Growing Up With Financial Stress Changed Me, For Worse and Better

Get the Full Story"There is no such thing as just enough money. Only two measures: no money and not enough money." This quote from John Steinbeck seems surprisingly appropriate in today's world. The majority of Americans are significantly stressed about finances, and it's one of the reasons many millennials are choosing to delay or outright give up on having kids. As a millennial who's just coming out the other end of a nine-year relationship, this last one hits close to home. My ex and I wanted kids. But one of the reasons she left was because she didn't want to raise them in the struggle. And the struggle is something that tends to follow me.

Disclaimer: I didn't grow up poor. As a Puerto Rican kid coming up in '90s New York City, my childhood was filled with a plethora of memories that I continue to cherish to this day. However, that's not to say that my sister, my cousins, and I didn't grow up the hard way, especially because our parents came from poverty. Although they did their best to shield us from the harsh economic realities of life in this city, it didn't always work out like that.

"Children are sensitive to the emotional cues of their caregivers," says Genesis Espinoza, a licensed marriage and family therapist based out of the San Fernando Valley. "When parents experience stress, anxiety, or worry due to financial insecurity, children often mirror these feelings and internalize them."

This makes perfect sense to me. Looking back at baby pictures from the early '90s, I'm always shocked at how fresh and well-dressed I was. My parents kept me laced in the latest Jordans when they were still together. Grape 5s? I had them. The OG 3s? Had those, too. But this freshness wouldn't last. After my parents divorced, my mother routinely ate cheese sandwiches for breakfast, lunch, and dinner so that my sister and I could not only eat real meals but so that those meals could last us longer. Thinking about it now, I'm sure her philosophy was that even though we were going through hard times, she didn't want us to feel like we were. But regardless of whether we understood what was going on or not, the reality of our situation and the stress my mother carried still found a way to affect us.

As Espinoza explains, "The first five years of a child's life are the most crucial and formative since the child's brain is elastic and absorbs so much information. Chronic financial stress during this time can affect attachment, emotional regulation, and cognitive development."

Financial stress experienced by children can manifest in different ways as an adult, Espinoza adds. In my case, I took on my mother's habit of maintaining a stoic exterior while secretly internalizing my anxiety. I dissociate rather than worry, stop socializing, and hole up. However, while this might have been an OK way to weather hard times as a single man, once I was in a relationship, this habit of dissociating and acting like everything was okay took a toll when we fell on hard times. To my partner, I appeared emotionally unavailable, uncaring when it came to our situation, and, worst of all, unambitious. In reality, I was paralyzed by internal anxiety, and it took everything to ignore the feelings of low value and failure that were swirling about. I couldn't show that I was being affected by what we were going through, and as a result, she felt like she was going through it alone. I can't blame her for not wanting to bring kids into that.

If I'm being honest, I didn't feel we were ready, either. My family likes to say you will never have enough money for kids. You just find a way because that's what they did. But no parent wants their kids to see them struggle or, worse, to deal with the stress of adult problems they can't understand, especially when these issues can affect how they grow up.

According to Espinoza, persistent financial issues can lead to chronic stress responses in children. It can make it more difficult for them to regulate their emotions, develop healthy coping mechanisms, and form stable relationships.

Thinking back to my childhood, maintaining stable relationships was challenging because we moved a lot - almost every two or three years until I was 10. That meant constantly changing schools and having to make new friends. And then, of course, there was the added pressure of fitting in. High school hallways are the equivalent of fashion week catwalks for teenagers. I was never the freshest and often got teased for wearing knock-offs, which created yet another barrier to get past when forging friendships. But here's the thing: despite my struggles, despite my parents' struggles, all of us came out alright. No, not just alright, better than alright.

Sure, I get tired of the struggle. Sure, it's impacted me in certain ways. I've struggled with materialism most of my life, something Espinoza says is common for kids who experience financial stress as we tend to "overcompensate to impress others." There are certain "comida de pobre" foods I will never eat again for as long as I live because we ate them so much when I was a kid, like white rice, scrambled eggs, and ketchup. And even that is only a fraction of what my parents went through before me, and their experience pales in comparison to their parents, who grew up crawling on the dirt floors of Puerto Rican casitas.

What I'm trying to say is that, of course, a part of me looks to the future and feels anxious. Shit, there's a part of me that looks at my present and still feels anxiety. And, of course, if we're talking kids, I wouldn't want them to feel that kind of pressure. I wouldn't want them to come up with the same kind of emotional or attachment issues I did. I'd want to give them the best childhood they could have. But that's when I look back on my own and realize I had an incredible one, and that had very little to do with money. What I bring to the table as a brother, as a friend, and maybe even as a father in the future also has very little to do with money.

Today, despite the current economic situation, not having broken through the glass ceiling of the working class and making less money than before, I understand one thing better than ever: my value isn't determined by what I make. It's determined by what I give.

Miguel Machado is a journalist with expertise in the intersection of Latine identity and culture. He does everything from exclusive interviews with Latin music artists to opinion pieces on issues that are relevant to the community, personal essays tied to his Latinidad, and thought pieces and features relating to Puerto Rico and Puerto Rican culture.

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