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Writer Asked Former Poor Kids To Share The Things Their Non-Poor Friends Didn’t Appreciate Growing Up, 30 Deliver
When growing up, kids don’t think too much about their appearances, the things they own, or how much money their parents make. All they need is to be surrounded by healthy and loving family members who would care for them. But the truth is, things change the moment people start comparing their family’s status and income to their friends.
Writer and publicist Victoria Barrett asked her followers on Twitter: "Former poor kids: what are some things you have in your house that you *never* had as a kid, things your not-poor friends would never consider luxuries?" The question brought up some difficult memories and a deluge of tweets from people who grew up in poor households.
Whether it’s fresh fruit, shoes, or toilets, the thread revealed that things people often take for granted were seen as comforts by children who grew up impoverished. Bored Panda has selected some of the most illuminating answers, so check them out below and be sure to share your thoughts in the comments.
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Victoria Barrett’s post quickly went viral by touching the hearts of thousands. People saw it as a truly emotional thread and started sharing their own examples. Many of the things people lacked when growing up resonated deeply with the writer. She started liking so many of the responses, Twitter even labeled her as a bot. "Twitter has decided that I'm clicking the heart on your replies too fast and I must be a bot, so if I don't [heart] your tweet, know that I see you and feel you," she tweeted.
The author of this post revealed that she had experienced childhood poverty herself by writing out some of the things she never had at her house: "A few of mine are Kleenex, band-aids, ziplock bags, and paper towels." In another tweet, she added, "Another one for me is an actual bedroom. With a closet in it. Also a car! That works! And another car that works in the same family!"
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Mary Rose Kent 2 years ago (edited)
During the worst of my family’s years of poverty, we had the same three meals for months on end: big honkin’ pot of pinto beans, big honkin’ pot of white beans, big honkin’ pot of navy beans. Each pot would last our family of seven two or three days, then we’d move on to the next one, again.
For many, this might seem like pretty simple objects that thousands of people couldn’t live a day without. That’s why it’s easy to forget that some things we take for granted or consider to be common additions to our basic human needs are actually items that people below the poverty line might consider the biggest luxuries imaginable.
This thread serves as a good reminder to appreciate the things you have and that not everyone has easy access to them. In fact, Columbia University found that the monthly child poverty rate increased by 4.9 in January 2022 alone, and it’s the highest rate since the end of 2020. This increase in poverty "represents 3.7 million more children in poverty due to the expiration of the monthly Child Tax Credit payments."
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Daenarys 2 years ago
When I was a kid we had a wood-burning stove. It was this huge metal box that sat in the kitchen and we had to go once a month to chop wood in the timber to supply us from fall to early spring. First thing in the morning it was so cold until it heated up and even then the upstairs bedrooms had no heat. When it was really cold in the winter I slept under the table in the kitchen in my sleeping bag. We had no A/C in summer, it was open every door/window and turn on the fans.
There's an abundance of scientific evidence that shows poor kids grow up to have a myriad of physical problems as adults. Cornell University researchers conducted a study by following 341 participants over a 15-year period (who were tested at ages 9, 13, 17, and 24) where they reveal that childhood poverty can cause significant psychological damage in adulthood too.
In the study, children who grew up impoverished showed signs of aggression, bullying, and increased feelings of helplessness, compared to kids from middle-income backgrounds. Plus, they experienced more chronic physiological stress and deficits in short-term spatial memory.
"What this means is, if you're born poor, you're on a trajectory to have more of these kinds of psychological problems," Gary Evans, the author of the study and professor of environmental and developmental psychology at Cornell, told Science Daily.
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"With poverty, you're exposed to lots of stress. Everybody has stress, but low-income families, low-income children, have a lot more of it," Evans added. "And the parents are also under a lot of stress. So for kids, there is a cumulative risk exposure."
The child psychologist explained that the findings of this study are important since kids who grow up in poverty are likely to stay impoverished as adults — there's a 40 percent chance that a son's income will be the same as his father's. "People walk around with this idea in their head that if you work hard, play by the rules, you can get ahead," he said. "And that's just a myth. It's just not true."
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MagentaBlu 2 years ago
24 hrs of clean running water will do it for me. Just running water out the fawcett everytime I need it.
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Leo Domitrix 2 years ago
If you live where mullein grows, we call it "camp flannel" for a reason. The leaves, fresh, are very good TP. Yes, I've done that. Maple tree leaves, too. You can't flush it, but it beats nothing.
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Leo Domitrix 2 years ago
Snacks back home were "What is edible, growing, and available?" Thank God I was raised in the country on a farm. FYI, you can make a good snack out of more than you know, but please learn for at least one year, so you can ID plants when they don't have flowers or fruit. Annoying AF that guidebooks don't show those pictures, b/c some edibles you don't want when they've flowered/fruited.
Participants had to perform several tests of short-term spatial memory, helplessness, mental health, and chronic physiological stress. Evans explained that the study has two implications. First, one of the best ways to prevent these problems is early intervention: "If you don't intervene early, it's going to be really difficult and is going to cost a lot to intervene later," he noted.
Then, increasing the incomes in poor households is the most efficient way to minimize a child's exposure to poverty and their risk of developing psychological problems. He mentioned that if a family is poor and has children, the federal government should provide them with extra income that's enough to participate in society.
