Consequences of Stress on Children's Development (WeeK 4)

Poverty is a huge stress on many families all over the world. Staying out of poverty. Feeding your family. Keeping your house. Our economy is making it hard for families and individuals to stay out of poverty. In the area we live it there has been a down turn and many are leaving or they are becoming homeless. I have family members that are considered to be in the poverty level of economy. My in-laws are helping a man and his family find a place to live and work. He was injured on the job and has been out of work for a month. His boss told him that his job would still be there when he was ready. Due to huge cut backs and the economy he does not have a job to go back to. My husband is lucky to have a job but he has to work in a different state then where we live. It is tough times and in our area it will get worse before it gets better. In our county we have more people on unemployment then 1 year ago. I chose poverty because it is close to everyone's heart and we have had our struggles but my family has always stepped up to help us out. Many people do not have the support and that is why they end up in poverty. People end up in poverty for many reasons and it is hard to climb out.
Poverty is not only a reality in the United States but in many countries around the world. My father in-law and I were talking to a man whose has been to Samoa on a mission. During his mission he worked among the people and was there to educate the older children so they could attend college and come back at teach other children. They want to break the education cycle by educating and bring people back to their own community to make a difference. The Church of Lateran Day Saints is working to educate and help break cycles.
Samoa has a huge population of poverty and the goal for break the cycle of poverty by the country has not been met. By 2015 they wanted to cut poverty in half and put people to work. It is 2015 and there is more children begging on the street then last year. Reason for poverty in the pacific is:
 The SBS report goes onto say “After extensive consultations…a working definition of Pacific poverty or perhaps more correctly hardship was defined in Human development terms as: An inadequate level of sustainable human development, manifested by: a lack of access to basic services such as health care, education and clean water; a lack of opportunities to participate fully in the socio-economic life of the community; and a lack of access to productive resources and income generation support systems (rural credit, capital, markets, skill) to meet the basic needs of the household, and/or customary obligations to the extended family, village community and/or the church.” (samoaobserver, 2013, p.1)
The government wants to break the cycle by getting rid of the hardship. The way they want to do that is by developing Somoa. By bring in more private sector jobs. Now that it is 2015 and the goal was not met I can not find and information on why and what the government is going to do. I found an article that speaks about how the government is reporting they have reached their goal but this is not true. After digging I found another article written this year and it states that due to inadequacy access to trade routes, poor nutrition and relying on other countries is why the poverty rates have not changed. Plus the report that said it was correct was read wrong. This was very interesting topic to research because I learned a lot about the country and its people.
References
The borgen Project (2015) Five factors that contribute to hunger in samoa Retrieved on September 13, 2015 from http://borgenproject.org/five-factors-contributing-hunger-samoa/
SamoaObserver (2013)Report finds Samoans living 'below poverty' Retrieved on September 13, 2015 from  http://samoaobserver.ws/other/food/4863-report-finds-samoans-living-below-poverty
Samoaobserver (2013) Of hunger and poverty in Samoa Retrieved on September 13, 2015 from http://www.samoaobserver.ws/editorial/4478-of-hunger-and-poverty-in-samoa

Child Development and Public Health

The topic that I chose was access to healthy water. Many people around the world do not have access to good drinking water. According to the Center of Disease Control and Prevention in 2010 801,000 children died from diarrheal.  Worldwide the water is declining and is threatening humanity world wide. As I was reading these facts I keep thinking I am so glad I live where I do. I am glad my children do not have to worry about drinking unhealthy water. We live in the mountains and our water comes from ground water. My entire community has wells that we get our water from. We have had somethings come up that have threatened our water but as a community we have fought to keep these out. We have had strip mining threaten our water but has never been able to get off the ground. We depend on the snow and water for drinking water and water use in general. We have had a lot of rain this year and it has helped the farming community and the fire danger in our area.

As I keep reading and understanding that in many third world countries children have to gather water for their families. I was also thinking I am grateful my children can go to school and play and not have to worry about providing water for the family. I was really surprise at the facts from the CDC of the amount of children that are affected by unhealthy drinking water. Water, sanitation and hygiene can help prevent 9.1% of global disease. After reading this I was thinking that why has America been so successful? What are the reasons we are not a third world country? My daughter studied the pilgrims last year and I remember reading how many did from diseases and think we after in house plumbing was invented we do not have the vulnerability to diseases that once happened in our country. I understand our society has grown because of medical advances and technology but sanitation has helped in many ways. Very grateful but also would like all children never to have to worry about safe drinking water.

Child birth in my life and around the world

I have three children and all of my birthing experiences were different. The hardest birth was my second child. I was in and out of the hospital with complications. I keep having false labor. I went into labor before Christmas and my doctor decided that she was not ready so he stop labor. Well because he did this I struggled to go into labor after that. When we final convinced him that he was wrong on the due date he induced me. I went into the hospital on a Saturday and by night time still had no baby. Went back Sunday and no baby. Late that night I went back and I was in pain bad. Finally he started to give me drugs and really look at what was going on. Well I do not dilate because my cervices does not relax. If he would have listen to me then I could have had her on Saturday. Anyways so I was so drugged by Monday morning she finally was able to come and the doctor was not even there. He was at home eating breakfast. The nurses got mad at him and by the time he arrived she was head almost out. The Head nurse was going to deliver her. When she came out at over 7 pounds the doctor said I guess she was ready. Plus he did not have a chance to put his gown on he just caught. I was not happy with him and neither was my family. She was healthy and had a head full of hair. During pregnancy I was on vitamins and tried to eat right. I gained alot of weight with her. I have terrible stomach problems and it is hard to eat certain foods. I cannot take the prenatal vitamins because they make me sick.

The culture that I chose to look at was Chinese. They recommend that a pregnant mother not lift or eat things that are harmful to the child or mother. They also see that food can be bad omens to a baby. They also have mom become isolated kind of 30 days after birth. The Chinese handle a pregnancy as if doing or eating certain things is a bad omen. They are very spiritual.