What Are Common Stereotypes About Poverty?

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The great news and what we've learned from many experts and the research over 40 and 50 years is that quality early childhood education, especially targeted in populations where there are high levels of poverty, can be part of the solution. It's not the only solution though because we need to support families as well. But at the same time, we can also reinforce a lot of stereotypes if we aren't careful.

For example, when I was an undergrad there were a lot of really popular movies coming out, including one with Michelle Pfeiffer, where the young white middle-class teacher went into an urban school and changed everything because she's so wonderful and passionate. I think that motivated a lot of people to go into teaching and I think that's so important. But if we're not careful, the idea of us as the savior of a population where we are going to help at-risk kids or poor families can reinscribe the stereotypes of a family or a child that's helpless without agency. We have to be really careful and examine our own biases all the time. That's what we're going to do now.

We're going to talk about some of the stereotypes of people who live in poverty. You might have noticed that I try to never use the term poor people because I think that's othering. It also focuses on putting "poor" in front of "people." I feel like we all are people first and poverty is a situation. It is not a description of an entire group of people. Part of our stereotype is even when you hear the term poor families or poor people, what comes to your mind? Figure 1 shows an image that many of us might think of when we hear those terms. 

Our population of people who may be experiencing homelessness is one very visible group, but there are many of us who are living paycheck to paycheck, one situation away from not being able to maybe make our bills. Many of us have kind of some social supports and social capital that can help buffer that.

Figure 1. Man sitting on a crate with a grocery cart full of personal items.

Let's look at some of these stereotypes. One of the largest stereotypes is that 42% of Americans believe that poor life choices cause poverty. This comes from a 2019 welfare and work and wealth national survey from the Cato Institute. There are other stereotypes as well. Take a moment to close your eyes and think about who or what comes to mind when you hear "poor families."  What are some thoughts that come to your head? Sometimes it can be painful because these biases and stereotypes are not just about people living in poverty, but about all groups. They are like the air that we breathe in our culture, they're everywhere. Just being human means that we've breathed them in. Unless we're trying to really unpack them, most of us do have similar ones.

Poor People Are Lazy

One of the most similar ones is the misconception that poor people are lazy. This is a very common misconception. If you turn the belief that poor people are lazy on its head then that means that if you're wealthy or if you're doing well, you must work really hard.

Let me give you a little background before I move on. Remember that I told you that I grew up in East Africa in a rural area. I saw lines of women walking along the street with giant tubs of water carried on their shoulder or their head. They would be walking to the water source to collect water because when I was growing up there were not as many community water sources and certainly no water sources being pumped into individual homes. Then you would see them in the afternoon coming back with collections of firewood to make fires for cooking on their small stoves called jikos. One of my favorite memes is a picture of an African woman carrying water with a quote by George Monbiot that says, "If wealth was the inevitable result of hard work and enterprise, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire." 

The belief that wealth is the result of hard work ignores the challenges that make it more difficult for some people to pull themselves up from their bootstraps. I believe this. I've seen the hard work of multiple people and families, sometimes working 2, 3, or 4 jobs just trying to piece it all together without benefits to make ends meet. Certainly, there are people who don't work and who live in poverty. I'm not saying that that's not the case. In contrast, most wealth is gained through inheritance, social capital, and available educational opportunity. Social capital is the idea of who you know, which many of us know that's how many people get jobs. This is supported by the fact that the largest predictor of economic status is the economic status to which someone is born. Many want to believe the idea that we can pull ourselves up from our own bootstraps and that we have human agency to climb out of poverty, but that doesn't always happen. If you were born in poverty, especially into generational poverty, it is going to take some extra support for those families.

Poor People Waste Their Money on Alcohol and Drugs

Another common misconception is that poor people waste their money on alcohol and drugs. In fact, 40% of Americans believe that drugs and alcohol are what causes poverty. I'm not going to tell you that it wouldn't contribute to it, but substance abuse crosses all cultural, racial, religious, and economic boundaries. This was such a prevalent misconception that multiple states started drug testing their welfare recipients. What these states found was welfare recipients are actually less likely than the overall population to take drugs (Covert & Israel). While the national drug use rate is 9.4%, welfare applicants ranged from 0.002% to 8.3%. We also know that drugs are expensive. 

Parents Living in Poverty Lack Parenting Skills

The next misconception, that parents living in poverty lack parenting skills, is rampant in the field of early childhood education. I feel like so many of our programs, especially ones that provide assistance or childcare for families living in poverty, often have caveats that families can get this childcare subsidy, but they have to come to our parenting education class. When these parents are able and do get to the parenting education class, it's usually an expert telling parents how to parent in a top-down approach, as opposed to really trying to work with families, connect with them, and learn about their strengths and their backgrounds.

This misconception is based on an outdated “deficit model” of thinking that is classist and ignores much of the research that shows that it is educational institutions and teachers who need to find better ways to connect with students from all backgrounds.  When we fail to do this, there is an educational mismatch that can hinder learning.  Rather than focusing on what a family does not have, it is important to focus on a family’s funds of knowledge (Moll, Amanti, Neff, & Gonzalez, 1992).  These funds consist of a families’ unique strengths and hidden resources like family traditions, household talents, chores, and home language. The family traditions might be that they do the same thing on New Year's Eve or have a game night regularly. The family might love to cook together or have a great sense of humor and can laugh together.

I have a friend who on Saturday mornings does a dance party with her all of her children and her husband and they just dance. Then they clean and everyone gets a chore and it is a tradition. She said that they make it so fun that her children like to clean. These are the family's strengths. We know that that kind of cohesion helps to make families more resilient and become more supportive. Again, it's a buffer against all of that toxic stress that poverty brings. The next time you hear a colleague complain about a parent's lack of skill, think to yourself, what strengths can I focus on so that I can better connect with the families and learn more about them and change my thinking from a deficit model to a strengths model?

This Ask the Expert is an edited excerpt from the course, Teaching, Caring, and Advocating for Children and Families Living in Poverty, presented by Kenya Wolff, PhD.