Against All Odds Briefing Growing Up In Poverty PDF Download

Children growing up in poverty face many challenges that children from more affluent families never experience. These children reside in disadvantaged neighborhoods with substandard housing, inadequate medical care, and under resourced schools. Family poverty places children at greater risk for depression, low self-esteem, antisocial behavior, and poor academic achievement (Duncan & Brooks-Gunn 1997). In spite of these disadvantages, there are some children who "beat the odds" and grow up to become successful adults who make significant contributions to society. The primary goal of this study is to understand the processes whereby assets or resources enable children in poverty to be resilient, despite the risks associated with living in poverty. In the study reported here, a draw-and-write technique was used as a way of inviting 33 children, (23 females and 10 males, of which 10 were Hmong, 11 were Middle Eastern, and 12 were African Americans) to make visual representations of the resources that, in their view, contribute to the resilience process. In addition to the draw-and-write, we also conducted in depth interviews with a sub-set (15) of the children who agreed to discuss the meaning of the images in their drawings. The drawings were analyzed using deductive content analysis. Narratives and interview data were analyzed using a theoretical thematic analysis approach. The findings support the preliminary findings from our first study that families, particularly parents have the strongest influence on supporting the resilience process in a child. These findings were consistent across ethnicity and gender. Most of the participants in this study described their parent(s) as nurturing and supportive, enabling them to overcome obstacles and adversities within their environment. Families, particularly parents, should be the target of future interventions designed to produce resilient behaviors in youth of color living in poverty.