Women and The Culture of Poverty

ABSTRACT:
Different interpretations of the term, “Culture of Poverty,” lead to different understandings of the issues of poverty. These differences manifest in the way policy is formed, including welfare policy. These policies directly affect single women who, more often than men, depend upon state assistance to feed their families and make ends meet. The notion that people in poverty adopt lifestyles to adapt to their situation is, on the surface, logical. It can even be seen as a positive adaptation to negative circumstances. On the other hand, the concept of the Culture of Poverty has been used against low-income families because the perceived associated behaviors seem to ensure their situation doesn’t change. Both sides of this debate have merit, but the interpretations of Oscar Lewis’s original work are varied to the point where Lewis himself sought to clarify his ideas. He was vilified for his ideas, which seemed at first glance to be racist. I will look at how the concept behind the culture of poverty has been variously interpreted, and the effects of those interpretations on those with the least financial power: low-income women.

THE ORIGINAL CONCEPT
Anthropologist, Oscar Lewis, first introduced the concept of a subculture of poverty in 1958, as a result of studying five families in Mexico. The concept refers to a “design for living” adopted by people existing in poverty. (Blacks 2002) The design is passed down through generations. Lewis described those who live in poverty as people who feel marginalized and inferior, and live in the present, rather than with an eye to the future. Irelan, Moles and O’Shea (1969:) defined it as “a systematic, integrated pattern for living.” Poor families, for example, have high divorce rates, with many women left living abandoned with their children. Lewis asserted that the culture of poverty perpetuates poverty. By the time children are of school age, they’ve “already absorbed the values and attitudes of their subculture and not psychologically geared to take full advantage of changing conditions or increased opportunities which may occur in their lifetime.” (Blacks, 2002) Lewis later wrote that people with a culture of poverty “are a marginal people who know only their own troubles, their own local conditions, their own neighborhood, their own way of life.” (1998:1) According to Lewis, the behaviors help the poor cope with their situation, and help give them a voice in policy-making for the poor. “Those who use the term “culture of poverty” usually hold that the poor share distinctive patterns of values, beliefs and action, and exhibit a style of life which departs significantly from that of the core culture.” (Roach and Gursslin 1967:3)

THE CONTROVERSY
Few concepts have been more widely used and abused as Lewis’s culture of poverty thesis. Lewis’s work withstood the many challenges because it addresses a social reality previously unrecognized. Lewis’s thesis is important, according to Harvey and Reed (1996) because it clearly demonstrates that “poverty’s subculture is not merely a ‘tangle of pathology,’ but instead is a set of positive adaptive mechanisms.”

Other social scientists vehemently refuted Lewis’s work. In the first place, as Marvin Opler pointed out, Lewis’s sample is small and not representative of the population. Moreover, Opler believes Lewis’s characterizations are stereotypical indictments of the poor, and that he was generalizing when he wrote that those who find themselves in poverty develop an inner feeling of worthlessness. It can’t be certain that poverty itself causes the development of the culture. As Vera St. Erlich (1966) wrote, “…the assumption that poverty is the decisive factor in shaping the life of these people is unproven.” Charles Valentine, wrote Culture and Poverty: Critique and Counter-Proposals, which is considered the watershed “refutation” of Lewis and his work. Valentine charged that Lewis was less dedicated to eliminating poverty than eradicating a “deviant subculture that offends bourgeois sensibilities.” (Harvey and Reed, 1996.)

In 1965, Daniel P. Moynihan presented an internal document to President Johnson entitled The Negro Family: The Case for National Action. The document spurred President Johnson into calling for new ways of assisting Black America. In a 2010 New York Times article, Patricia Cohen wrote, that the Moynihan report described the urban black family as caught in an “inescapable ‘tangle of pathology’ of unmarried mothers and welfare dependency, and was seen as attributing self-perpetuating moral deficiencies to black people, as if blaming them for their own misfortune.” Also vilified as racist, Moynihan’s analysis never “lost its appeal to conservative thinkers whose arguments ultimately succeeded when President Bill Clinton signed a bill in 1996, ‘ending welfare as we know it’.” (Cohen, 2010) The idea that attitudes and behavior patterns keep people poor was shunned by more liberal thinkers. Still, as Irelan, Moles and O’Shea (1969:9) wrote, “There is no doubt that prolonged economic deprivation, wherever it occurs, influences many aspects of total life outlook as well as specific attitudes.”

