Disadvantaged Children Growing in a Climate of Hopelessness and Despair

Despite the Cultural’ Myth about a happy childhood, all children have a hard time growing up. William Saroyan said, “I think it inevitable and in order, for the human being to be unhappy in childhood. I think it is impossible at the same time for almost any human being to be entirely unhappy at anytime.”¹

There are many who grow up with more than the ordinary obstacles. These children can be called disadvantaged. There are many disadvantages. There are physical handicaps or intellectual limitations. There are others that come from broken homes where death, desertion or divorce of parents have taken place early in the child's life.

I will concentrate on those children who grow up with the handicap of poverty. The additional problems of growing up as a member of a minority group are significant and sometimes crucial, but they can obscure the profound effects on the personality that come from the primary disadvantage of poverty.

It has been estimated by Dr. Helen