“Experiences in early childhood…lay critical foundations for the entire life course” (CSDH,2008). The novel “Lullabies for little criminals," written by Heather O’ Neill, examines the effects of two social determinants on Baby’s life. Poverty interacts with poor education in Baby’s life, building an underdevelopment childhood for her to grow up with. It reflects children in our society who could get less life choice under the influence of poverty and poor education.
The argument over a woman’s right to choose over the life of an unborn baby has been a prevalent issue in America for many years. As a birth control activist, Margaret Sanger is recognized for her devotion to the pro-choice side of the debate as she has worked to provide sex education and legalize birth control. As part of her pro-choice movement, Sanger delivered a speech at the Sixth International Neo-Malthusian and Birth Control Conference in March of 1925. This speech is called “The Children’s Era,” in which she explains how she wants the twentieth century to become the “century of the child.”
Although Baby may be innocent, she is also vulnerable as she is so oblivious to real life. As her exposure becomes greater, her character slowly begins to deteriorate in the last half of the novel. She begins to do drugs, disobey her father, and when she meets a pimp named Alphonse she claims
In today’s society, abortion is a controversial topic. Many people dispute if it is moral to eliminate the potential of the unborn fetus or if it is fair to force the parent to keep and raise the baby if the parent isn’t ready. In Sallie Tisdale’s We Do Abortions Here: A Nurse’s Story, the author uses imagery and internal conflict to recreate her experiences as a nurse employed at an abortion hospital. She does this to make her audience understand her and the people who work in abortion hospitals’ perspective.
When a woman chooses to keep her baby, it may not be her decision; it may be her moral duty to the society influenced by her family’s pressure and religious belief. However, if she considers the broad social factors that will shape and influence her views, and that will allow her to make individual choices such as whether to keep her baby or not, she is applying what C. Wright Mills’ called the Social Imagination. James Henslin (2013) stated that C. Wright Mills’s sociological imagination gives us the ability “to understand how our personal troubles (the problems we experience) are connected to the broader conditions of our society” (p. 2). It allows us to question the “norms” and gives us the ability to see things from different perspectives
In the passage “What is poverty?”, the author Jo Goodwin Parker, describes a variety of things that she considers to portray the poverty in which she lives in. She seems to do this through her use of first-person point of view to deliver a view of poverty created by a focused use of rhetorical questions, metaphors, imagery, and repetition to fill her audience with a sense of empathy towards the poor.
(1) The eight social devices were personal ideals, public opinion, law, belief, education, art, illusions, and bugaboos. There were three popular bugaboos which were first termed by Hollingworth (1916) as false ideas or beliefs held by society that were created by medical men. The first was that if pregnancy was delayed until the age of 30, it was more painful and hard. Thus prompting women to have babies at an earlier age. The second stated that women who do bear children live longer opposed to women who don’t. The third stated that a child that was raised alone was more likely to become “selfish, egotistic, and an undesirable citizen” (Hollingworth, 1916). Which propelled women to have more than one child so their child would not become any of those things. (1) These eight social devices had been used as a means to confine women to the roles of child bearer and mother by manipulating them to not aspire to anything more. When a woman went against her designated role they were considered abnormal, selfish, and were destined to encounter the wrath of God in the hereafter. (2) When this article was first published, in
Baby encounters stigma from authority figures and classmates, further contributing to her low self-esteem. For example, after a school teacher informed Xavier’s parents that, Baby is a troubled child from a broken home - Baby is unwelcome at his house. Lauren was Baby friend; however after witnessing Baby’s home life she humiliated and excluded Baby. Furthermore, they were many instances where the social workers and teachers could have intervened and made a positive difference in Baby’s life. However, they all fail to do so; Baby lamented "they are afraid of my sadness" (O 'Neill, 2006,
In this short story, it was clearly seen that the protagonist was physically and psychologically isolated from her community. This abhorrence initiated within the protagonist’s own household. Her family implied that something was wrong with her—that she used to be a lovely baby and that she was cursed (263). This implication has undoubtedly destroyed the protagonist’s self-confidence to the point that she acknowledged herself as an “it”—an object that is not valued—as she stated the words, “it saddened [my mother] to have given birth to an item
A child’s well-being plays a major role in political debates and decisions. Whether the debate is about a child’s mental health, their social class, or the effects of their parents, politicians are constantly striving to improve the lives of the future generations. In Mical Raz’s book, What’s Wrong with the Poor? Psychiatry, Race, and the War on Poverty, she argues that maternal deprivation, sensory deprivation, and cultural deprivation shaped public policy. Ultimately, Raz believes that interpretations of race and social class influenced the different types of deprivation. While Raz’s argument is valid, the practical application of deprivation is premature. The generalization of deprivation has caused more social issues and long-term negative effects such as sexism and racism.
Many believe that the parents of the Sandy Hook victims conspired to murder their children, but what they fail to realize is that all their “ evidence” is just circumstantial. In court all types of various evidence is presented to the jury. According to Citizens Information “ The general rule is that circumstantial evidence is admissible. However, the courts are careful when the only evidence in a case is circumstantial evidence. Circumstantial evidence must be closely examined and it must be looked at cumulatively. In other words, a court would be very slow and unsettled to convict a defendant on the basis of a few pieces of circumstantial evidence” ( 4). In court the Sandy Hook Conspiracy would have trouble being found true due to the giant amount of
Nicholas Kristof once said, “ In effect, we have a class divide on top of a racial divide, creating a vastly uneven playing field, and one of its metrics is educational failure”. Human Rights Activist and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nicholas Kristof is a very profound writer. Nicholas Kristof is known for his powerful and emotional passages that really gets in the audience 's thoughts like, “Is a Hard Life Inherited”. The purpose of this passage is to inform the upper-class families and society of the struggles of the lower middle class and the hardships that they need to overcome in order for success. The strategies Nicholas Kristof used can be separated into three important segments which are pathos, logos, and cause and effect.
As one of her eleven siblings in a poor family, Margaret couldn’t help but to feel inferior and long for a rich and comfortable lifestyle. When Sanger’s mother died at the age of forty, Margaret believed that her mother’s premature death was a consequence of excessive childbirth. Along with this mindset, as a young girl, Margaret formed a mindset that poverty, illness, and strife were all fates for large families, whereas small families enjoyed wealth, leisure, and positive parental relationships (Croft). It came to no surprise that Sanger, with such a harsh childhood, grew up to become one of the biggest, if not the biggest, advocates for birth control. Soon after her mother’s death, Margaret decided to become a nurse. During her years as
In the novel Ragtime, E.L. Doctorow tells a complex story where historical figures and fictional characters are woven together to make up the narrative. Evident themes include: race, class, and change and transformation. Throughout Ragtime, there are many characters who are influenced by certain people or encounters. Ragtime not only tells the individual struggles of each character throughout the novel but also shows how each character is affected by another. The different characters in Ragtime represent different responses to change - from encouraging change to responding to it, and from resisting change to accepting it. The novel represents characters who provoke change (Coalhouse), characters who accept change (Mother and Tateh), and characters who resist change (Father).
When thinking of personal experiences, “The Mother” by Gwendolyn Brooks touches on the emotional topic of abortion. Even though this poem was published decades ago, it can still be seen very relevant to this day. Accepting abortion and the outcome can indeed be a challenging task for many, while others seem to adapt to it without much of a problem. Gwendolyn Brooks’ writing lets us take a look at the mothers view point of abortion and how a mother responds to her new situation. Throughout the poem, the speaker shows signs of grieving concern of the topic of abortion and its outcomes by presenting emotions of regret and memories, shame and guilt, and contradicting herself to almost justify what she has done.