Childhood Poverty Quotes

My mom missed meals on several occasions because there was only enough food to feed all of us. My mom didn't have a bed until I was 15 years old. She slept on a couch... I remember laying with her, like I used to sleep with my mom until I was like 12. I was a big baby; I'm a momma's boy. But my mom is my best friend, and never let me down, ever.

We do nothing for children between the ages of zero and five. And we seem to be quite happy to have children growing up in not just poverty, which wouldn't be so bad, but isolation, lack of people around them, lack of support, lack of ability to go out and play in the dirt.

In my wildest imagination, I never thought that the fifth of six children born to Helen and Buddy Watts - in a poor black neighborhood, in the poor rural community of Eufaula, Oklahoma - would someday be called Congressman.

When I was growing up, my family was so poor we couldn't afford to pay attention.

America, in all its institutions, whether it be the family or government, has forgotten and neglected its children.

I didn't grow up in a wealthy family at all. Being at home all day and watching movies, that was a luxury.

There can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way in which it treats its children.

For too long, Ireland has neglected its children.

When I was a kid in Houston, we were so poor we couldn't afford the last 2 letters, so we called ourselves po'.

I've always been terrified about not having money. I've been a big saver and a big earner. When I've been out of work, I've always found another job. I never wanted to get into debt, because money was very tight when I was growing up. I never felt deprived, but I couldn't have the things I wanted.

Some kids win the lottery at birth; far too many don't - and most people have a hard time catching up over the rest of their lives. Children raised in disadvantaged environments are not only much less likely to succeed in school or in society, but they are also much less likely to be healthy adults.

I can't dismiss my roots as a kid growing up during the Great Depression in the ordinary midwestern town of Grand Rapids, Michigan. From the standpoint of money and material possessions, we were barely scraping by.

Nothing in baseball can bring me down to the level where I was growing up in Pine Bluff, crying and broke. This is fun for me. Whenever you see me slumping, nah, I don't get upset; I'm all right.

Growing up, I had only one good pair of shoes. So on rainy school days, my mom would slip plastic bread bags over them to keep them dry. But I was never embarrassed. Because the school bus would be filled with rows and rows of young Iowans with bread bags slipped over their feet.

I've tasted the dirt side. I've tasted being broke. I've been in the dumps, I've lived in motels as a kid. I want a different opportunity for my children. I never want them to see those things.

I didn't grow up wealthy. We couldn't even afford spaghetti sauce when I was first born, but my mom and dad worked really hard and came from the bottom up.

My father, at the death of his father, was but six years of age; and he grew up, literally without education.

I grew up in Burbank - but not the Burbank of valet parking and TV studios. In the late 1950s, there was a small apartment complex on Elmwood Avenue that rented mostly to families on welfare. I lived there from age 3 to 11 and again from 14 to 18 with my mother, Shirley, and my younger sister, Toni.

Polls that have been taken by kindergarten, first- and second-grade teachers indicate that 30 percent of the kids have been deprived in some way so that they are physically unable to keep up with the class.

When I was a child, I was very poor and wanted everything. So when I got money, I began buying things.

When I was about 8 or 9, I lived in New Jersey with my mother and we were seven deep in one bedroom and sometimes we didn't have electricity.

I was born in South Carolina. On my dad's farm, I didn't have much. I'm just a poor kid who worked in a produce market.

Children are born into a society in which they are not a priority.

We must not seek the child Jesus in the pretty figures of our Christmas cribs. We must seek him among the undernourished children who have gone to bed at night with nothing to eat, among the poor newsboys who will sleep covered with newspapers in doorways.

I was a kid growing up in Houston, didn't have a lot - three younger brothers, a single mom. It was tough.