My Mother Never Worked By Bonnie Smith Yackel

Social Security has been a very beneficial government program for elderly people, and those whom they support, when being an active member in the workforce is no longer an option for reasons such as old age, disability, or death. Destruction of the program, or worse, lack of the aid, would be catastrophic. Without it, it could leave many senior citizens that can no longer

Stephanie Coontz is a teacher, historian, author and a scholar activist. She has also very indulged in the world of public debate on families, this mostly due possible because of her extensive skills to study modern families as well as historical patterns. In her book The Way We Never Were, Coontz presents a historical look at the family and how it has changed over time. Her interest in the subject comes for her need to understand how families functioned in the past and present, and what lead to notion and definition of family nowadays.

In the book, Mama Might Be Better off Dead, there were two main characters that were crucial to the plot of the story, Jackie Banes and Mrs. Jackson. Throughout the book, I found Mrs. Jackson to have the best connection with public health. Mrs. Jackson was an elderly and disabled women with a variety of health care odds stacked against her. She had numerous health concerns; such as, diabetes, peripheral vascular disease, and an amputated limb (Abraham, 1993). Mrs. Jackson suffered these health issues because she was a poverty stricken women and experienced economically depressed living conditions. Due to her low socio-economic status, Mrs. Jackson did not qualify for full coverage Medicaid because she was not considered in a low enough income bracket unless she put more than half of her monthly social security towards health benefits (Abraham, 1993). As a woman with limited resources, Mrs. Jackson was unable to afford the cost of benefits much less her own survival expenses. The duration that Mrs. Jackson experienced insufficient resources led her to all of her unfortunate outcomes regarding her health. One of the reasons Mrs. Jackson needed an amputation on her leg was due to an untreated wound that resulted from her diabetes. Her diabetes had also gone untreated because she was unable to afford treatment and transportation costs to help her infection heal (Abraham, 1993). In the book, no one cared about Mrs. Jackson and it was because she was a poor

Dorothy Allison’s essay, Panacea, recalls the fond childhood memories about her favorite dish, gravy. Allison uses vivid imagery to cook up a warm feeling about family meals to those who may be a poor family or a young mother. Appeal to the senses shows this warm feeling, along with a peaceful diction.

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).

I Knew a Woman is about a woman who has more than just beauty. Theodore Roethke explains what he sees in this woman and the joy and pain about loving her. Roethke uses a

Alison Bechdel ends her memoir Are You My Mother? with the words “But in its place, she has given me something else. She has given me the way out.” While this conclusion might seem flawed, it does a good job finalizing the recurring theme of spiderwebs in the novel. Just a few pages before (275), she depicts a scene of her talking about phobias while her mother throws out a spider. A connection can be drawn between the phobia of a real spider (that her mother has) and her phobia of what a spider represents, perfection and symmetry. Quoting from Adam Phillips, Bechdel says that, “‘Spiders are good to hate people with … she had to find a spider to let her do it.’” (275) The medium of a spider represents a recurring theme that Bechdel incorporates

As hard work goes, attitude is also extremely important to have when trying to achieve something. If someone’s demeanor is off, they don’t believe they can achieve something greater than them, which in turn leads to failure. However, Jeannette wasn’t one of those people who didn’t believe in themselves, she tried to do everything that she could with a positive outlook regarding her life. Even when she didn’t concur with her parents, she didn’t give up her optimism when she moved to Welch, “Seeing as how Welch was our new home, Brian and I figured we’d make the best of it,” (Part 3 Chapter 7). While Jeannette tried to make everything special for the family by including teamwork, “If we all work together, we can get it done in a day or or two,”

My mother, Lisa Dawn Hicks Kern, was born at Wadley Regional Medical Center, Texarkana, TX, on Sunday, June 15, 1969. Her father, James Kenneth Hicks, was 28 at the time of my mother’s birth; he was employed at Red River Army Depot as an electrical engineer. Her mother, Sharon Lee Clark Hicks, was 25 when my mother was born, at the time she was the home maker. My mother had an older sister who was a four year old toddler at the time of my mother’s birth. Kimberly Ann Hicks was born at Wadley Regional Medical Center, Texarkana, TX, on Monday, August 30, 1965.

