'm an old child welfare worker that never lost the passion or empathy for children from hard places. Children from hard places is descriptive of many more children in this country than those who have a case number in the child welfare system. Falling into the category of a child from a hard place isn't necessarily tied to the socio-economic conditions of a child's life, but often poverty is a contributing factor.
In 2016, a long-term friend who was my first supervisor in child welfare in 1970 sent me an email recommending the book "Hillbilly Elegy," written by J.D. Vance. She indicated that the insight provided by the author was eye-opening and that everyone working with children needed to read the book. At the time, the author was thirty-one years of age.
Without hesitation, I ordered the book and read it from cover to cover without putting it down. It tugged at my heartstrings and reminded me of many children with whom I've worked. I firmly believe that it shouldn't hurt to be a child, but invariably in almost everyone's life there are at least brief periods of time that a child wants to move beyond the confines of childhood and chart their own course.
Of course, in saying that, I'm mixing apples with oranges. The young man who chronicled his story in Hillbilly Elegy said of himself: "I grew up poor, in the rust belt, in an Ohio steel town that has been hemorrhaging jobs and hope for as long as I can remember. I have, to put it mildly, a complex relationship with my parents, one of whom has struggled with addition for nearly my entire life. My grandparents, neither of whom graduated from high school raised me, and few members of my extended family attended college. The statistics tell you that kids like me face a grim future – that even if they are lucky, they will manage to avoid welfare; and if they are unlucky, they'll die from a heroin overdose, as happened to dozens in my small hometown just last year.
Early in the book he writes: "In Ohio, I had grown especially skillful at navigating various father figures. With Steve, a midlife-crisis sufferer with an earring to prove it, I pretended earrings were cool – so much so that he thought it appropriate to pierce my ear too. With Chip, an alcoholic police officer who saw my earring as a sign of 'girlie-ness,' I had thick skin and loved police cars. With Ken, an odd man who proposed to Mom three days into their relationship, I was a kind brother to his two children. But none of these things were really true. I hated earrings, I hated police cars, and I knew that Ken's children would be out of my life by the next year…"
He writes of himself: "When I joined the Marine Corps, I did so in part because I wasn't ready for adulthood. I didn't know how to balance a checkbook, much less how to complete financial aid forms for college." He emerged from the U.S. Marine Corps with the confidence that he could make it in life.
My former child welfare supervisor was right, Hillbilly Elegy is a must read. In part, it restores confidence in the American Dream. We can move beyond the limitations of our familial structure and environment and dare to dream. Vance found the tools to do that from his time in the U.S. Marine Corps.
Hillbilly Elegy is a really good book, even if it does include an abundance of F-words. This is not a political endorsement. It is the story of a young man who figuratively pulled himself up by his own bootstraps.
All My Best!
Don
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