A Week of Memories Day One: Stressed about Money from Day One

Today I think about my extreme fear for lack of money. I try to save all the money I can. I have trouble spending money on buying anything beyond groceries -- including clothes. In fact, I think it's been over a year since I've purchased anything from a mall. I constantly worry about money and that at some point in the future I won't be able to make ends meet.

This fear for lack of money has gone on since before I can remember. In fact, I've had an extreme poverty mentality all of my life. Sour cream is an expensive addition that all meals can go without. In fact, how dare I ask for more than a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and thus cause my parents more money? I don't think it is healthy or normal for a child to constantly worry about money. I would watch how much each tank of gas cost my dad and feel guilty that I had cost my dad that much money. I felt guilty for years after my dad bought me a cup of hot cappuccino at a gas station. I felt guilty for two reasons. First, I had cost my dad money and second, none of my other siblings got to share in the treat.

Now looking back, I have come to think that in a healthy family a child should never feel guilty about the money they cost their family. Especially when it's such things as shoes once a year after your shoes have holes in the sole. The parents should feel guilty if they cannot provide for all of their children but the parents should never make the children feel guilty about how much the parents have to pay to raise the child.

I'm sorry, but just because you pay the money for that child to live, does not indebt the child to you at all. You were the one that made the child. You were the one the (supposedly) made the decision that you could take that child into the home and support them and raise them. Now I know that with many fundamentalist/quiverfull families, they believe that God directs how many children you have and will always provide for however many children "He" gives you. I wonder where in the world they came up with the idea that limiting or planning for the number of kids you have is a sin? I think of the argument that many kids are a blessing. Isn't money a blessing as well? And obviously, many of the families in those movements do not have that blessing, so why should they have all blessings. Yes, sure, you can indulge in that blessing, if you can support the blessing. Even if your theology is that God gave you that kid, it still is not the kid's fault that you cannot support them. Stop blaming your kids. Stop making your kids feel like trash.

I wish I could have had a childhood where I did not constantly feel guilty about the amount of money I caused my parents. I wish I could have had a childhood where I was not stressed out about money -- to the point of giving me heartburn.