Mama Might Be Better off Dead by Laurie Kaye Abraham

Calvin and Hobbes embodied the voice of the Lonely Child is an article written by Libby Hill. In this article, Hill digs deep into the famous comic strips of the 80’s and 90’s, and uses her now adult mind to examine the deeper meanings of the comics and how they shaped her childhood. Hill’s main focus is on the theme of loneliness, and how Calvin is able to find ways to cope with the loneliness that often plagues children in the modern world. As a child, she related to Calvin, because Calvin’s character, despite being complex in nature, was portrayed in such a way so that children could relate to him. As the article progresses, she begins to draw comparisons to reading the strips as a child and then rereading them as an adult, and she explains

“Mama might be better off dead: The failure of healthcare in urban America”, was written by an investigative reporter Laurie Kaye Abraham in 1993. This is a disturbing and profound look at the human side of the health care and how government health care policies work when they hit the streets. This is a story of an impoverished African-American family dealing with devastating illnesses and how they end up in a miserable dilemma.

In the book “mama might be better off dead” written by Laurie Kaye Abraham, tells a story of Jackie Banes and her family, and their struggles to hold the family’s health together. Her grandmother Mrs. Cora Jackson, who pretty much raised her, has suffered the amputation of one leg because of uncontrolled diabetes. Jackie’s father, Tommy, who has suffered a stroke because he didn’t care about the consequences of high blood pressure. Jackie’s husband, Robert, who has a progressive kidney disease. Abraham has gone out of her way to find more about the American health care system in North Lawndale, Illinois. Throughout the book she talks about how the health care system in America is so unfair and unsatisfactory to the needs of poor people such as the Banes’s Family.

The poem “Mothers and Daughters” is written by Pat Mora. Pat Mora is a contemporary award winning writer, who writes for children, youngsters and adults. She was born in El Paso, TX in the year 1942. She attains a title of a Hispanic writer; however, the most of her poems are in English. In her literary work, one can observe the different aspects of the immigrants’ lives such as language issues, family relationships, immigrants’ experiences and cultural differences (1187).

Widening economic inequality in the United States is being accompanied by increasing health care disparity. While the health care system seeks to provide health care as a human right, it fails to do so often worsening the disparities (Dickman, Himmelstein, & Woolhandler, 2017). While health care today has made major strides, there are many people who are still suffering from health care system injustices. Of the people who are still uninsured a majority of them are in the middle-working class or those living in poverty. Poor Americans have less access to health care than wealthy Americans. The life expectancy gap between the rich and poor continues to widen. Health care in poor communities is too often neglected. This issue has been a trend in the United States for many years. In Abraham’s book, Mama might be better off dead these very same inequalities are evident for the Banes family. Because of these inequalities, preventive illness becomes life threatening causing care to then become extensive and even more expensive.

In “The Victims” by Sharon Olds it describes a divorce through the eyes of the parents’ children. The first section is shown through past tense as the speaker is a child and the last section is shown in present tense with the speaker already being an adult trying to make sense of past events. The word “it” in the first two lines carries a tremendous weight, hinting at the ever so present abuse and mistreatment, but remaining non-specific. The first part generates a negative tone toward the father who is referred to as malicious by the mother who “took it” from him “in silence” until she eventually “kicked him out.” Through the entirety of the poem the children are taught to hate their father. Who taught them? Their mother showed them that their father was a villain and were taught to have no sympathy for him but “to hate you and take it” and so they did so. Although the poem never directly states what the father did to receive the family’s hated, the speaker gives examples as to why he is hated.

“Mama Might Be Better off Dead: the Failure of Health Care in Urban America” by Laurie Kaye Abraham, follows a families struggles over the course of three years in a poor Chicago neighborhood. Abraham points out specifically how the health care system in the United States has failed the different members of the poverty stricken Banes family. The main character, Jackie has the responsibility of taking care of her sick and elderly grandmother. Jackie also cares for her three young children with little help from her husband, Robert who also suffers from various illnesses. While, there are some government programs set up to help families like the Banes’, the health care system is certainly lacking.

