Families and children: their experience of homelessness

This is an exploratory and ethnographic study that looked at five families in Stanislaus County (California Central Valley) that experienced homelessness. For the purpose of this study, a family had to include a father, mother, and at least one child under the age of 18 years. Through in-depth one-on-one interviews of each single parent, the study found a huge sense of embarrassment that both parents carry during a homeless experience. With embarrassment came the feeling of shame, guilt, anger, sadness, fear, and the feeling of worthlessness. Due to those feelings, parents tended to "other" their experience from the rest of the homeless population. In other words, "My/our situation is different than theirs ('other' homeless people)." Parents strongly felt they did not deserve to be in their current situation because they are not "alcoholics/drugaddicts, lazy, dirty, filthy, undeserving and unappreciative." Parents believed that they never asked to be homeless; instead they strongly believed that "those other" homeless people did ask for it. Gender roles also played a big role in making each parent feel some type of pressure. Fathers felt and took on the responsibility and pressure to be the "breadwinner" of the family. And because of their given stage he and his family faced, he felt responsible in figuring out whatever needed to be done to get out of homelessness. Mothers also faced a huge pressure from society as the "caretaker" and "nurturer" of her children. They felt like an "unfit mother," "shame," "guilt," and "sadness" because a "good" mother does not allow this kind of thing to happen to her children. Recommendations are made to develop a better understanding on the complexity of homelessness and all its subpopulations (veterans, families, single men/women, mentally ill/disabled, domestic violent survivors, youth and transients) facing this country. The study suggests that laws are reformed/written by politicians, service providers, churches, advocates and communities to keep up with the understanding and awareness of this social problem called homelessness.