There are no suggestions from him on how these boys, their mother, and their five siblings can turn their lives around without simply expecting the government to intervene. And what about their mother? How can a woman have seven children with a drug addict and not realize at some point that she herself is condemning her children to a life of poverty, violence and constant struggle? Of course she wants her children to have the same things as any child deserves to have - a safe, happy childhood where there's always enough to eat and they don't have to worry about ducking their heads whenever they play outdoors - but what has she done to make that happen? Kotlowitz does nothing to address these questions or point the finger of blame at the parents of Lafayette, Pharaoh and their siblings for being a large part of the problem in the downfall of a civilized, humane way of life. He doesn't seem to hold the parents accountable for the actions, even when those actions clearly have devastating consequences. Was there never any thought to not having more children when it was clearly obvious it was impossible to even adequately care for the first one or two? Still, this book forces us to agree that yes, there is hopelessness, pain and incredible inequity in the...
Raising children (although it often seems as if the children are raising themselves) in such deplorable, criminal conditions can only lead to the children turning to crime themselves.
The social workers should have known what was happening by monitoring on a regular basis. Providing job training and daycare for LaJoe, coming to the house every month to talk to her about changing her circumstances and mandating that she attend counseling are all monitoring methods that should have been in place and were not. If only one change could be made to the social welfare system for the benefit
Children There Written by Alex Kotlowitz, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, the book There Are No Children There follows two boys' activities around the Henry Horner Homes, a low-income public housing project in Chicago, Illinois. The book covers the time period from the summer of 1987 through September, 1989, and follows the protagonists, Lafeyette Rivers (nearly 12 years old) and Pharoah Rivers (nine years old). This is not
Holly Sklar writes, "the gulf between the rich and the rest of America will continue to widen, weakening our economy and our democracy. The American Dream will be history instead of poverty." With the advent of more billions into the ranks of the Fortune 400, so it is; instead of witnessing the booming middle class that marked the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions, America is undergoing a transformation that more clearly
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