Episode 208: Resilience Isn't Enough | Cash Payments Make the Difference

[The Invisible Americans theme by Bridget St. John]

Carol Jenkins:
Welcome to this new episode of the Invisible Americans podcast with Jeff Matrick and Carol Jenkins. Today we talked with computer scientist and author Emi Nietfeld. Is the trait of resilience overplayed when it comes to beating poverty?

Jeff Madrick:
And we hear from two members of the Parents Advisory Board of the ABC Coalition, Automatic Benefits for Children. These mothers know what cash support means to the success of their children.

Carol Jenkins:
But first, Emi Nietfeld bested child poverty, mental health issues, a troubled foster care situation, and made it into Harvard University. Her book, Acceptance, grapples with the price she had to pay to prove she had pulled it all together and was worthy of saving. And we also talk about how her success is used to deny help to others. I mean, we are so impressed with the book that you've written, Acceptance, and you say that you started writing it right after you finished your application for Harvard because there were things you had to sort out. If you could tell us about that.

Emi Nietfeld:
When I was applying to college, I was so overwhelmed and I had had a very, very difficult childhood and teenage years, and I found myself trying to tell this extremely complicated story in like 500 words. And not only get across all of these confusing facts, but also portray myself as this perfect overcomer who had gone through so much and had only been made stronger by these obstacles. And I was really struggling with the fact that that did not feel true. I had not overcome these circumstances. I was still very much in the middle of them.

And I was absolutely not a perfect person who had responded to things in perfect ways. Like, I was still dealing with self-harm. I was lying to adults. I was, you know, not always able to ask for help. And so, for me, writing this book became a way of telling the real story first of grappling with my guilt about not being this human interest story person, but then later really coming to terms with the fact that no child is that child that we read about in the newspapers. That is a fiction that is made up, and it's one part of the story, but it is not the whole story for any person walking on this earth.

Carol Jenkins:
And you say that one of the issues most overlooked in this country is child poverty.

Emi Nietfeld:
Yeah, absolutely. Where it just impacts so many parts of somebody's life. As Americans, I think we're often so obsessed with this idea of resilience as a character trait or an X factor that determines why some people succeed and other people don't. But I've been in a lot of rooms with many young people who have been through poverty. parental divorce, parents in jail, losing everything. There was a conference where I wrote about unacceptance called the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans. That year, Judge Clarence Thomas from the Supreme Court was being honored, as well as Condoleezza Rice. And there were 104 young people who had been selected for overcoming adversity.

And don't get me wrong, these were really, really incredible young people who had gone through horrible things. The average household income was $15,000 for a household of four, if I remember correctly, so well below the poverty line. But the political agenda of this conference was to praise us as individuals and to say, you are proof that we don't need a safety net because you all have done it. And nobody was asking us, well, how did you do it?

What kind of support did you have? What teacher took an interest in you? What parents might not have been able to take care of you, but loved you and supported you? And I felt like we really need to talk about that. We need to talk about what is going right when kids are able to get out of poverty or to do well in spite of it. And we can't just say, oh, this is, you know, an individual problem for individuals to solve because it's absolutely not.

Jeff Madrick:
That's great that you tackled that head on. How did you keep it from them? How did you do it?

Emi Nietfeld:
When it came time to publish the book, I got really, really lucky that I had an editor and a publishing house that was totally on board with having this kind of controversial, counterintuitive argument that resilience culture has gone too far and it's tipped from being something that's healthy and positive into something that can feel tyrannical for people who are in the midst of hardship.

Carol Jenkins:
If you could tell us about your childhood, you mentioned, you know, the stress of it. And in reading it, it seems, you know, horrendous, but it also seems that you handled it, you know, as best as anybody could.

Emi Nietfeld:
Well, I grew up in Minnesota. My family was evangelical Christian until I was about nine years old and when my parents divorced. And like a lot of people that threw my family into turmoil, there was a really drawn out, bitter custody battle and the separation really aggravated both of my parents' mental health issues. One of my parents moved across the country, never to be seen again, and my mom got full custody. And my mom really, really loved me, but she was a compulsive shopper and hoarder. And that meant that her income as a blue-collar crime scene photographer was really sucked away into this compulsion.

And we lived in Swaller. We had mice running around. There was sometimes no hot water, no place to shower. And my mom really could not see that there was a problem with our home or with her habits. And instead, she took me to the doctor, who diagnosed me with ADHD, despite having very few symptoms, and I ended up receiving medication.

