The Working Poor: Invisible in America

A number of women at the edge of poverty are survivors of sexual abuse. The chapter opens with an account of a 10-year-old girl who could not believe that everyone had not been raped. The same girl ended up pregnant at the age of 18, unsure which of three men was the father of her child. The trauma of sexual abuse is fundamental to the subject’s loss of agency: “Lost is the very notion that real choice exists, that decisions taken now can make a difference later. A paralyzing powerlessness sets in, and that mixes corrosively with other adversities that deprive those in or near poverty of the ability to affect change” (144). 

Sexual abuse among low-income families emerges as one mechanism of transmitting poverty from one generation to the next, as the abused are more likely to become pregnant younger and have dysfunctional relationships with men. It leads to more single-parent households where fathers may or may not support their offspring. Addiction is also rife as a means of coping for young women who are sexually abused.  

Sexual abuse affects a mother’s ability to nurture her children as she cuts off emotionally, is defensive, and cannot sustain empathy. In turn, neglectful parenting can have further reaching consequences in poverty, where the child is more exposed and cannot purchase buffers such as therapy.