Kristof's "Land of Limitations", my response

QUOTES

This week, my blog post will be me choosing three quotes from the reading which particularly stood out to me, and what I think they mean. 

The first quote I want to discuss is from the beginning of the text, when Kristof compares a child's chances of leaving the economic status of their parents to their height. He quotes Alan Krueger by saying,  “'The chance of a person who was born to a family in the bottom 10 percent of the income distribution rising to the top 10 percent as an adult is about the same as the chance that a dad who is 5 feet 6 inches tall having a son who grows up to be over 6 feet 1 inch tall'".

This quote helped me put this comparison into perspective. The first question I asked myself was "how many people do you know that are taller than their parents? Or, at least their father?" After asking myself that question, the answer I came up with was "not many." This helps put this into perspective to me, as it helps me realize that children who are unfortunate enough to be in the bottom 10% of income will most likely stay there for the rest of their lives. Of course, they have a chance, but realistically, that chance is probably less than 10%.

The next quote that stood out to me was towards the middle of the article. In this quote, Kristof mentions, again, how children born into an impoverished, less fortunate, family are likely to stay at the bottom percentile. He takes a different approach this time, by saying, "Remember that disadvantage is less about income than environment. The best metrics of child poverty aren’t monetary, but rather how often a child is read to or hugged..."



This, again, puts things into perspective for me. This, perspective, however, is different from the first. When reading this particular section of the article, Kristof also talks about how kids are beaten, how they have drug addicts and alcoholics for parents, and how this affects them. This, of course, makes a lot of sense. Going through life, I know that a child's family life and background affect them a lot as they are growing up, but I never really seem to think that it affects them to this extent. Some make bad choices, yes, but if poor children and rich children make the same bad choices, do they face the same consequences? Or does their background have a lot to do with the outcome? This leads me to my next point.

My third and final quote is not too far off from the previous quote. In this quote, Kristof sort of elaborates on the previous quote that I mentioned, by saying, "Some think success is all about “choices” and “personal responsibility.” Yes, those are real, but it’s so much more complicated than that."

This quote ties into the previous one by using the same ideals. By saying success is much more complicated than just personal choices, gets the audience thinking "how" before he even explains it. After this quotes, he uses a different analogy, saying that children from more fortunate families make some bad choices, sometimes even worse than the children from impoverished families. However, they have the family and the means to bail them out, as opposed to the other children, which don't have the means to do that, and have to suffer from the consequences more so than their rich counterparts.

this picture reminded me of the rich parents vs. poor parents scenario.
The man on the right most likely has a rich family to bail him out,
 while the one on the left is probably self-reliant, and homeless as a result.

In class, I would like to talk about poor families vs. rich families, and how having different backgrounds, regardless of the choices made, affect the outcome of the children. How richer families can bail their child out more than the other. How they don't have the same opportunities, and if they do, how it might be harder on the poorer child to maintain the same level of success. And, finally, how this scenario reminds of myself, in comparison to a family friend. She, as her income would suggest, is upper middle class, while my family and I are certainly lower middle class. I intend to discuss how she tries to push me to do the things her children have done, and how she cannot seem to comprehend that it might be harder to achieve than for her children.