We won`t break the cycle of poverty in this country until we understand that the ways we push people to prove their manhood and womanhood just about guarantee that if you are born poor, you will stay poor.
It works this way: Human beings must claim their manhood or womanhood when their bodies change, at 13 or so. This is a psychosexual necessity-they don`t have a choice about it.
If this is made easy for them, by the society recognizing them as young men and women, they can pass readily on to the next task, which is developing the skills of adulthood. However, if their manhood or womanhood is denied them, they may get stuck in the ”proving” stage and remain adolescents forever.
Traditionally, in a capitalist society, men prove manhood by making money. Women prove womanhood by marrying men who make money. That`s fairly easy-if you`re born rich. What`s striking is how many of our other ways of proving manhood and womanhood lead to poverty.
For men: athletics, which earns a living for only a tiny few. Driving too fast. Drinking. Drugs. Proving no one can tell you what to do, which gets you kicked out of school, fired from your job, or tossed into jail.
For women: Getting pregnant. Guidance counselors all over this country have told me of 14-year-olds reporting that they are pregnant and boasting proudly, ”I`m a woman now.”
What is the way out of this mess? Many of the programs designed to help young people break the cycle of poverty may make things worse. Some, for example, promote birth control-which is essential-but nonetheless may miss the point. One popular poster shows a picture of a very young pregnant woman, with the caption: ”Children having children.” If even a tiny part of why a young woman got pregnant is to prove she`s a woman, and she reads a poster telling her she`s still a child, what might her reaction be? ”What do I have to do?
Have twins?”
The solution is not to come up with a better, healthier way of proving woman or manhood. The solution is to convey that you don`t have to prove it at all. Our young people need to know that there are five stages of human development:
– Childhood, which is behind them.
– Puberty, which brings the surge of creative energy called manhood and womanhood. You don`t have to earn it. It`s a gift. As such it should be greeted with rejoicing-and the young person publicly proclaimed a man or a woman.
– However, being a man or a woman does not mean you are an adult. What comes next is an apprenticeship period (called ”youth”), when you learn the skills of adulthood.
– If you gain them successfully, you enter adulthood. Adulthood means being capable of taking responsibility for yourself and your community, and this you do have to earn.
– The fifth stage is old age.
The crucial issue is to take our manhood or womanhood for granted, so that we can move on to the civilization-building tasks of adulthood. If we can convey that idea, we can begin to break the poverty cycle. Without it, we`re in for more of the desperate same.
