Sometimes it helps to put things in perspective:

Around 9:30 p.m., when most families are getting ready for bed, she escorts her two sons, aged 6 and 13, down a narrow carpeted corridor in their concrete highrise. Clad in flannel pyjamas, backpacks over their shoulders and sleeping bags and pillows in their arms, the boys wilfully, though not eagerly, accept the journey as part of their routine. They reach a doorway and, with a final hug, their mother leaves them in the care of a neighbour for the night.

Outside on the deserted rain-soaked streets near the intersection of Martin Grove Rd. and The Westway, she catches a city bus and travels north. She transfers to another bus further on, one that eventually drops her off at a condominium where she will mop hallway floors, empty garbage and scrub toilets from 11 p.m. until dawn.

“My sons, they always say, `Please stay with us.’ But I can’t,” she says with a mix of sadness and regret. “I have to leave. I have to work.”

As I read the cover story of today’s Toronto Star, I am even more conscious than usual of the spaciousness of my home, the computer on my lap while my husband plays on the xBox in the basement, my little girl surrounded by a heap of electronic toys.

Too often those of my economic class defend the differences by saying, “I worked hard to get where I am.” I defy any one of them to tell me that they work as hard as Puvaneswaran:

For her labour, Puvaneswaran earns no more than $1,150 in an entire month, often less. The rent for her small one-bedroom apartment is $849.

Puvaneswaran, who is paid $8.50 an hour, borrows money from friends to get by. She has relatives who sometimes send clothes from England. She rations food during the week ???‚¬??? one glass of milk for each boy at morning and one at night. She won’t allow herself any. After 3 p.m., she lets her sons have some fruit, a banana or apple.

Their main meal of the day alternates between rice (Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays) and pasta (Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays). On Sunday afternoons, they look forward to a hearty meal at the Hindu temple where they worship. In short, she pays a hefty price to live in the country’s largest and richest city.

So why ???‚¬??? 13 years after settling in Canada ???‚¬??? does a hard-working mother still live in poverty? How many more years will she be expected to live and work like this?

Last week I posted about how the mother’s movement rhetoric too often surrounds the lifestyle choices of affluent women who can afford to decide whether or not to work. Sometimes it helps to have a good stiff kick in the pants to remind us what “tough choices” really look like. I have volunteered with children who live in similar circumstances; anyone who says that a middle- or upper-class child in daycare is suffering for the lack of a full-time mother has never seen what real suffering looks like.

There are hundreds of thousands of children in Canada whose parents were two or three jobs each and who still can barely afford to eat, never mind amass large quantities of battery-hogging toys. I hate to move the conversation beyond their suffering, since that alone should be enough to motivate people to work for change; but human nature being what it is, I’ll point out that the children who grow up in these homes, chronically undernourished, understimulated, with no enrichment opportunities, will not grow up to meet their full potential and will not be able to contribute to our society as productive and engaged citizens (and honestly, why should they?). This will damage the world our children will grow up to live and work and make families in, making it less secure, less peaceful, less just.

Besides supporting the local food bank (which is necessary, but also conveniently lets government off the hook for changing the systems that keep people in such deprived circumstances), I also support a variety of organizations committed to ending poverty in Canada, among them the National Anti-Poverty Organization–itself always struggling to make ends meet, ironically.

If you know of and support a similar organization where you live, please leave the name in the comments below. Maybe someone who reads it will be motivated to take some of their own affluence and put it to a constructive use.

If you or your family are currently benefiting from the work of a particular organization, please also feel free to plug them in the comments section. Oftentimes the most helpful and forward-thinking groups don’t receive the attention they deserve in mainstream circles.

Bookmark to: