Voices of the Recession Six-Year-Old

¶ … Voices of the Recession

Six-year-old Keri doesn't know what caused the economic crisis, or what should be done to pull the nation out of the recession. All she knows is that when her mother lost her job, she had to move into her grandmother's small, Cape Cod home. Her sixty-two-year-old grandmother, Virginia Matthews, continues to work at as a receptionist in a doctor's office. "One thing that is nice about working for the medical profession," she says, "is that you are less likely to lose your job. People don't stop getting sick." Originally Virginia planned to retire by the time she was sixty, but her late husband's medical bills motivated her to continue to work. "Now I don't know when I'll be able to retire, with Stacey here. I'll be working until they cart me out on a stretcher, probably."

Although Keri's grandmother says that she loves her granddaughter, she admits that it has been hard living with a young child now that she is older than and 'not as patient as she used to be.' "After a certain point in life, you need your privacy," she admits. Her small home, where she raised Keri's mother Stacey, has only one bathroom. Virginia's husband passed away three years ago, but she said that living in such small quarters with three people seemed easier when she was a mother, not a grandmother.

Stacey used to work in the human resources department of a local construction company. However, after several months of supervising extensive layoffs, eventually she was one of the many people 'laid off.' The rent on her two-bedroom apartment became too much to for her to stomach and she wanted to continue to send Keri to the parochial school Stacey feels is important for her child. "I didn't want her to be taken out of school mid-year," she said. She is certain that as soon as she finds another job she will be able to leave her mother's home, but until then, Keri sleeps in Stacey's old room, which had been converted to a sewing room. The house, no longer set up for a family, feels cramped and crowded. Keri's husband, never reliable about his alimony and child support payments, has also been laid off.

Involuntary intergenerational households like that of Virginia, Stacey, and Keri are becoming more and more common in the new, recessionary economy. "According to the Census Bureau, as of last year there were 5.1 million Americans age 25 to 34 living in the home of a parent -- a dramatic increase over the 4.3 million who were doing so in 2004, and a figure that does not take into account the economic displacements of the last several months. More startlingly, when AARP, the lobby for older Americans, surveyed 1,000 adults this spring it found that 11% of people between ages 35 and 44 -- traditionally the high-earning years in which adults come into their own professionally -- were living with parents or in-laws" (Wadler, 2009, p.1).

Before the Baby Boom, intergenerational households, especially in many first-generation homes of immigrants, were the norm. But now, independence and living alone is not simply expected, it is seen as part of one's value of self-worth. "Feelings of failure, depression and anxiety are common in such situations," even though both Stacey and Virginia say that Stacey did the right thing (Wadler, 2009, p.1). Keri, of course, just misses having her own room. Says Stacey: "Looking back, working in the [construction] industry, I ask myself -- could I have seen it coming? You know the bubble is going to burst at sometime. But what was I supposed to do -- quit my job? I know people who aren't in the industry even worse off than me. Everyone is being affected. Lots of kids have left Keri's class, and I'm just glad she can finish off the year with the same teacher. After that who knows? I hope I have a steady job by then." Stacey says that she voted for Barak Obama, but thinks there is only so much a politician can do to change things. "You can't legislate people from being greedy," she said.

"I hope Keri has a better future than me. I want her to go to college, fulfill all of her dreams. Although I don't regret any of the choices I have made, it has been hard being a single mom with only an associates degree. But I worry about her future, especially if things don't start to pick up soon. I don't think construction is going anywhere, so I'm trying to get a job somewhere else in an office. I've found temp work but nothing permanent."

What will the recession's effect be on the expectations of the young, like Keri? Having your own room with a television, your own cell phone, private school, afterschool classes (Keri has had to forego ballet, although her school offers some free extracurricular activities) had become the norm, even for middle-class families -- but no longer. Stacey says that it is hard for Keri to understand, but she has had not choice. "We were never extravagant, but little things like eating out, going to the movies, all of those things are gone. And grandma doesn't have cable."

