this is my 3rd attempt at responding to this thread....it's a very complex and complicated issue that makes an easy response so hard to articulate.....
in the united states, except for those brought here by force into slavery, we, as a people are the descendants of immigrants. for many many reasons, our ancestors left their homelands in search of better...better education, better land, bettering for themselves, better for their mother and kids. i cannot totally disagree with marigold here. i know and understand leaving your home and kin is very hard, but the choice being made, generation after generation to remain in a situation that cannot support your family, in that specific geographic location is not good for that specific family nor society as a whole.
(QUOTE)....There is help out there. But they have to want it, they have to ask if not for themselves but for their children so their lives can be better. No one should live in poverty. I can see one generation being poor, but not the second or the third. Grandchildren should not be as uneducated as the grandparents. Each and every generation should improve on the last. (END QUOTE). there is help, it might not be easy to get to, it might not to be abundant help, but there are social services and ways to break the poverty cycle. education and birth control are first steps in ending the cycle of multi generational poverty both in appalachia and the inner cities.
i am not in any way or form discounting family ties, but some of those ties are nooses on the neck of the future generations. i know i'll be flamed for this, but i will be thinking on this topic and how to change the awfulness of it for my sisters and brothers locked into this hopelessness for a long time. kindly and thoughtfully joyce