Home Sweet Home: The importance of a home
My heart dropped down into my stomach the moment I got my test paper back from my teacher. My brain started to feel foggy while I could feel my heart beating out of my chest. “How was I going to tell my parents?” I asked myself. I could feel each part of my body tense up, my mouth becoming an arid desert while my palms accumulated sweat. “It’s just one test I told myself and it’s a B. It’s not like I committed a crime.” Nothing was ever good enough for them. Every time I walked home from the bus, my body would go into a panic. It wasn’t unheard of in South Asian culture for parents to physically discipline a child and/or emotionally tear him/her down due to poor grades, not abiding by traditional values, or not fitting into the ideal body type. There was no room for error in this household. It was important to my parents that we maintain an aura of perfection amongst the rest of those in our community. Every part of my life was curated and well thought out by my parents to make sure one day I’d be a respectable woman and considered marriage material so we could move up the social hierarchy.
Personally, I did not deal with homelessness, but my home was emotionally unstable, as I feel many of our homes were/still are. In my early years, my father had a terrifying temper causing his reactions to our behavior to be quite overexaggerated and was abusive in some situations. [Physical discipline remains a big part of South Asian culture. I do not condone any forms of discipline/abuse. Setting boundaries is a better way to restructure this understanding. Refer to Setting Boundaries, Find Peace by Nedra Glover Tawwab.] But buried deep, hidden from the surface was his own childhood traumas. As for my mom, she held a high school diploma from India and came from a poor, traditional background, so she had an enormous inability to relate or understand my western world. Her and I did not play house, we did not go to lunches together, and there were no motherly talks about boyfriends. Instead we spent Sunday nights at the temple, hours at garba/raas dance practice, and a whole day going a few towns over to shop for Indian goods. When I was very young I would find any reason to not go home, always asking to stay over at friends’ and other families’ homes so I could escape the negativity that consumed my home. Home was a strange place. We had moments where everything was calm and life was good. However, as time went on, those moments became shorter and less frequent as the daily burdens of life and past traumas bogged my family down.
No matter what I did, according to my parents I was not living up to their expectations and considered a constant disappointment because a huge divide remained between us: I was growing up in America in an environment that was vastly different from what they knew. They had a hard time understanding American ways and approached every problem as if we were still in a third world country. Their third world childhood poverty and personal childhood traumas were palpable through all their behaviors and idiosyncrasies.
Unbeknownst to them, I was also dealing with sexual abuse from someone within our community that spanned over the course of many years in my childhood. When I was 16 I divulged this information to my family (at this point the abuse had stopped), but to my disappointment they chose to ignore it out of shame and embarrassment because the South Asian community generally didn’t acknowledge these things. As I grew as a teenager, I felt no safety, no compassion, no consideration, no understanding from my family, which made me feel like a wandering empty vessel moving through life with no place to dock. Suicidal ideations were on a movie reel in my mind. I considered running away multiple times. I felt distrustful of people around me because if you cannot rely on your family, who can you rely on?
Finally, going to college allowed me to escape. Whenever I could, I chose not to go home, but sometimes the loneliness was extremely palpable. Seeing my friends piling into their cars to head home for the holidays was a constant reminder of the fact that I was alone. When I did visit my family, I would suffer from massive anxiety that consumed my body. Every interaction with my family left me drained and weak. From the outside looking in, my life looked pristine. All my physical needs were being met, but inside I was in a dark place barely holding on. One thing kept me going: I knew I was one of the blessed ones born with so many privileges. If I was struggling to hold on, how were those kids that didn’t have what I have? What about those that have no house at all with little to no support? I told myself I want to be a voice for those children that don’t have a place to call home. Then, I thought about my parents. Their childhoods were telling: children of farmers and raised in villages with no running water or stable electricity in a third world country. All of our childhoods are very influential in how we move through the world as adults.
Definition of Home
What is a home? According to Oxford Languages, “the place where one lives permanently, especially as a member of a family or household.”
I had a home.
I lived there permanently.
I was a member of a family.
Is that enough?
I chose to discuss homelessness as the first part of child health and wellness because the quality of a home environment is very revealing about a child’s overall ability to perform and maintain a well rounded life.
Homeless Youth
Annually, 4.2 million youth and young adults (age 13-25) have experienced homelessness within a 12 month period. Now let’s imagine a classroom of children/young adults: that comes out to and 1 in 30 children from the ages 13-17 and 1 in 10 young adults ages 18-25 have experienced homelessness. That means if you have school aged children, generally one of their classmates is suffering or will suffer from homelessness. It is important to also note that these children are all unaccompanied minors, meaning minors with no parent/guardian. They truly are wandering as empty vessels in this world. Without a high school diploma they are at a higher chance of becoming homeless. Black, Hispanic, and LGBTQ+ youth also have a higher probability of leaving home and currently make up a large portion of the homeless population. This is probably due to the fact that each of these groups have an increased likelihood of dealing with inequities and inequalities throughout their lives. Many Black and Brown people are subjected to redlining (systemic housing discrimination) because they live in an area considered to be a high financial risk. Banks are less likely to give out mortgages and business loans in these communities, thus decreasing economic development. The Black population in America disproportionately live in high areas of poverty, which regularly expose them to environmental toxins, and have limited access to quality care, services, nutritious food and economic opportunities. These disparities are likely pushing these minority groups into homelessness sooner and for longer periods of time.
If a child has an unstable home environment they may take their chances out on the street than in a home that hurts their ability to feel safe. These homeless youth report that “family conflict as the major reason for their homelessness or episodes of running away.” Many struggle with poor family dynamics, sexual activity, sexual orientation, pregnancy, school problems, and alcohol and drug use, which all contribute to the family instability. Youth also might experience substance abuse within the family, sexual violence, and/or physical abuse from family members. Homeless youth are five times more likely to report incidences of child sexual abuse when compared with youth living in stable homes. LGBTQ+ youth are two times more likely to run away usually due to poor reaction to their sexuality by their family and many times are asked to leave by a parent, relative, foster home, or group home. All these children that come from a poor home environment have to calculate the benefit of staying versus leaving, which in many cases is a hard decision for any individual.
To leave home as a child or young adult is very risky. As a child/young adult, you lack finances, support system, access to healthcare, an understanding of how to move through the world; generally, the odds are against you. These youth are more likely to develop mental health issues, use drugs, turn to prostitution. Many deal with disruption of their education. Homeless youth also have a higher suicide rate. According to National Sexual Violence Resource Center “many youth experience violence — with 71.1% of women and 58.2% of men first experiencing contact sexual violence, physical violence, or stalking by an intimate partner before age 25 (23.2% of female victims and 14.1% of male victims before age 18).”
Those that have experienced homelessness exhibit significant cognitive impairment especially in working memory. They also exhibit clear deficits in cognitive functioning, attention, and executive function, mainly with those that have a history of a mental health disorder. Rational decision-making, inhibition, planning and reasoning are all stifled until young people mature, making young people biologically more likely to engage in high-risk behaviors, such as unsafe sexual activity and substance use, than more mature adults. Without safe and permanent homes and caring adults, runaway and homeless youth are at even greater risk of engaging in high-risk behaviors or putting themselves in unsafe or risky situations.
No home or an unstable home environment can have drastic consequences on a child’s overall wellbeing. Those that cannot cope with the troubles at home leave, thus decreasing their chances of developing into a functional adult of society. Those that decide to stay at home in an unstable environment suffer other consequences that do decrease their overall quality of life. I hope to discuss those issues in future posts.
Sources: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1leOvZZGx2XYpghKXmfmkeQL9ojVR1wdFPGKQjmGfYzE/edit?usp=sharing
