Tough Times For Working Families

By No Limits on 02/23/2009 @ 11:30 AM

Guest Post from Erika Alexander

Tough times are toughest on working families, especially women. I should know, my mother was married with six children and our preacher father was sickly his whole life. I think of the young, poor woman my mother was and the poor children we six kids were. She cleaned houses, army bases and office buildings while administering and teaching a Headstart program. We hardly ever saw her, so the six of us raised each other, doing our chores, then scouring the neighborhood for small jobs like taking out the trash and yard work. We dumpster-dived for cans and thrown-out treasures to fix up and keep. It was tough then, but there was neither a recession nor a depression in the offing. We were the working poor. What do the working poor do when there is no work?

I'm thinking about the millions of families that already survive in a depressed state, and how these hard times will affect them. Langston Hughes famously said "White folks' recession is colored folks' depression." My mother laughed at that because times were already so tough it would be difficult to know if they got tougher.

Well, they are getting tougher, and families are feeling the squeeze. An increasing number of women are, as my mother was, the sole breadwinner of the family. My mother bears the scars of a prolonged tough life now. Since there was never enough, she was the first to go without. Lack of health care was particularly hard on her. Now, at 65, she looks and moves like a woman decades older, her legs withered by malnutrition, arthritis and self-healed breaks left untreated, her once-bright eyes dimmed by cataracts.

According to sociologists, over the past thirty years we've witnessed the "feminization of poverty" in this country. Women and children are most at risk in hard economic times. Prenatal care, infant health care, dental care and general nutrition are the first things to go when there isn't enough money to go around. On the campaign trial with Hillary Clinton and Ann Lewis this past year, I met plenty of these brave women. They contributed and volunteered tirelessly, often with kids on their knee, working to support a candidate who championed their needs.

Three years ago Hurricane Katrina showed us, and the world, the forgotten face of poverty in America. Now, a slow-motion Katrina threatens millions more women and children all over the country at a time when far too many of our families are already treading water. With a new administration in Washington, let's all work to keep these women and children uppermost in our minds and bail them out first.

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