And I took 12 different psychiatric drugs in just under two years, ranging from Adderall to antidepressants to antipsychotics. And just after I turned 14, I was sent to live at a residential treatment center, which is one of these facilities for troubled teens, where you have bars over the windows, a padded isolation room, and you don't go to school. You just have a teacher come in to do worksheets or read aloud from books.

And that was really when I decided I would like to go to college. I would like to escape this for school. And I feel very grateful that I had a role model for my mom. Both of my parents had gone to college. And when my mom was younger, she had dreamed about attending Stanford University, which was at the time one of the only elite research universities, I think the only elite research university that accepted women. And so I was, you know, dreaming about that as I spent nine months in this facility and then a year in foster care. And then as I was bouncing from friend's sofa to friend's sofa my junior and senior year of high school during breaks when I wasn't living on campus at a boarding school.

Carol Jenkins:
I want to get back to, though, this idea of your success being used to prove that a safety net is not needed for most children in poverty.

Emi Nietfeld:
This idea, it just never occurred to me that my story would be used in that way. When I was a senior in high school, you know, I was doing everything that I could to get into college, to get into a college that could give me great financial aid, and to pay for that education.

And so I found myself looking at all these scholarship applications, and to my surprise, you know, the big ones were the Ayn Rand essay contest, where you read the fountainhead and you write, you know, an essay about why libertarianism is right, and the Horatio Alger conference, which I applied to and won. And I just thought, you know, okay, this is going to be some money, $20,000, that could really help me pay for school.

But then when I showed up, I felt bamboozled, because it became clear that they had a political conservative agenda. The emcees at the big gala included Lou Dobbs, Rush Limbaugh was in the audience, Newt Gingrich, and it really felt like I had been chosen and these other kids were chosen as props. You know, and it was the hypocrisy was just stunning because there had been 50,000 applicants for this scholarship. 50,000 and 104 of us were chosen.

And yet we were the proof that anyone could do it. And this is actually one of the biggest private scholarship programs in America. Unfortunately, like part of why many of these scholarship programs seem to exist is that people don't believe that education should be affordable for everybody. They believe that only these certain worthy young people deserve this help.

And many of the people there really had been in intense poverty. I feel grateful that that was not my family's situation. You know, we had been working class, and then my mom's compulsions, like, made us much poorer than we had been, you know, along with legal debt and medical issues and all of that. But it felt really disingenuous to hold me up as somebody who had overcome these things when I really was suffering from them and had not overcome them and would not quote unquote overcome them for years. And even as an adult, you still deal with the fallout of what happens to you when you're a child.

Jeff Madrick:
How does this relate in your mind to child poverty itself?

Emi Nietfeld:
In my work now, I do a lot of writing about inequality and about the intersection of inequality and mental health. I think a lot of people are looking at the teen mental health crisis which I definitely identify strongly with. I had my own teen mental health crisis. And a lot of the problems that I was dealing with as a teenager are things that are just so common now, where young people are very depressed, young women are very suicidal. People seem to think that that is divorced from what's going on in our economy and our society.

And I really disagree with that, because the stress and the pressure of not being able to afford healthy food, a safe place to live, an education, I think that is really weighing on people, including young people and children. There is so much evidence that programs like the Child Tax Credit not only slash poverty rates for children, but they also improve mental health outcomes for children and families.

And I remember when I was growing up, my mom loved tax season. It was always her dream to get a second job as a tax preparer. And I just remember every April being like, OK, we're getting the earned income tax credit back. This is when we can pay off our debt. This is when things can go back to zero. And just knowing every year that is why we are not living in dire poverty, right? This is why we have electricity, why we have food. Yes, things were not perfect. We did not have as much as we could have benefited by, but that really was the difference between, you know, being working class and being poor.

Carol Jenkins:
And one of the things you point out is the race issue as well. You think that had you been Black, you would have been taken away from your mother at a much earlier period than you were.

Emi Nietfeld:
I ended up going into foster care when I was 14, and it was a little bit of an interesting situation because my mom voluntarily agreed to let me go. But there definitely was pressure there that I felt that if she hadn't agreed, I would have been taken. And for several years before that, there had been different people filing reports. So I was like on the radar of the child welfare system for a while before that. What I experienced is that everybody gave my mom the benefit of the doubt. You know, when she brought me to the doctor and said, I think Emi has ADD because she's disorganized, she's chronically late, and she gets hyper-focused when she reads.

And I was 11 years old. How can an 11-year-old be disorganized? I don't know. I think all 11-year-olds are. But people trusted her because she was a white lady. She was well-spoken. You know, she had a college degree, and she had full custody of me. That is not a way that we treat all people in society.

