The Most Significant Lessons that MS. Childers in conveys in Welfare Brat a Memoir book

Mary Childers is a human resources consultant for colleges and universities. She has a Ph.D. in English Literature and lives in Hanover, New Hampshire. From an early age, Mary Childers loves her family fiercely but refuses to repeat her mother's or older sisters' mistakes. She doesn't believe that school is optional and that "men are the source of all happiness and all despair." The child of an absent father and a single mother who schemes and struggles to house and feed her brood, Mary is the third of her mother's surviving seven children, who were fathered by four different men.

If her mother's romantic charisma can occasionally brighten their dim, roach-infested two-bedroom apartment, her alcohol-inspired moodiness and irresponsibility can leave her children hungry and desperate. Determined to live differently, Mary finds refuge first in books then in work. Self-sufficiency, she realizes by the age of twelve, is her only reliable ticket out of Bronx neighborhoods increasingly characterized by arson, rampant crime, and racial conflict.

In a culture where fatherless children are the norm and academic achievement and hard work are often scorned, Mary seems to alienate her family and friends at every turn. Yet she blazes her own bumpy path out of the tight circle of poverty. With this lyrical and often humorous examination of her early years, Mary Childers addresses the issues of welfare dependence, childhood resilience, the American work ethic, and a popular culture that values sexuality more than self-esteem.

"Every page of Welfare Brat startles the reader with recognition, not only for those of us who grew up in poverty, but for everyone who remembers the vulnerability and hopes of childhood. Read this beautifully written story and wonder—aloud even—how we as a nation were ever ...