Conveying wealth and poverty to kids

Periodically my kids have wanted to know if we are rich or poor. On the global level, obviously the answer is “rich.”

Within the context the kids can see, we’re pretty typical. Things that make us feel rich, even within our neighborhood:

• We felt we could afford a third child.
• The kids can each have their own bedroom.
• We have a lot more in savings than most households.
• We can afford to live in a part of town that’s safe and walkable.
• We rarely worry about money, which is invisible but huge.

On the other hand,

• We share one car between three adults and four children
• We have a non-family housemate, partly for company and partly for income
• We get most of our clothes used
• We live in an apartment and need to be more careful about not being too noisy than if we had our own house.

The kids aren’t always interested in accurate comparisons with others in our own neighborhood (“Eeeeeeveryone besides us has a yard with grass.”) It’s even harder for kids to grasp what life is like in other parts of the country or the world.

I like the books Children Just Like Me and A Life Like Mine, both by Unicef and DK. They’re picture-rich, with themes about what children need (food, water, medical care, education, play, loving care, safety, expression) and the lives of specific children. Getting these books out has been one of the most helpful at answering our kids’ questions about “rich” and “poor.” When we look at the kind of school buildings, water sources, and homes typical children around the world have, it becomes much clearer that we’re rich.

I prefer “Children Just Like Me,” though it’s from the 1990s, because most of it focuses on specific children. Each child is portrayed as a protagonist rather than a victim, with their likes and dislikes. But most of them live in a two-room house their dad made of cinderblocks. (Apparently in the new edition there are fewer poor children, which does reflect a real trend, but not to the extent the book depicts.)

To be clear, this doesn’t mean my kids are little altruists who fully grasp how lucky we are. But it does seem to reach them at times.

These books, like most of the other best children’s books from the past, can be found cheap on Ebay.