And it's really well known that if you are Black, in particular, or Hispanic, Native, you are way more likely to have your kids taken away, often for, usually for what's called neglect. And I'm putting that in quotation marks because that's often just the consequences of living in poverty. But something that I really saw is that you are held to a different standard when you are a white parent.

And I've now connected with a lot of other white people who ended up involved in child welfare. And I feel like that experience is often very different, where it's often like, hey, there were a lot of red flags that should have been waving brightly. My family was not given the intervention that actually could have been helpful.

And I did not experience emotional or sexual abuse at home, but I've spoken to many people who have, who felt like nobody was going to protect me because my parents had this racial privilege. And so I think that it's kind of a very sad flip side of this racialized child welfare system, where not only are families of color policed and surveilled, but white parents are not always given the scrutiny that's both fair or could sometimes be helpful to give.

Carol Jenkins:
So you graduated from Harvard, went off and became a computer scientist at Google. Talk to us a little bit about that. I've read some of your essays about that part of your life.

Emi Nietfeld:
When I showed up at college, I was like, okay, I have to get a job. I have to get a job with dental insurance as soon as I graduate because I did not have that family support to feel like I can do whatever I want to do or study whatever I want to study. And so very early on in college, I discovered computer science, which at the time was like a new hot field. I ended up getting an internship and then a job at Google.

Google to me was absolutely paradise. It really had this family environment that I had not felt at home. And I just had so much security to be able to save money, to be able to have great health care. I mean, even massages at work. I really, really loved it. And unfortunately, also, tech can be a really difficult place for women. I found that out firsthand several times, including when I experienced sexual harassment from a mentor, which was unfortunate.

But what was even more unfortunate was the way that Google responded and treated it as though it was my mental health issue rather than a hostile environment at work. Despite there being other victims of the same person, despite this being a really widespread problem for a lot of people, a lot of women and people of color experiencing discrimination for different reasons. And so I ended up writing about this for the New York Times and really grappling with, OK, what does it mean to love a job? What do we owe our workplace?

And I think now a lot of people are dealing with those questions and are becoming increasingly disillusioned with this idea of a dream job that justifies everything and makes it all worth it. But for me, I really had to go through that reckoning of having believed that I could turn all the pain in my past into this beautiful new career, to being like, you know, these things have happened to me, and now I have to decide what I'm going to do with the rest of my life.

Carol Jenkins:
Well, you've actually challenged a couple of American myths, one of resilience and the other of loving your job more than anything in the world. And your life now, you're about to, as we record this, about to give birth to your own child.

Emi Nietfeld:
Yeah, I'm scared. It's going to be a big transition. And I think everybody grapples with, you know, how do I keep the good things my parents did for me? And how do I avoid making the same mistakes? And also, how do you raise a child in a world with a lot of problems, right, where they're going to grow up and they're going to recognize that things are not all right. And I know that, too. And it does make me feel more urgently like we need to address inequality and have a world where everybody has a chance to thrive and be happy.

Jeff Madrick:
One of the reforms we always argue in favor of is more money for poor families. And people seem to resist this, as you know, I think. What would you say to that? Can more money make a substantial difference? A lot of people think it can't.

Emi Nietfeld:
I think the obvious answer is that people are poor because they don't have enough money, and that giving them some money can often solve that problem right away. And I think I also have a different take on this now, having experienced pretty extreme upward mobility. having worked in a career that was very lucrative. And, you know, I married a fellow software engineer who's still in tech and who comes from a family of tech people and has that generational wealth. And just having been on both sides, I'm like, the extra money doesn't make rich people that much happier. It really doesn't.

And I see so many of my peers who have too much money for their own good. And so I would almost argue that redistributive policies, they're not just good for poor people, they can be good for rich people too. And especially once you start to get into tax season, and you're looking at, OK, well, what things can I write off on my taxes? I can get a tax break for saving money for my child's college. I own an apartment, and I get the mortgage interest tax deduction.

And that is a federal subsidy that's worth almost $20,000 a year that my husband and I receive. And you just start to see, wow, the tax system really is rigged in favor of the rich. And if you just balance things out, not even giving people a quote unquote handout, but just making it more fair, what a difference that would make to so many American families.

Carol Jenkins:
Well, Emi, thank you so much. The book is Acceptance. We could talk with you forever. We'll have to have you come back. You know, you shed so much light on inequality, you know, as you've experienced it in your life. And congratulations. Thank you.

[The Invisible Americans theme by Bridget St. John]

Jeff Madrick:
In our conversation with Eboni Brown and Kali Daugherty, we heard the clear voices of success when support is given to struggling families. They are members of the Parent Advisory Board of the ABC Coalition, a group of more than 100 organizations working to achieve automatic benefits for children living in poverty.

