situation where a poor person is prevented from extricating himself from pverty by anything except his own lack of motivation.
You say 'A poor person can work very hard and not get anywhere,' you concede in your writing that there's an amount of chance outside of their control that can keep them in poverty regardless of their actions, and you promptly follow it with 'I cannot imagine how someone could possibly be left impoverished due to anything other than a lack of motivation.'
You are arguing against yourself.
Fix that before I go on my shpiel about how the european quasi-socialist model is actually better at equipping people to escape poverty.
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posted
Resh: You should read the book Mackillian keeps mentioning. It might help you envision those situations.
Belle: I agree that it's the parents' responsibility to care for their children, but it still seems to me that this is a case where it was the system that failed, not the parenting. The dentist stopped treating the boy because he squirmed too much. According to the article it's incredibly difficult to find dentists that accept Medicaid. Then there were problems with paperwork. I just don't know what she could have done different, unless you assume that it all goes back to her not making them brush their teeth well enough, which I'm not at all convinced is a safe assumption.
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posted
To put this in perspective, "squirmed too much" might mean "was just wiggling around in the chair a bit," or it might mean "was unable to be kept still enough without sedation to be safe using sharp instruments around." A good number of children with really horrid dental problems need sedation (even general anesthesia) to have extensive work done. A situation such as described would have been intensely painful even just to fully examine the surrounding area.
OR facilities get booked for serious dental care in kids. That may or may not be covered under a given healthcare funding program, but it is doubtlessly quite expensive.
posted
I kicked a dental assistant while under sedation. And I'm supposedly a grown-up. I can definitely see a small child being unmanagable without some serious knockout drugs.
posted
Okay, so this thread was on my mind today as I took three of my four kids to the dentist. The other one went last week, her checkup was perfect except we need to start talking orthodontics. :shudder:
Well, of my four kids one has two tiny cavities. Now, we can presume that they have all been drinking the same flouridated water, eating the same foods, and otherwise living similiar lifestyles. All of them have been trained to brush their teeth by me and had me harp on them to make sure they do it. And Abigail, my six year old with the two tiny cavities has never been one to skip brushing teeth at night.
So, I asked the dentist if I were doing anything wrong. He said of course not, he could tell she cleans her teeth regularly and that otherwise she had a very healthy mouth. Some kids just get cavities, especially in baby teeth. She's one that will be a definite candidate for sealants later.
However, I don't think that knowing that some kids are more prone to cavities absolves the mother completely. I STILL say she bears some responsibility (note I say only some, I am not excusing the other failures in the system when I say that.) There are ways to get your kids dental health seen to even if you can't pay for them. I asked the dentist specifically if he took Medicaid (he is, incidentally a pediatric dentist). He said no, but he participates in a group of pediatric dentists that volunteer their services to work in a low-cost clinic downtown that accepts people who cannot pay for dental care. He said they rotate, and he winds up doing it several times a year. He also told me that the dental school at UAB has many low-cost programs for people who cannot afford to pay full price for dental care or who do not have insurance. He also speaks once a year at the local elementary school, handing out free toothbrushes and toothpaste and dental floss and brochures directing people to resources that will help them if they can't afford care.
In other words, it's possible to get help. It may not be as easy as we like, it may be inconvenient (UAB dental school is in an area of town with little public parking, though there are mass transit buses that run there), but it's possible. And if your kids health is a priority, you'll find a way to make it happen. Look at kq's post about how difficult it was for her to navigate the system to get her girls covered. It was hard, but she did it, because she's a parent that is committed to the health of her kids. Every parent is responsible for the health of their children, and even if it's inconvenient or difficult, you find a way to make it work. This mother DID fail her kids. Yes, the system failed her and failed the kids too, but she is not blameless, in my book.
quote: A good number of children with really horrid dental problems need sedation (even general anesthesia) to have extensive work done.
That's absolutely unbelievable to me. I cannot imagine letting a child get to that state before doing something. At some point aren't parents liable in some way? Does this seem like child neglect to anyone else? I mean, would we think differently if it were a medical problem somewhere other than the mouth that the parent didn't have treated? Or is it different because that type of problem can usually be seen in an ER, which won't turn people away, and dental problems can't be treated there?
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posted
The trouble is, Belle, that article didn't tell us the whole story and as I said once before, I refuse to make judgments without truly understanding her situation. There are any number of mitigating factors here and I have to say, a few free or cheap clinics for dental work won't cut it. There are more children without dental insurance than clinics who will treat them. I'm not saying she's blameless, I'm just saying I won't judge her with this information.
And when it comes down to it, what good does it do to throw around blame like that? Does it make us feel better to live our middle class lifestyles if we think that this woman's poverty and even her son's death is wholly or partly her own fault? Does it help other people in her situation? Does it forgive us from helping these people? Should we help them and if so, how?
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posted
Christine, I agree with much of what you're saying, but you need to understand that my motivation for examining the "Who is to blame issue" stems from an extremely biased article that slanted ALL blame away from the parent.