Throughout the novel Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, many of those who lived in poor conditions died because they didn’t have access to proper health care. In the beginning, it’s shown that Jane’s poverty-stricken parents died after being sick, and the same happened to Jane’s childhood friend Helen after a typhus outbreak at their school. In both of those situations they were too poor to receive the medical care that they needed. This problem still exists in modern times, except it involves not only the poor, but also the elderly and disabled. In the 1960s the Medicare and Medicaid programs were put into place to try to help those that can’t afford health insurance. However, not everyone is eligible for those programs, so they still lack

Through my understanding of the book, Homeward Bound by Elaine Tyler May explores two traditional depictions of the 1950s, namely suburban domesticity and anticommunism. She intertwines both historical events into a captivating argument. Throughout the book, May aims to discover why “Post-war Americans accepted parenting as well as marriage with so much zeal” unlike their own parents and children. Her findings are that the “cold war ideology and domestic revival” were somewhat linked together. She saw “domestic containment” as an outgrowth of frights and desires that bloomed after the war. However, psychotherapeutic services were as much a boom then as now, and helped offer “private and personal solutions to social problems.” May reflects her views on the origin of domestic containment, and how it affected the lives of people who tried to live by it.

Growing up in today’s society can be traumatizing for any child. When it comes to growing up as a young girl, however, it can be downright devastating, but not only for the child but the parent as well. There are so many decisions to be made when choosing how to raise your child, assuring that you have instilled proper values to develop a healthy sense of self-worth and confidence.

In Cinderella Ate My Daughter Peggy Orenstein examines the triumphs and pitfalls navigating raising a daughter, in today’s mixed message world. From peer pressure and the need to fit in today’s society, young females have commercialism forced at them at every turn and in very clever ways. Doll creators have been pushing the boundaries of good taste with each new season launch. When the more “mature” actresses at the age of 17 feel the need to do something drastic to remove them from the wholesome image created for by company executives, mothers and consumers feel betrayed, and yet then we need to have a dialog with our kids as to why just last month Miley Cyrus was wonderful but now she is not okay for the viewing household.

In Meredith Small’s article Our Babies, Ourselves she focuses on people’s social and psychological development through examining the different cultural aspects of raising a child. During this process she compares the American perspective of treating babies, to those of the Gusii and the Dutch. Throughout her examination many points are made that I believe can give the reader’s a valuable understanding of the impact of different means of parenthood on a child’s future development.

Live your life to its fullest, if I had to mention one thing I learned from Mary Oliver 's beautiful poem, "When Death Comes", that would be it. Specifically not letting time pass you by, or letting things like anxiety or anger control your life. The comparisons to death also help with understanding the magnitude of our mortality, and the importance of not taking each and every day for granted. With many fitting and unique metaphors I found it easy to be engaged with the poem. This leads also to a lot of relevant and surprising imagery, employing a more detailed vantage point for the reader. In "When Death Comes", Mary Oliver uses persona, metaphor, and imagery to speak not only of death, but more specifically living life to its fullest before death.

The idea of Mother Earth is extremely empowering for women; most women believe that, right? Ellen Cronan Rose finds the idea of mother earth tremendously unempowering. Rose writes in her article “The Good Mother: from Gaia to Gilead”, that the imagery of mother earth is deeply problematic and is harmful to the feminist cause. This is a shocking view considering that most women don’t seem to have a problem with that idea. Ellen Cronan Rose states that the “mother earth” metaphor is harmful to the way women are viewed in society because it perpetuates negative stereotypes against women, it views the earth and women primarily as producers, and it overlooks the fact that both men and women are connected to nature. She goes in-depth into how mother earth imagery can impact women.

In Bonnie Smith-Yackel’s essay “My Mother Never Worked” she passionately defends her mother after Social Security refuses to grant her death benefit check. Yackel does not realize that Social Security fairly distributes benefits to contributing Americans. Social Security was reasonable to not granting benefits to a woman who never contributed as a wage earner. It would not be fair if benefits were granted to a fraud who never paid wage taxes compared to wage earners who do. Americans who abuse Social Security benefits by committing fraud is unethical and not to mention illegal. Americans that are in desperate need for Social Security benefits require it far more than frauds. By eliminating fraud the government can properly grant social benefits to hard working Americans. Social Security benefits should be permitted to Americans that work and provide back to their country or they are disabled. Hard-working citizens that pay their duties will receive back from benefits, including employees that are qualified as disabled. Benefits should not be granted to any citizen that makes no contribution to their country such as, tax deductions from their wages. Furthermore, Social Security needs to reach out to the majority which is the poverty-stricken. By informing impecunious people and immigrants of Social Security it could save them from the poverty they suffer from. Even though, Social Security relieves some citizens from a financial burden there are still many improvements to be