Stacey's career has met a roadblock but twenty-two-year-old Jamaal's never really took off. A recent college graduate with an economics degree, Jamaal worked his way through college with the hopes of landing a good job to pay for his student loans. However, even experienced individuals in the field of finance have had trouble keeping their jobs, much less recent graduates. Jamaal said that he was angry for a number of reasons -- first, that even though he pursued an economics degree, his classes never really discussed the dangers of the kind of creative lending practices that brought about the current economic crisis, like subprime mortgages and credit default swaps. "This shouldn't be taking me by surprise," he said. "What was the media doing all of these years?"

Secondly Jamaal is suffering without even having had a chance to prove himself in the workforce. "When times were good, the guys in charge prospered, and now that they have had their fun, it's the next generation that has to suffer." Jamaal had wanted to work a few years, and then return to school to pursue his MBA, but given the difficulty of obtaining student loans, this dream seems unlikely until he can find a job, save more money, and banks loosen their lines of credit. However, he said that Barak Obama was inspiring to him personally, and if anyone could improve the country, it was the current President. Jamaal blamed the Bush Administration for much of the crisis, especially its deregulation of the banks that were currently being bailed out in Washington. When asked what he thought of the bailout, Jamaal said he was conflicted: he wanted to work in the industry and make money someday, but the idea that these institutions could do such harm and escape with few penalties was troubling.

For students currently in undergraduate universities, nation-wide, many are trying to avoid the fate of Jamaal by switching majors. According to The New York Times: "Robbie Blinkoff, an anthropologist who runs a marketing consulting firm in Baltimore, hears both the anxiety and the potential in a class he teaches at Goucher College. One senior said he was applying to be a teacher -- a profession he had never considered when there were so many more lucrative lines of work. The economic contraction, he told Mr. Blinkoff, "can give people more room to be creative'" (Zernike 2009, p.1). Others students cite the inspiration of President Obama's urging young people to be more civically minded rather than to pursue careers in finance. Nation-wide, applications to programs such as the Peace Core and Teach for America are up, as students look for refuge in civic-minded programs from the perils of the larger economy. Others have returned home after college, somewhat less abashed than middle-aged adults with children, to take unpaid internships with the hopes of bolstering their resume for graduate school or law school. Despite the current glut of lawyers, applications for virtually all professional schools are likely to skyrocket, as the best and the brightest take refuge in more schooling, trying to weather out the worst of the crisis.

Older workers who have been 'downsized' feel less optimistic. Rob Blithe, the manager of a local sporting goods franchise, never got a college degree -- he was of an entrepreneurial bent and never felt he needed the extra credentials. But now his store's future is sealed -- it is scheduled to close within the next few months. Rob blamed fear for the recession for the downturn in sales. "When people cut back, pricey sports are the first to go -- and they go do discount stores for their sneakers, or online," he said. Rob's experience is not uncommon, according to the New York Times. "Unlike the last two recessions -- earlier this decade and in the early 1990s -- this one is causing much more job loss among the less educated than among college graduates. Those earlier recessions introduced the country to the concept of mass white-collar layoffs. The brunt of the layoffs in this recession is falling on construction workers, hotel workers, retail workers and others without a four-year degree" (Leonhardt 2009). Consumer spending has been contracting more quickly than employment has been growing -- something that Rob has witnessed first hand.

Because construction has been so hard-hit, another social shift is that of households where women, rather than men, are the primary breadwinners. Construction worker Dave Christie still gets the odd job here and there -- just far fewer than he did only a year or two ago. On the other hand, his wife Molly, who works as a waitress, has had steadier work, although she acknowledges that customers are eating out less, drinking and eating less expensive menu items, and also leaving smaller tips. It has been observed that "The Great Recession of 2008 (and beyond) is hurting men more than women" and Dave said that his esteem as well as the family pocketbook had taken "a hit" (Leonhardt 2009).