Quote Originally Posted by Crankin View Post
many of the families I work with, they put so much stock into making a "nice holiday" for the kids, which to them means buying lots of stuff.
Yeah, I see that too. I see it as a kind of double whammy. On the one hand, chronic (as distinct from situational) poverty so often coincides with an absence of critical thinking (I'll save my opinions about the reasons ...) - the parents were never given the tools to judge the cultural messages they receive. On the other hand, poverty is so deeply stigmatized in the US that parents quite rightly want to do whatever they can to spare their kids ridicule, even if it means accepting all the consumerist messages and spending money they don't have.