Carol Jenkins:
Eboni and Kali, thank you so much for being with us today. We are big fans of the ABC Coalition. In fact, we're members, so we love everything that you're doing. And the coalition praises the work that the Parent Advisory Board does, so thanks for everything that you put into it. If you could each tell us a little bit about yourself.

Eboni Brown:
Sure. Thank you all for having us. My name is Eboni Brown. I am a Southern Belle, born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia. I biologically have three children. My partner has four, so we have a nice, largely blended family. I work in philanthropy in an organization that makes documentaries for BIPOC, LGBTQ marginalized space, and I serve as the administration of finance. So, I really enjoy that role, and I have been on the PAB since we started, I think, three years ago in April, March or April, actually, so.

Kali Daugherty:
Hi, I'm Kali Daugherty. I'm from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I'm born and raised. I've worked in social services, particularly housing and homeless issues for the last 11 years. I've also been heavily involved in political advocacy for the last eight years, connected to a lot of different groups to support and uplift those experiencing poverty. I've been also part of the PAB since the inception of this group, and I've really enjoyed being able to work with other individuals that are experiencing the issues that my family is. Being a single parent to my son, it's been challenging. And the group being able to talk with others experiencing the same thing has been really helpful.

Carol Jenkins:
Great. Well, you know, Jeff wrote the book on child tax credit cash payments, the high cost of child poverty. Jeff, do you want to talk with Eboni and Kelly a bit about that?

Jeff Madrick:
How did you know you were officially poor when you didn't know? Do you have to apply at the ABC? Do you have to apply for money and cash allowances? How does it work?

Eboni Brown:
Well, there are 2 different things. So, us joining the parent and advisory board, there was an application process for that. And then the main criteria was 1 to be parents or caregivers. And so long as you met that, there were different questions asked about. Prior advocacy work, how do you kind of live in modern day life? Knowing like what the poverty levels are not, you know, specific math numbers, what kind of things like that? And so based on those criteria is the selection committee to pick the original 12 of us.

Jeff Madrick:
Okay. So there are 12 of you.

Carol Jenkins:
Yeah. So Kali, talk to us, I was at a poverty conference recently where they seem to be making a bigger and bigger space for lived experience. Enough with all of the policy makers and the, well, we need them still, but lived experience has always been a diminished part of the conversation and now it finally you know, is becoming a part of, tell us, you know, how does it work?

Kali Daugherty:
It's so important because, yes, the lawmakers are necessary. We need them to put these policies into place and to advocate for our needs. And we're the ones living through it and having to experience the things that they decide. So being able to use my voice and the experiences of my family for a variety of different things, and particularly the child tax credit has been really impactful because you can't know what it's like. You can't know the difference of $300. It might not seem like a lot. That's what I got. And it's a world of difference for my family.

Eboni Brown:
Eboni? Yeah, I absolutely agree with Kali. I think our goal is to allow people that aren't experiencing that to understand what we experience. And so while you spend years in Congress trying to pass laws, we have children that are hungry. And so it's hard to look at your child and be like, well, we're waiting on a lot of pads so that mommy or daddy can feed you, that they don't understand that.

And so as being part of the PAB, it was to one, advocate for our children, but then advocate for others. The number of children in poverty was so large and so extreme. And it makes you curious as to what our government wants to have done and what do they really want to spend this money towards if it's not taking care of our babies.

Carol Jenkins:
Let's talk a little bit about cash, because the beautiful thing about the expanded tax credit that we had was that there was a monthly amount coming into the household. And there are so many now, philanthropists, cities, states that are all recognizing, just give them the cash. And that's certainly what Jeff and I believe as well. So talk to us about about that. Kali, start with you in terms of the difference between filling out 100 pages of an application and somebody just saying, we know you need it, here it is. Take it.

Kali Daugherty:
Yeah, for having having gone through the every six months of here's your updated application for food stamps and health care and all these different things and I hope I didn't work any overtime because that'll put me over and I've lost benefits for that reason before and the restriction of the benefits that you get for other things yes you might get a certain amount for food or a certain amount for housing or child care whatever it might be But that doesn't pay for diapers.

That doesn't pay for gas in your car. That doesn't pay for your phone bill and different things that come up that are just necessities. And it doesn't pay for the field trips at your kid's school. It doesn't give them those experiences that they want. So giving the individuals the cash and the freedom to choose what's best for them really makes an impact.