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Mary Rose Kent 2 years ago
By the time I entered high school, I was so near-sighted that I had to sit in the front row, and even though our lives had improved considerably by that time, I didn’t get glasses until I bought them for myself at age 19 because I had a ticket to see Artur Rubinstein play in one of his last live performances, when he was 89 years old and nearly blind, and I wanted to SEE as well as hear.
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"It's not true you can't do anything about poverty. It's just whether there's the political will, and are people willing to reframe the problem, instead of blaming the person who is poor and — even more preposterous — blaming their children," he said. "This is a societal issue, and if we decide to reallocate resources like we did with the elderly and Social Security, we could change the kind of data this study is showing."
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Mary Rose Kent 2 years ago
The year I was 11, my parents started their own business and they had a good product, but it turned out to be just a fad rather than the next big thing like they had thought it would be. They had put pretty much everything they had into it and weren’t able to pay the mortgage on the house, which I found out one day near the end of fifth grade (so I was 11. My brother was 10, my sister was 8, the next brother was ~2-1/2 and the baby was shy of six months) when I came home from school and everything we owned was sitting in the living room. We spent the summer in a Bohemian friend’s mountain shack, replete with a hot plate in the “kitchen” (a long, low room about 85 steps up the side of a mountain, with poison oak all over the place, including those steps), a small room where all seven of us slept, and an open pit beside the cabin as our toilet. And there were biting flies.
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MagentaBlu 2 years ago (edited)
Actual bedroom with a bed you don't have to share... not even with pets. A bed just for yourself
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Lucifer 2 years ago (edited)
Where I grew up we needed school uniforms. Everyday, come home from school wash the uniform( Shirt, shorts, socks) for the next day and do that for the whole year. If we were lucky we didn't grow in height and were able to use the same uniform for next year ( had lot of stitched patches on the uniform). Looked ridiculous one year wearing shorter clothes. And we had to be very very careful with the shoes.
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Dakota Ball 2 years ago
It sucks how the system designed to "save you money" only really applies to people who don't need to save it in the first place
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MagentaBlu 2 years ago (edited)
Everything OP mentions is in fact a luxury. In my country only for rich people, no way for someone middle class
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What do you think ?
Caro Caro 2 years ago
I really hate reading these comments. Children going without healthy food, shoeless, cold. It just pisses me off and makes me feel inadequate for some reason, as if I should do more to help.
B Penn 2 years ago
If you're in the US and you want to do more to help, voting for better social care, higher minimum wage, better child care options, free health care and dental etc. Would be huge. For these people imagine how much not having to pay the money for insurance or copayments would help them. They wouldn't have to make decisions between taking their kid to the doctor or buy food/new clothes.
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K Witmer 2 years ago
And there are people out there that think everyone has access to healthy food to this day. They have no idea how hard people struggle. Even though my mom was a single parent I was so fortunate to have family that helped her. I never went without. I do remember the constant moving though that was not fun. 12 different schools. One I only went to for 3 days.
Caro Caro 2 years ago
That must have been tough K Witmer. Changing schools so often leaves you without real friends. Hugs (not one but 2 !)
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MoMcB 2 years ago
My mum used to get flour bags from the baker (they were made of cloth back then) and make bed sheets from them. Funny, I never thought we were poor, we were loved, kept warm and fed.
Caro Caro 2 years ago (edited)
There's I think a difference between poor - not able to afford sheets and new clothes and poor - going hungry. For me it would be living without heating. I hate the cold but I had a nice childhood and didn't lack a thing. Not rich but not poor. I do remember my mother feeding some neighbourhood kids tho who were poor and hungry. I sometimes watched as she opened my cupboard and gave some of my clothes to these kids.
Load More Replies... Caro Caro 2 years ago
I really hate reading these comments. Children going without healthy food, shoeless, cold. It just pisses me off and makes me feel inadequate for some reason, as if I should do more to help.
B Penn 2 years ago
If you're in the US and you want to do more to help, voting for better social care, higher minimum wage, better child care options, free health care and dental etc. Would be huge. For these people imagine how much not having to pay the money for insurance or copayments would help them. They wouldn't have to make decisions between taking their kid to the doctor or buy food/new clothes.
Load More Replies... K Witmer 2 years ago
And there are people out there that think everyone has access to healthy food to this day. They have no idea how hard people struggle. Even though my mom was a single parent I was so fortunate to have family that helped her. I never went without. I do remember the constant moving though that was not fun. 12 different schools. One I only went to for 3 days.
Caro Caro 2 years ago
That must have been tough K Witmer. Changing schools so often leaves you without real friends. Hugs (not one but 2 !)
Load More Replies... MoMcB 2 years ago
My mum used to get flour bags from the baker (they were made of cloth back then) and make bed sheets from them. Funny, I never thought we were poor, we were loved, kept warm and fed.
Caro Caro 2 years ago (edited)
There's I think a difference between poor - not able to afford sheets and new clothes and poor - going hungry. For me it would be living without heating. I hate the cold but I had a nice childhood and didn't lack a thing. Not rich but not poor. I do remember my mother feeding some neighbourhood kids tho who were poor and hungry. I sometimes watched as she opened my cupboard and gave some of my clothes to these kids.
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