Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis(68)

Part of the problem is how state laws define the family. For families like mine—and for many black and Hispanic families—grandparents, cousins, aunts, and uncles play an outsize role. Child services often cut them out of the picture, as they did in my case. Some states require occupational licensing for foster parents—just like nurses and doctors—even when the would-be foster parent is a grandmother or another close family member. In other words, our country’s social services weren’t made for hillbilly families, and they often make a bad problem worse.

I wish I could say this was a small problem, but it’s not. In a given year, 640,000 children, most of them poor, will spend at least some time in foster care. Add that to the unknown number of kids who face abuse or neglect but somehow avoid the foster care system, and you have an epidemic—one that current policies exacerbate.

There are other things we can do. We can build policies based on a better understanding of what stands in the way of kids like me. The most important lesson of my life is not that society failed to provide me with opportunities. My elementary and middle schools were entirely adequate, staffed with teachers who did everything they could to reach me. Our high school ranked near the bottom of Ohio’s schools, but that had little to do with the staff and much to do with the students. I had Pell Grants and government-subsidized low-interest student loans that made college affordable, and need-based scholarships for law school. I never went hungry, thanks at least in part to the old-age benefits that Mamaw generously shared with me. These programs are far from perfect, but to the degree that I nearly succumbed to my worst decisions (and I came quite close), the fault lies almost entirely with factors outside the government’s control.

Recently, I sat down with a group of teachers from my alma mater, Middletown High. All of them expressed the worry, in one form or another, that society devoted too many resources too late in the game. “It’s like our politicians think college is the only way,” one teacher told me. “For many, it’s great. But a lot of our kids have no realistic shot of getting a college degree.” Another said: “The violence and the fighting, it’s all they’ve seen from a very young age. One of my students lost her baby like she’d lost her car keys—had no idea where it went. Two weeks later, her child turned up in New York City with the father, a drug dealer, and some of his family.” Short of a miracle, we all know what kind of life awaits that poor baby. Yet there’s precious little to support her now, when an intervention might help.

So I think that any successful policy program would recognize what my old high school’s teachers see every day: that the real problem for so many of these kids is what happens (or doesn’t happen) at home. For example, we’d recognize that Section 8 vouchers ought to be administered in a way that doesn’t segregate the poor into little enclaves. As Brian Campbell, another Middletown teacher, told me, “When you have a large base of Section 8 parents and kids supported by fewer middle-class taxpayers, it’s an upside-down triangle. There’re fewer emotional and financial resources when the only people in a neighborhood are low-income. You just can’t lump them together, because then you have a bigger pool of hopelessness.” On the other hand, he said, “put the lower-income kids with those who have a different lifestyle model, and the lower-income kids start to rise up.” Yet when Middletown recently tried to limit the number of Section 8 vouchers offered within certain neighborhoods, the federal government balked. Better, I suppose, to keep those kids cut off from the middle class.

Government policy may be powerless to resolve other problems in our community. As a child, I associated accomplishments in school with femininity. Manliness meant strength, courage, a willingness to fight, and, later, success with girls. Boys who got good grades were “sissies” or “faggots.” I don’t know where I got this feeling. Certainly not from Mamaw, who demanded good grades, nor from Papaw. But it was there, and studies now show that working-class boys like me do much worse in school because they view schoolwork as a feminine endeavor. Can you change this with a new law or program? Probably not. Some scales aren’t that amenable to the proverbial thumb.

I’ve learned that the very traits that enabled my survival during childhood inhibit my success as an adult. I see conflict and I run away or prepare for battle. This makes little sense in my current relationships, but without that attitude, my childhood homes would have consumed me. I learned early to spread my money out lest Mom or someone else find it and “borrow” it—some under the mattress, some in the underwear drawer, some at Mamaw’s house. When, later in life, Usha and I consolidated finances, she was shocked to learn that I had multiple bank accounts and small past-due balances on credit cards. Usha still sometimes reminds me that not every perceived slight—from a passing motorist or a neighbor critical of my dogs—is cause for a blood feud. And I always concede, despite my raw emotions, that she’s probably right.

A couple of years ago, I was driving in Cincinnati with Usha, when somebody cut me off. I honked, the guy flipped me off, and when we stopped at a red light (with this guy in front of me), I unbuckled my seat belt and opened the car door. I planned to demand an apology (and fight the guy if necessary), but my common sense prevailed and I shut the door before I got out of the car. Usha was delighted that I’d changed my mind before she yelled at me to stop acting like a lunatic (which has happened in the past), and she told me that she was proud of me for resisting my natural instinct. The other driver’s sin was to insult my honor, and it was on that honor that nearly every element of my happiness depended as a child—it kept the school bully from messing with me, connected me to my mother when some man or his children insulted her (even if I agreed with the substance of the insult), and gave me something, however small, over which I exercised complete control. For the first eighteen or so years of my life, standing down would have earned me a verbal lashing as a “pussy” or a “wimp” or a “girl.” The objectively correct course of action was something that the majority of my life had taught me was repulsive to an upstanding young man. For a few hours after I did the right thing, I silently criticized myself. But that’s progress, right? Better that than sitting in a jail cell for teaching that asshole a lesson about defensive driving.