Had the article been more balanced, I'd have felt no need to comment on it. Either way, it has nothing to do with me needing absolution for my middle-class lifestyle as you call it and speaking of not judging people, maybe you should listen to your own post and, quite frankly, be quiet. You have no idea what type of lifestyle I live or what I came from. You have no idea what *I* personally, and my husband, have sacrificed in order to care for our kids and that includes dental care. I only recently got dental insurance myself, and coming up with the money to pay for dental care for four kids is no picnic, not even for "middle-class" people.
Plus, this is a discussion board. Discussing things is what we do. Quit assigning motives to people that don't exist.
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posted
Belle, do you remember how it was for you when you were in the midst of a deep depression, and how much you leaned on Wes to help continue taking care of the kids? Some mothers are in a similar situation but without family support, or even with people they live with actively working to make things worse.
---
Edited to add: While working in an ER, I have begged and begged to get kids who didn't have coverage seen for dental care. If it was an acute matter (tooth half broken off and kid in agony in the ER), I could usually find someone to come to the ER for a quick temporary treatment. But for anything longer term, at the places who would take them, the waiting list for an initial appointment was usually at least 5-6 months out. Given that these families might not be in this city 5 months out (migrant workers, or likely to get kicked out of the shelter and have to go on the Greyhound to live with family in Chicago, etc.), keeping an appointment was a bigger problem than you might think, even if they got it.
Also, sometimes it's a matter of not having access to clean water. Cheap soda pop costs a lot less than bottled water, and bottled water is a relatively recent phenomenon as far as mass availability goes.
I don't think we need to fix everyone's life, and I don't think we have to feel bad for not living on the edge ourselves. I do think there's good reason to change this system in order to make healthy living and healthy choices easier.
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posted
Yes, I remember that, and again, I feel like I need to shout from the rooftops or something I'm not saying the mother bears all the responsibility here.
But she bears some. That is my entire point, the whole thing. No one seems to be grasping it, and it's frustrating.
We can sit here all day and think of reasons why this mother didn't get dental care for her kids utnil it was life-threatening. Maybe she was depressed. Maybe she was in an abusive relationship, and her husband/boyfriend beat her and she was too scared to leave home. Maybe she herself has a phobia about dentists and can't take the kids because she's too afraid herself. I can go on.
None of that changes one essential fact - if you are the primary caregiver for a child his health is your responsibility. Even if you're scared, sick, depressed, poor, doesn't matter. That child's health is your responsibility and you take care of it. My husband did have to shoulder extra duties during my depression, but I still took my kids to their checkups and cared for them when they were sick. I've been in a pediatrician's office with a needle in my chest and a pump around my waist pumping chemo drugs in my system, so sick myself I could barely stand yet I was there because my child was sick and needed care. And I dont' say that to make myself out to be some kind of hero, or to say "Look at me, I'm so holier-than-thou" (shout out to Annie's thread) but just to say that I think that is no more and no less than any caring parent would do. It's what you have to do, even if you don't want to. Having kids means that you will have to put another living human beings' needs before your own for at least 18 years. In my case, four living human being's needs. I don't get to say "I'm too sick or too depressed, so my kids teeth can rot out." If I am too sick or depressed to care for my kids I find someone else to do it. And I can assure you, few things you can throw up about what may have kept this mother from caring for her kids will sway me, because I've been through too much myself. I've had to be a parent through poverty (not just lower middle class, I'm talking poverty), I've had to be a parent through death and loss, I've had to be a parent through cancer, through emotional depression, through all kinds of things and yet I never lost sight of the fact that I was a parent and had to take care of four other people. Again, not tooting my own horn, I can name off the top of my head dozens of people here on Hatrack that have done the same, perhaps in some cases much better than I have. All I want to point out is that every parent should be expected to at least get basic medical care for their children.
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posted
Belle, if you reread my posts you will notice that I specifically did not refer directly to you or make judgments about you. I did not use the second person when I talked about a middle class lifestyle. I chose the wording specifically because I do not know what your lifestyle is or how you have gotten there. So please, take my comments in the manner in which they were intended -- which was to further a discussion of the problems with poverty in American and the possible solutions.
quote:If I am too sick or depressed to care for my kids I find someone else to do it.
I think those who have the someone else to do it are very lucky.
I have often worried what I would do if I ever became too sick or depressed to care for my son. Yesterday and the day before I had a miserable sinus infection that knocked me off my feet. I managed, but I wondered where I would take him or what I would do with him if I got really sick. I don't live anywhere near my family or my husband's family and I don't have any friends I could count on like that. I often find isolation to be a huge problem in my life and I often wonder if anyone else feels the same way. If I were poor, that would just magnify the problem. It's a big enough problem as it is, with me being legally blind and unable to drive. I've noticed that one difference between modern days and historical times is communities -- we just don't form them like we used to.
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quote:Originally posted by Belle: Yes, I remember that, and again, I feel like I need to shout from the rooftops or something I'm not saying the mother bears all the responsibility here.
But she bears some. That is my entire point, the whole thing. No one seems to be grasping it, and it's frustrating.
I don't think it will alleviate much of your frustration, but I do agree with that point.
I've been off-kilter lately as regards making sense of my thoughts and getting them out right, and I'm sorry for having contributed to your frustration. It's me, frankly -- even my husband has been looking at me askance lately. *grin
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