In “Invisible Child,” a New York Times article written by Andrea Elliot, we follow a day in the life of a young African American girl, Dasani, growing up in New York City. However, instead of living in an “Empire State of Mind,” Dasani lives in the slums, growing up homeless with her two drug addicted parents and seven siblings. Dasani often finds herself taking care of her siblings, making sure they have enough to eat, tying shoelaces, changing diapers, getting them to the bus stop in time, and the list goes on. An 11 year old girl, essentially taking care of a whole family, as well as taking care of herself by going to school, receiving an education, and partaking in extra-curricular activities. Elliot captures the life and struggles of a family well under the poverty line, giving us an unprecedented look into what Dasani must do each day not just to grow up in New York City, but to survive.

Locally, I have personally known two people, one family, and one family in law, who collected the social security checks of four or more people monthly. Now to take that onto a broader scale 6.5 million people over the age of 112 are actively reaping their social security benefits despite having been dead for many years . They are dead but since this large and ineffective bureaucracy doesn’t have the death records on file the numbers are susceptible to fraud and not only susceptible but many are actively victims of it. Now getting a death certificate or proof of death really shouldn’t be that hard since all they have to do is “call up the bureaucracy next door,” but we forget the bureaucratic engine is large and ineffective for no other reason than it is. It huffs and puffs and goes nowhere and then demands more money out you to make it work better. Bureaucracies are designed to subordinate and confuse so that citizens are too busy running around trying to appease the bureaucracies to do anything about all of the corruption, corporatism, and inefficient, ineffective practices that occur in the government on the day to day.

Social security is a family protection system. I was raised by a single mother that recently passed away and now raised by my father. The social security process of my father being labeled as a widow and receiving help was lingering causing my family and I to lose our home and live with my aunt for a while. I am looking forward to see social security improved by being in the hands of Hillary Clinton to prevent any other complications to families. Hillary proposes to stop the retirement age increase for older people like my father who have worked with every bone in their body for continuous

     There is much-heated debate on the issues of Social Security today. The Social Security system is the largest government program of income distribution in the United States. People are concerned that they won't see a dime of what they worked so hard to contribute into the Social Security system for so many years. Social Security provides benefits to about forty-three million Americans. Not only to retired workers, but also to their spouses and dependents of the workers who die prematurely. It also provides benefits to disabled workers and their dependents. Social Security appears to most people like a simple retirement saving’s account. After all, you generally

In the personal essay “My Mothers Tongue” (1990), Amy Tan, widely known author explains her insights on language and culture identity using details and memories from her own life experiences. Tan conceals that the language in which her mother used with her “was the language that helped shape the way [she] saw things, expressed things, made sense of the world” (1208) and in the process it made her who she is today as an author. Tan illuminates the euro centricity of the Master Narrative by retelling stories of her mother being treated poorly because of her “broken” or “limited” English. She recalls many past experiences where her mother suffered from bad service and treatment from restaurants, stockbrokers, and even hospitals. Using examples from her personal life Tan gets her point across about language and culture characteristics in order to show how Chinese culture is affected by the master narrative and also encourages others to include a variety of cultures in order to overcome bias opinions. Tan’s apparent audience can be ranged from the child of an immigrant to a doctor and offers an authentic and rich portrayal of Chinese history through her conflicting experience of her Chinese and American cultures.

The Social Security System is in need of a new reform; our current system was not designed for the age stratification we have at this time. The U.S. Social Security Administration Office of Policy states, “The original Social Security Act, signed into law on August 14, 1935, grew out of the work of the Committee on Economic Security, a cabinet-level group appointed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt just one year earlier. The Act created several programs that, even today, form the basis for the government's role in providing income security, specifically, the old-age insurance, unemployment insurance, and Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) programs.” Social Security was modeled to aid the elderly citizens, however during the