Poverty is Poison was the headline of a February 18th editorial in the New York Times. Every time I read something like this – old news passed off as a new discovery – I want to scream a little bit. Massive amounts of research, some of it quite famously cruel and spectacular, has been done on child development. That “children growing up in poor families. . . .experience unhealthy levels of stress hormones which impair their neural development” is not a new finding, nor is it surprising. These same stress hormones are found in children from abusive or neglectful homes, and it has been far beyond proven that children who are not nurtured in infancy, if they survive at all, will experience a host of problems, from social attachment disorder to learning disabilities.
What is surprising is that we, as a society, continue to expect and demand a cure through self-determination. That we negate the factual science of neural development in favor of blaming, shaming, or shunning the affected, believing that moral weakness or poor character, rather than any significant physical or cognitive deficit, is responsible for those who fail to rise to the social challenges of our competitive society.
I’d like to find your inner child and kick its little ass.
“Get over it,” pop star Don Henley once sang. “Complain about the present and blame it on the past, I’d like to find your inner child and kick its little ass”. Henley’s popular song, which seemed to show equal disdain for real victims as well as those faking it in exchange for a car crash payday, reflected the attitudes of many Americans at the 1990′s height of child abuse stories. Unfortunately, there was a window of time when it became somewhat hip to come out as an abused child – and celebrities, whether jumping on the popular bandwagon, or sincerely trying to help, only caused a serious issue to be taken less seriously. People started to recoil, not from the horrors of child abuse, but from yet another sad tale of alcoholism, rape, or rage – especially those told by people living a privileged existence far removed from the hardscrabble lives of the working and middle classes.
The backlash against abuse victims was swift, hard, and long lasting. English professors across America added “child abuse” to their list of cliched topics. More and more writers were steered away from the topic by threats of non-publication. When books were published, such as “A Child Called It” or “The Glass Castle”, the endings were happily-ever-after.
The old but persuasive bromides of positivity were shined up for a new generation who were spoon fed the concept of self-esteem without the struggles and accomplishments that naturally lead to a sense of self-worth. I remember arguing with my daughter’s second grade teacher about this when Elisabeth came home one day and told me spelling didn’t matter. I was sure she misunderstood the teacher, but no. Mrs Greene informed me that correcting a child’s spelling could “stunt” their creativity and lead to lowered self-esteem. My argument that self-esteem would be a natural byproduct of mastering the task of spelling fell on stubbornly deaf ears – as did my argument that creativity isn’t so fragile that it’s destroyed under structure.
That new generation is now grown up, and they seem all too willing to carry the torch for the crumbling and blind school of self-determination, regardless of scientific discoveries, old or new. Poverty is character, and character is destiny. Trauma is gotten over by self-help books and positive self-talk. Neural pathways, receptors and hormones are nothing that an hour with Joel Osteen or Dr. Phil can’t fix. Think it and be it. Get real. Or, as Oprah – who was once of the foremost advocates for the misunderstood underclass before taking the Cosmo girl road of peddling everything from diets to beauty secrets – might suggest, discover your spirit. Live your best life.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with feel-good philosophies, positive thinking, or living one’s life with passion. The wrong enters when these things are held out by the dominant society as a cure to problems that are far deeper, more serious, and more poisonous than everyday problems.
Not feeling great about the way one looks in a bathing suit is in no way equivalent to actually being (as opposed to merely feeling like) a social outcast.
I feel like a fraud. I’ve never fit in anywhere…
“I feel like a fraud,” says *Kari, who spent her first six years of life with a neglectful mother before being sent to live with her elderly grandmother. “I’ve never fit in anywhere … and my thoughts just don’t seem to work the way other people’s do.” Kari, now 46, spent most of her adult years trying to climb the ladder as a graphic artist in the corporate world.
“No one ever told me I didn’t have talent,” she says, “I did, and was probably even above-average in that area, but I just wasn’t well liked. I wasn’t liked when I was myself, and I wasn’t liked any better when I followed the advice of all those self-help, how-to-heal, or how to make friends books. I knew there was something different about me – something that made other people uncomfortable – but I never found what it was. I kept trying out all sorts of different approaches, but it was like I had some invisible mark of a social pariah. My work was valued, but I couldn’t get promoted. There were convenient acquaintances, but no real friendships.
“I went to therapists. I meditated. I read every book I could find on healing and being social, and I trained myself to carefully consider every response and every action. . .
“The weirdest thing has always been the way people respond to me. For some reason, my words were always taken far more personally than if they came from someone else. For instance, if one of my colleagues casually complained, it was no big deal. If I did the same thing, even using almost the same exact words, it was an Oh my God event – people would be shocked, or instantly label me a chronic complainer.
“It’s that kind of over-sensitivity. . .to me as a person, and to my words. . . that made me afraid to speak out at all. I was labeled weird, no matter how normal I thought I was, or how like them I tried to act. I became quieter over the years, and my own sensitivity around other people became so heightened it was almost paralyzing.”
After seven jobs in 19 years, Kari quit. She subsisted on unemployment and savings for two years, while struggling with intense depression and thoughts of suicide. One therapist suggested Kari might have a mild form of Asperger’s Syndrome, a diagnosis that left her with little comfort. “Even if I agreed with that, which I really don’t seeing that I don’t have many of the symptoms, it really doesn’t change anything,” she says.
Eventually, Kari went to work as an $8/hr. checker in a small grocery store, which pays her extra on the side to create signage. It wasn’t the life Kari planned, but she’s not alone.
There are profound and visible differences between a “wild child” like +Genie, who was discovered at age 13, after having been isolated from infancy in a dark room in her parents’ home, and David Pelzer, whose childhood abuse and isolation was chronicled in the book “A Child Called It.” Genie never recovered, while Pelzer went on to become a successful journalist and author. Their experiences, the extent of abuse suffered, their brains, and exposures to other people, were quite different even though there are several parallels that can be drawn.
What is less obvious, and almost invisible in society, are those who were significantly poisoned in childhood – those who were permanently affected by the crossed wires, mixed-up hormones, and neural changes caused by poverty, neglect, and abuse. Most often, those affected are physically indistinguishable from those who were reared in relatively normal and healthy homes.
The emotional and social differences, not seen by the naked eye, may range from mild to severe, with Kari’s case being somewhere in the moderate middle.
There’s no “get over it” cure, and no amount of shame or blame placed on victims can reorganize or “fix” the brain that was damaged in infancy or childhood. The best that survivors can do is to be aware of the differences and develop the patience, personal strength, and comprehensive understanding necessary to deal with being something of an outcast – with being, perhaps, “of this world, but not necessarily in it.”
For society, the question should not be about a cure that doesn’t exist, but a two-fold one of awareness and prevention. Rather than throwing the science (and its subjects) away in favor of the quick, convenient, and empirical “bootstrap” approach – which seeks to make everything from financial achievement to social success mere matters of character and effort – society might instead seek to understand the deeper, more realistic reasons why some former victims of poverty and abuse fail to thrive.
Understanding that, we might put more stock in prevention and make the end of poverty and child abuse in America a real and urgent priority, rather than shuffling both off to the easy-to-forget realm of stale news and tired cliches.
*Real name not disclosed.
+Genie was the psuedonym given to Susan Wiley by researchers. She now lives in an undisclosed group home in Southern California.