Eboni Brown:
Yeah, absolutely. I think it's almost insulting that you have the audacity to tell me how to spend my money, right? I'm raising my children. I'm taking care of my household. It's not that I'm financially irresponsible. It's that I may or may not make enough to support everything that's going on. This little $300 or $400 helps go towards a $500 grocery bill, especially as we sit through inflation. and watch how bread is now $4 a loaf when it used to be $0.99.

So it's not like we don't know how to manage the money. It's just like the country is what it is. And so when you give me the money and say, here it is, use it how you use it, then that works in the best favor of myself, my families, and others across the country.

Jeff Madrick:
When did you start receiving payments?

Kali Daugherty:
I know it was sometime during the blur of the years of the pandemic. I had just lost one of my remote jobs. I believe it was 2021 because I had lost one of my remote positions that I was working and it kicked in shortly after that.

Jeff Madrick:
Was the difference sudden for your family once you got the cash?

Kali Daugherty:
Oh, absolutely. For my family, that made a difference of we could get through the month without having to rely on credit cards and catching up every month versus we just had enough money. If there was something that came up, I could cover it and not have to worry.

Eboni Brown:
And I think it also, it allows us to not necessarily have to work as hard and be without children. So if I get an extra $500 a month, and that's one less part-time job that I have. At one point, I worked like three or four jobs just to make sure that everything was covered. So imagine me not having to work as many jobs. I can go to after-school programs or things at my children's school and be a more active parent. So it's not always just about the food, which is a major deal, but it's how it affects our life. as a whole, and the social well-being of us and our families.

Jeff Madrick:
How did it feel to the kids? Did they react right away? Did they understand money was coming in?

Kali Daugherty:
I think to Eboni's point, it was more so the ability. They might have seen it more in the way that we spent more time with them. Like I had lost a position during that time and I didn't have to quickly replace it. Like we were still okay because I had that time. And my son has like, can you turn off the computer now? Are you done yet? I want to play outside with you. And I could actually do it then because I had that additional income coming in.

Eboni Brown:
I think depending on the age of the children. Ideally, as a good parent, your children never know when things are not happening in the house, right? That's always our goal. My older children, of course, will see the changes, but the younger children, life kind of goes on. But yeah, there's definitely more of that social aspect that's affected.

Carol Jenkins:
I want to know what the conversation is like when you see our Congress discussing this child tax credit that most of us feel isn't as good as the old one for sure, but would help millions of children. What do you say? When you hear the arguments against it, it's just unfathomable to us. So, you know, what are you saying about it?

Kali Daugherty:
Kelly? And the first thing I think about, if you had that child in your life that couldn't get their needs met, would you say no to them? Would you say no to a family in your community that came up to you and asked for that assistance? And could you turn them down if you knew you had the power to fix it? And you do. You have the power not only to fix your community, but individuals across the nation. We're depending on this. We're relying on this additional support and the ability to feel independent and be able to prosper and grow our families the way that we want to because of this.

Eboni Brown:
Absolutely. I'm studying basic guaranteed income as a possible dissertation for a PhD program. And one of the pushbacks we often hear is that people will quit their job if we give them this money." I was like, there is no way. I can't live off of $300 or $400 per month. That thought, to your point, Joyce, is just unfathomable. It does not make sense.

And so the arguments that they make, if they sit down and really think through it, are just not logical. And so I think from a political perspective, echoing what Kali said, like, how would you feel if your child needed food or lights or school supplies and things of that nature? And for Christ's sakes, what's taking so long? That's always my argument. I have these moments. I'm like, this should not have to take that long.

Jeff Madrick:
Well, here it is. You have the money. The kids are a little happier, a little more content. I assume their lives are more fulfilled. It's amazing, however, how many Americans can be arrogant about the need for this cash, that it doesn't really make a difference. And that's partly why we started our program. It's outrageous that people think the cash doesn't matter, doesn't matter enough, and let's get more of it, darn it. So keep that for your policymakers and your local politicians. That's for sure, and we'll try to do the same from our part.

Kali Daugherty:
And the people that say it doesn't matter have enough cash, and that's why it doesn't matter to them.

Jeff Madrick:
Exactly.

Carol Jenkins:
Thank you both so much. It's been a great conversation. Thanks for the hard work and the advice that you provide and the lived experience that informs all of our work. We appreciate it so much. Thank you. Thank you.

Jeff Madrick:
Bye!

Carol Jenkins:
Thanks so much for joining us on the Invisible Americans podcast, available wherever you get your podcasts, but we urge you to visit our website for transcripts, show notes, research, and additional information about our guests and their work. That's www.theinvisibleamericans.com. Please follow us on social media and our new YouTube channel, and our blog posts are up on Medium as well as our website. That's www.theinvisibleamericans.com. Jeff and I will see you the next time.

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