Comment by MichaelRo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by MichaelRo | Hacker News Reader

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>> My brother was in the RAF last time we spoke

>> Sometimes I just want to run back home and live with my parents, at the age of 32, and beg them to take care of me.

Well this doesn't sound like someone who is destitute and with no safety net whatsoever.

What's so wrong living with your parents? For most of human history it was the normal thing to do. Parents will take care of kids and one of them will inherit the parent's house and take care of the old parents. Have his own kids and have the grandparents helping with raising them.

Also I'm not so sure about UK but around here there's quite a significant rural population. Not everyone can or wants to make it in the big city. Life in the countryside is a lot cheaper, everything's cheaper. House prices are a joke compared to big cities and still villages get slow but steady depopulated.

On the other hand I do know people, excluding the homeless, who really have nothing. Father lost the apartment to gambling then disappeared, mother died, kid got evicted in the street in the middle of the winter, worked heavy construction jobs until got sick and had to file for disability and now all his income is a miserable pension that can't even pay for food let alone a rent in the city. And he's better off than the homeless or the gypsies who live off the city's garbage dump.

So I'm not saying the author has it easy but rather than some of it is a deliberate choice.

She doesn’t have a car or license. So living in the countryside in the UK is a non-starter. When you’re living life on hard mode already due to poverty and the pernicious destruction of control over your own time that that causes, trying to exist without personal transport and a child is impossible.

I know. I’ve experienced it first hand (as the kid).

To your point about deliberate choice: What I do recognise from the article, and it was clear before she mentioned it, were the signs and symptoms or untreated trauma and ADHD. The deleterious effect of those conditions on decision making often seem to us observers as ‘deliberate choices’. This can be very frustrating for those of us who would and do make different choices in similar situations.

She said her brother said she deserved everything she got. This suggested to you he would support her?

Wanting to beg her parents to take care of her does not imply they would. Many people want things they cannot have.

Her parents fostered 100s of kids. They helped her, she has her own issues asking for and accepting help.

Except below from https://amp.theguardian.com/society/2023/jan/07/jack-monroe-...

“” That’s what I don’t understand, I say. Why didn’t you tell your parents when they were in a position to help? “Because … ” For once, she slows down. “I was ashamed. I was ashamed that I had had a good job and I’d fucked it. I was embarrassed that I’d ended up not being able to provide for my son, and I was worried that if I told a soul, the walls would come crumbling down. Because my parents had fostered for most of my childhood, I’d grown up with this fear that if I ever had a child, he would be taken into care. That I would be an unfit mother. I’d grown up with almost 100 children revolving through my childhood home. So in my head, nearly every kid went into care because nearly every kid I came across was in the care system. I was terrified that if I told anyone, my son would be taken into care.” Monroe decided to flog pretty much everything she owned to pay for her rent. She waited until her parents were away, then put a notice in the local paper. It ended up running a story about her and, unsurprisingly, her parents found out. “They were really upset. They came round with two Sainsbury’s bags for life. It was like Christmas. All this stuff that we hadn’t had for ages. There was a box of Coco Pops! I sat there like a child and ate bowl after bowl.” “”

She is not someone who has no safety net evidently. Anyone considering donating to her deserves to know this. But the claim I challenged was specific statements did not sound like someone who has no safety net. The difference is important when considering people who are not her.

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