According to Harvey and Reed, (1996) conservatives and liberal baby-boomers alike could not deal with a theory of poverty grounded in an analysis of capitalism and class. As to Lewis’s claim that the culture of poverty contained a positive side, helping the poor to cope with their situation, Harvey and Reed wrote, “The possibility that the poor could possess either alternative wisdoms or cultural virtues cannot be countenanced [by those in power]. If the poor were to appear as relatively competent partners in solving their predicament, they would once again, as they were in the 1960s, have to be given significant voice—some degree of ‘maximum feasible participation’--in charting their path out of poverty.” This may partially explain the neoconservative efforts to misstate and misappropriate Lewis’s ideas. Harvey, et. al. (1996:22) wrote, “Rather than allowing poor women, poor Hispanic Americans, poor African-Americans, etc. to speak in their own voice—one which would raise class-based concerns and alienate the middle-class leadership of such groups—a dissembling silence is maintained.”

Lewis didn’t think his ideas really applied in an advanced capitalist society. Other sociologists, however, argue that the culture of poverty can apply to advanced societies, as well. Anthropologist, Walter Miller, also argues that the “American lower class has its own set of focal concerns that emphasize masculinity, living for the present and luck, rather than effort as the basis of success.” Miller regards this class culture as self-perpetuating and an adaption to low-skill occupations. “For example, people with this attitude have an increased ability to tolerate boring work and find gratification outside of work. (Blacks, 2002)

In discussions about the culture of poverty, there are two prevalent ideas. One, that someone in the state of cultural poverty holds a pessimistic view of his chances of “making it.” The other idea is that seen in a positive light, the culture of poverty could be a coping mechanism, and that eventually, the poor may use that as a tool to improve their situation. As early as 1968, Jaffe and Polgar believed the culture of poverty was a cop-out, used to rationalize slow movement toward improvement in family planning services. (1968:1) They contrasted two approaches to designing family planning programs: the Accessibility Model and the Cultural-Motivational Model. They explained that experience supports the accessibility approach, which “seeks to create services where none exist or remove obstacles to getting services, such as distance, and eligibility and fee practices,” while the cultural-motivational approach, which emphasizes counseling and sex education programs to restructure values, dominates the thinking of health and welfare professionals.

For example, in the family planning setting, the assumption concerning poor men and women is that they do not want to curtail the size of their families. Studies show instead that poor couples want an average of less than three children and make some effort to limit their family’s size. Most “must rely on less effective, non-medical contraceptive methods and have more excess fertility (in terms of their own preferences) than higher income couples.” In addition, the poor access medical care mostly for emergency or chronic conditions, and rarely for preventative reasons. (Jaffe et.al, 1968:3)

F.S. Jaffe, et. al. (1968:4) concluded that “Despite the persistence of such unfavorable institutional factors and the relationship of family planning to deeply internalized attitudes about sex, even a modest improvement in the opportunity structure thus seems capable of bringing about substantial behavioral change.” Their most generous estimate was that (in 1968) 87 percent of the estimated target population lived without subsidized services. An independent review of the 1967 family-planning efforts of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare established that the Department’s policy does not mandate any real priority in funds or staff for family planning. This misapplication of the concept of the culture of poverty is an example of how concepts can be used to legitimize institutional resistance to change, leaving the poor to fend for themselves.

As we know, single low-income women, dependent upon family planning and welfare services, are the most vulnerable to this resistance. In Philadelphia, low income mothers told sociologists, Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas, that they thought marriage was “profoundly important, even sacred, but doubted that their partners were ‘marriage material.’ Their results have prompted some lawmakers and poverty experts to conclude that programs that promote marriage without changing economic and social conditions are unlikely to work.” (Cohen, 2010) I believe that programs designed to help young fathers choose responsibility and co-parenting, regardless of whether they stay with their children’s mothers, would be a more realistic and beneficial approach.

The recent downturn in the national economy has accelerated the change in the face of poverty. Venkatesh (2010) points out that there’s something is “happening in our society that probably the research is very slow to take up, and that is that inner-city poverty is actually declining. The greatest poverty in America is actually in the suburbs.” It’s in rural areas, too. In West Virginia, the poverty rate is almost 20 percent. The greatest areas of job growth are in industries that do not pay a living wage. Cohen added that the popular understanding of poverty is portrayed as an either-or situation; either people cannot get ahead because they are lazy, or there are no jobs available. Venkatesh (2010) noted that we begin to see people as not worthy of attention, and tend to treat them as victims who are not being innovative or having the wherewithal to improve their condition. I believe this disconnect is responsible for the current attitudes among some politicians that so-called entitlement programs should be the first to be eliminated from a deficit budget, as if there was nothing else in the budget to be cut.

