poverty is a way of life for the poor that is passed down...

â€Å"Poverty is a way of life for the poor that is passed down from generation to generation through the family.† Explain and assess this view. In this essay I will assess and explain the view that poverty is a way of life for the poor that is passed down from generation to generation through the family. Thus, firstly I will assess this view from the culture of poverty. Firstly, the idea of a culture of poverty was first introduced by Oscar Lewis. He developed the concept from his fieldwork among the urban poor in Mexico and Puerto Rico. Lewis argues the culture of poverty is a design for living transmitted from one generation to the next. The culture of poverty has the following elements, on the individual level, a strong feeling of†¦show more content†¦They regard a conventional family life as the ideal and strive to play the mainstream roles of a father. However, their income is insufficient to support a wife and a family. Facing daily situation of a failure, men often desert their family. On closer examination Liebow found little support for the streetcorner man’s rationale for marital failure. Marriages failed largely because the men had insufficient income to maintain them. The matrifocal families that were resulted were not due to a culture of poverty but simply to low-income. Liebow therefore rejects the idea of a culture of poverty or lower-class subculture and sees the behaviour of the poor as a product of situational constraint not of distinctive cultural patterns. Therefore, this shows that the family does not play any role in the prolong poverty but instead it had been the situational constraint that had forced them to stay as being poor. Thus, the statement that poverty is a way of life and had been passed down from generation to generation had not been entirely correct since it is proven that situational constraints are the actual problem. Lastly, according to Shane J. Blackman found that the young homeless had very similar aspirations as the other members of society, but situational constraints such as homelessness had been keeping them at one particular spot which is a t the state of poverty. Because of their homelessness, theirShow MoreRelatedThe Social Issue Of Poverty979 Words   |  4 Pagesaccurate definition of Poverty, because they are currently experiencing it first-hand in the United States (Maiese, 2003). Absolute Poverty, which academically can be defined as the lack of the minimum food and shelter necessary for maintaining life. This definition comes with much controversy because most Americans who have the bare basics to maintain life are still living in what is known as Relative Poverty. 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