Leslie said: "many in the lower socioeconomic groups accept much that
happens in their
lives as inevitable or that they are powerless to change them. So many
situations occur that they indeed have absolutely no control over, that
it can and does become a persuasive attitude in their whole life."

I think you've hit the nail right on the head, Leslie. I am positive that
that sense of lack of control ("sense", indeed - it is a fact!) is one of
the reasons we see so many teen pregnancies in those socioeconomic groups.
Not so much just teen pregnancies, but very young women (we would have
called them girls in a less pc era) having *repeat* pregnancies & babies; it
"happens" once, and then they figure well, here I am, this is my life, and
on and on it goes.

This is hard to change! It's easy to say, "Well, haul up your socks, girl,
and get a grip!", but it flies in the face of most of their life lessons.
Oh, there's so much work to do! And obviously we're missing some of the
pieces, or we'd have "fixed" it by now.

It also helps me when I remember that for some of the women we see living in
what we would call miserable circumstances, where they are now is actually a
big step up (by their own reckoning) from where they came from. It's pretty
cheap of us to deny them the pride they get from that, however bad it looks
to us. So maybe they're in the abandoned bread truck, running their
electricity off of an extension cord rigged to "steal" electricity from a
near-by utility pole. But it's their home, and maybe she doesn't have to put
up with being sexually molested by her father, or share her living space
with a bunch of constantly-shifting addicts, or whatever. So I try not to
assume that this life is necessarily hell on earth for her, that she may
actually feel proud of what she's achieved for herself and her kids!

And am I nuts to think that all women, all families even in this country
(not to mention the rest of the world!), need not operate on the same value
system? That we will be ultimately ineffective at trying to mold everybody
into the standard "family values" format? Certainly all women should have
the self-esteem and strength to be truly making their choices, not just
falling into them as the path of least resistance. But I'm not sure that,
even in the "ideal world", that it would necessarily bring about what would
look to "us" like a picture we want to see.

This is related (in an obscure and too-lengthy-to-explain way) to Kathy D's
posts about women's strength, their ability to flourish and triumph in all
kinds of settings, to cope and beyond coping to thrive and raise fine
children. So the ways they do it may look different; I don't think that
saying "oh, those poor women who have to live like X" is appropriate,
necessarily.

Seems like we want it both ways, at least in North America: we want all
families living in "nice" houses, having X number of babies at age Y-Z, with
a certain # of toilets and so on, making life choices we approve of. But we
also want women nursing and parenting like the !Kung San. Boy, I'm glad it
isn't up to me to decide!

Cathy Bargar, RN, IBCLC Ithaca NY