WHAT CAN BE DONE
Cohen (2010) noted that there is no single culture of poverty. Depending on the location and ethnicity, it’s very diverse. “So there’s no one-size-fits-all answer to these questions.” For example, work is being done about single mothers and their relationships to the fathers of their children, despite the lack of a marriage certificate. Even when fathers can’t financially support their children, they are being encouraged to see their obligations as parents and look for other ways to support them. The question isn’t whether or not parents should be married, it’s how to make a marriage work when the circumstances are less than perfect. (Cohen, et. al. 2010)

Daniel Gross, (2008) a columnist for Newsweek, gives an interesting point of view: that the welfare system is no more dysfunctional than the corporate welfare system. If the poor have a culture of poverty, the corporate world has their own version of it, and that culture is responsible for creating many more people living at or near the poverty level. “We don’t hear as much about the culture of poverty these days,” he wrote, “perhaps because the market turmoil is making us all feel a little poorer. Or perhaps it’s because a highly visible group is now exhibiting all the outward appearances of the underclass: the overclass. Forget welfare queens and the culture of poverty. Think Wall Street kings and the culture of affluence.” Gross pointed out that Wall Street types don’t interact much with people of the lower class. Perhaps that will change when more and more people lose their wealth. Cuthrell, Stapleton and Ledford (2010:2) suggested using a resilience model, rather than focusing on risk factors. The model looks at characteristics of people who were successful despite growing up poor. “…a resilience model focuses on protective factors—individual, familial, community, or all three…” Supporting people in these three areas help the poor to adapt to their situation. Cuthrell, et.al. sought to examine the culture of poverty to identify strategies for helping children living in poverty. As Jaffe, et. al. suggested, making services more available to poverty-stricken families would help.

Ladson-Billings found that in education, it’s “…not the ‘culture of poverty’ but the ‘poverty of culture’” at work. Perspective teachers often use the phrase to describe pathology associated with students from poor families, and use it as an excuse for their failure in teaching them. Culture is generally used as a code word for difference and perhaps deviance in the world of teacher education.” (2006:4) Ladson-Billings suggested that prospective teachers look at their cultural systems, and recognize them as normalized learned behaviors. (2006:6)

CONCLUSION
The culture of poverty seems to mean a variety of things, but it is agreed that people living in poverty adopt certain world views and behaviors, whether those behaviors help the poor cope with their situation, or whether it keeps them in their situation. If it’s the former, the culture of poverty can be seen as a positive phenomenon. If the latter reason is true, it can be seen as an excuse to consider the poor “undeserving.”

I offer as an example my own situation.

Due to a miscalculation in my student loan need for this year, I found it very difficult to meet expenses, including food and gas to get to school, which is 68 miles north of my home. Because I am food challenged, I applied for food stamps. I was denied, even though I am 58 years old and a full-time student. It seems when I tried to roll my work-study over to cash, I technically refused work-study. Even so, the work-study allotment was $500, but I received only $100. The supervisor at the Adult and Family Services (AFS) office told me that had I left the work-study in my award, I would qualify, even if I didn’t actually work. They told me that this is a federal rule, not one enacted at the state level. I was to feel a bit more helpless knowing that my federal government is still concerned with welfare reform and blanket rules, rather than giving a leg-up to a 58-year-old full time student with diabetes and a dependency upon the Cottage Grove bus schedule. Still, I will work the system, if I can get the financial aid office to reinstate my work study for the next two terms, thus qualifying me for an Oregon Trail Card. In this case, it’s an example of how people of poverty begin to think. I could consider the situation hopeless and give up, or see if there’s a way I can access a much-needed service. I choose the latter.

In my opinion, those who agree there’s a culture of poverty miss the point when trying to describe it. For me, the culture of poverty manifests as depression, helplessness and victimhood. It’s a pervasive feeling that the government is not on your side, and neither are those who have wealth. Miller may be correct in assuming that the poor have an increased ability to tolerate menial, repetitive labor. Most people I know at the poverty level have been looking for work for a long time, with unemployment benefits running out, despite complying with the job search rules. Many are forced to take low-paying positions, despite the fact that they do not pay a living wage.

I have lived much of my adult life at or below the poverty level. I hold an outdated technical degree and have worked many years in the newspaper field. From my own personal experience, and from what I’ve observed, poverty-stricken people are usually keenly aware that they do not fit in with the norm, and develop a mindset to cope with that, rather than specifically coping with poverty. To make ends meet, and still feel like they’re among the “haves” rather than the “have-nots,” as our culture demands, the poor will find ways to fit into society as much as possible. Whether this means they shop at Goodwill and Salvation Army for used but good quality furniture and clothing, or whether they “work the system” to gain an advantage, I think the motive is the same. They just want to belong in the community, like everyone else.

