Poverty Mindset

Is there a poverty mindset?  The media proclaim that those born into a low-income lifestyle are largely destined to remain there.  The implication then is that not much can be done about it, so don't waste your time trying to promote beneficial programs.  Low expectations breed low outcomes.  And on and on....

I was born into a pretty strange lifestyle, come to think of it.  My parents, four older brothers and myself lived on a farm, raised dairy cows for awhile, and farmed or rented out our land, and went to the local schools until high school.  But my mother (circa 1920's) was raised in an urban environment of music lessons, private schools, governess for the children, cook in the kitchen, upstairs maid, downstairs maid and a seamstress who stopped by once a week to help grandmother with the mending.  Because my grandfather was a medical doctor and worked for a living, they considered themselves "middle class."  Money issues were never discussed in front of children - a hold-over she carried into my generation that left me woefully ignorant of practical financial planning when I reached adulthood.  
 
On the farm we lived frugally within my father's Kodak income (his day job - between milking cows morning and evening).   "The big yellow mother" always provided health insurance and it never occurred to us children that our medical and dental needs would not always be met.  The only cost outside this umbrella was my braces, for which payment mother gamely returned to work in a local factory for something like $75 a week (mid-1960's).

Though our income was modest, mother raised us upon the "nobless oblige" principles of her own upbringing, seasoned with the enlightened socialism of my working class father.  In her later years she worked in the inner city, making life-long friends with people with backgrounds very different from her own.  She was equally at home at elegant dinner parties or hobnobbing with the rich and famous. Her example awed us.  My father was always somewhat irked by my mother's ease (which he did not share) in moving among people of all walks of life.  "You think you're as good as anybody," he once remarked, to her amusement. 

I am technically poor but don't have a poverty mindset.  I wasn't raised that way.   I'm where I want to be, doing what I want to do, with as much as I need, and more to give away.  My expectations are high, but not where money is concerned.  It's a beautiful life.  Thank you, mother.