People living in poverty have a definitely different mindset from those who live more comfortably. They can easily fall into depression, not caring about the state of their homes, or their appearance. Or, they can do the best they can to live a good life, despite the lack of money. Either way, the lack of cohesiveness with the rest of society seems to be a bigger obstacle to the well-being of poor women, especially if society views them as marginal people who are basically lazy.
From this class, I’ve begun to see the forces at play that keep me teetering over the poverty line. Unlike other women at the poverty level, I at least have hope that I will one day live in relative comfort without money worries. I will soon have a bachelor’s degree, which is said to improve earning power significantly, offset by my student loans, of course. With no retirement fund, I expect to work until I’m quite elderly, and the university degree will make it more likely I’ll find work I can do as I age. In the current national economy, I find it’s important to have several possible career choices. However, I’m aware that just by being a student at the university, I’m already in a group that is becoming more elite because of the rising cost of education. The very poor have access to education money, but not all of them have the wherewithal to complete a 4-year degree. For women, caring, compassionate government services are essential to help them gain footing in this economy. While I believe most social services workers are compassionate, the rules governing welfare and other services have become tougher, so that fewer qualify for them. As Congress tightens the financial belt, and as long as the myth of the Welfare Queen exists, more and more women will fall through the cracks, making it all the more likely a culture of poverty will exist.



Bibliography
Blacks Academy, (December, 2002). Theories of Poverty: The Culture of Poverty, downloaded 11-21-11 http://www.blacksacademy.net/content/3253.html
Cohen, Patricia, (October 17, 2010). The Culture of Poverty Makes a Comeback, New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/18/us/18poverty.html?pagewanted=all
Cohen, Patricia, Venkatesh, Sudhir, (October 20, 2010).Reconsidering the Culture of Poverty, N.P.R. Talk of the Nation. Program transcript. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130701401
Cuthrell, K., Stapleton, J., & Ledford, C. (January 01, 2010). Examining the Culture of Poverty: Promising Practices. Preventing School Failure, 54, 2, 104-110
Erlich, Vera St. (1966) Family in Transition: A study of 300 Yugoslav villages. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Gross, Daniel, (March 28, 2008) Today’s ‘Culture of Poverty,’ Newsweek http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2008/03/29/today-s-culture-of-poverty.html...
Harvey, David L., Reed, Michael H. (1996) The Culture of Poverty: An Ideological Analysis, Sociological Perspectives,39, 4, 465-495
Irelan, L. M., Moles, O. C., & O'Shea, R. M. (June 01, 1969). Ethnicity, Poverty, and Selected Attitudes: A Test of the "Culture of Poverty" Hypothesis. Social Forces, 47, 4, 405-413.
Jaffe, F. S., & Polgar, S. (May 01, 1968). Family Planning and Public Policy: Is the "Culture of Poverty" the New Cop-Out?. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 30, 2, 228-235.
Ladson-Billings, G. (January 01, 2006). It's Not the Culture of Poverty, It's the Poverty of Culture: The Problem with Teacher Education. Anthropology and Education Quarterly, 37, 2, 104-109.
Lewis, O. (January 01, 1998). The Culture of Poverty. Society New Brunswick-, 35, 2, 7-10.
Opler, Marvin K. (December, 1968), On Lewis’ “Culture of Poverty,” Current Anthropology, 9,5, 451-452.
Parker, Seymour, Kleiner, Robert J., (June, 1970),The Culture of Poverty: An Adjustive Dimension, American Anthropologist, 72, 3, 516-527.
Roach, J. L., & Gursslin, O. R. (March 01, 1967). An Evaluation of the Concept "Culture of Poverty". Social Forces, 45, 3, 383-392.


My five favorite sources were the following:
1. Jaffe and Polger, Family Planning and Public Policy: Is the Culture of Poverty the new Cop-out? This source examined the effect of the culture of poverty on family planning, and how the culture effects agency policies.
2. Ladson-Billings, It’s not the Culture of Poverty, but the Poverty of Culture. This source looked at the effect of the culture of poverty in the educational setting, and how it can become a cop-out for teachers who find it difficult to reach students from low-income families.
3. Cuthrell, Stapleton and Ledford. Examining the Culture of Poverty: Promising Practices. Like the source above, this source also looks at the culture of poverty as it applies to education. I liked this source, because it contained ideas for teaching teachers how best to help low-income students.
4. Harvey and Reed, The Culture of Poverty, An Ideological Analysis. The source contains an excellent explanation of the culture of poverty, which helped my understanding of the concept.
5. Parker and Kleiner, The Culture of Poverty: An Adjustment Dimension. Parker and Kleiner demonstrate how the Culture of Poverty is an adjustment mechanism used by people at the poverty level to help them cope with their situation.