Editor’s note: This commentary is by Samn Stockwell, of Barre, who works at the Family Center of Washington County and teaches at Community College of Vermont. She has published essays, blogs and poems in many publications.
[A] few years ago I was looking through a newspaper and saw a photo of a parent I know being given a surprise gift of toys and food for his family. The look on his face was one of both embarrassment and dismay. He had not asked for this, nor expected his photo to be taken when he opened the door. He worked hard to provide for his family and had a justifiable pride in his ability to take care of them. He did not want to be the poster child for need. The generosity of others should not be at the expense of someone’s pride or self-confidence.
I love toys and I work with small children, so on the face of it, Toys for Tots would seem to be a charity I would adore. Toys are gathered at central locations and handed out to families more discreetly than the above example, but I have come to dislike it as another occasion for reinforcing ideas about poverty and need that are destructive for both poor people and the middle and upper classes.
I work at a nonprofit agency providing services to families with young children. This time of year emails go out asking staff at my agency to sign up needy families for Toys for Tots, and staff take the lists from the families, and soon the front hall piles with mountains of toys, a testimony to the generosity of our community. The presents for one family can fill a large garbage bag. These are genuinely needy families, sometimes homeless, and it’s winter obviously, so cold, too. As a former poor person from a long line of poor people, why not cheer this event?
The mounds of stuff reinforce that what you possess is so important strangers will help you acquire some more. This deluge of gifts says it’s really important for your children to have things you can’t afford to get them; therefore, you are inadequate as a parent. The culture already says that in a million ways to the poor: Your children are less likely to succeed in school, more likely to end up in jail, yada, yada, yada – as though the fact of being poor is an inherent flaw.
We do need things to help us be who are we – adequate and affordable shelter, nutritious food, and the space and materials to use whatever gifts we possess. These are usually things you can’t wrap up for someone you don’t know or appreciate (although there could be an accidental gift that is revelatory for someone).
But what young children need most is parenting. They need parents to spend time with them in play, to encourage them to struggle to learn new things, and to model the traits they hope their children will embrace: honesty, persistence, kindness, and perhaps patience. How does Toys for Tots help carry forward the idea that in the midst of all the piles of toys, every parent has something unique and of vital importance to give to their children? It’s worth infinitely more than any dozen of toys.
A surprising number of the toys are for very young children: children 3 and under. The needs of children this age are for predictability, consistent care-giving, and opportunities to safely explore. Neither infants nor toddlers will measure the success of a day by the number of wrapped packages they receive.
It’s easy to confuse abundance with having what you need. The valuable life is not the life of endless mounds of stuff, it’s the life in which you have opportunities to be valued for who you are, to have meaningful work and meaningful relationships. This is best accomplished by not having constant worries about shelter, food and transportation. Occasional worries, yes, but the basic ingredients of life should be easily attainable through reasonable levels of employment: Someone working at a minimum wage job should be able to afford safe shelter, nutritious food, and every now and then, a night at the movies. As the economy stands now, even middle-income wage earners struggle with affording the basics.
So help is needed and it feels great to give generously, but consider the message in your giving. Consider the ways in which you can support the autonomy of the parents or any other group you donate to, and not supplant their ability to feel competent. To be an occasional recipient of a gift can feel good, but to be the constant recipient or to be swamped by gifts confirms the sense of inadequacy and deepens the sense of an unbridgeable divide. Consider the ways in which giving can be a bridge.
I think it’s fine for strangers to donate one durable age-appropriate toy (without batteries) to a family, but not five or 10 toys. I think gift cards are even more appropriate so that parents can make their own choices about what to give their children. We fail to support the primacy of the family in most of our holiday giving for children and it’s the family that raises the child. Even better (but more logistical work) would be to pay the heating bill or one month’s rent for a family. I see families with both parents working and yet unable to meet basic needs. The struggles of single parents are monumental.
I am not arguing here that families are inherently wiser about their children’s needs, or better able to choose from the array of toys advertised – only that they, with all their flaws, should be the choice-makers.
I work with very young children with disabilities, some severely disabled and some mildly disabled. In addition to the work of helping young children to walk and talk, we spend considerable time trying to coax wheelchairs and standers from insurance companies. We spend time trying to find a good child care program that can wrap their arms around a child with a disability. Good and affordable child care is a challenge for any family, but for a child with a disability it’s doubly challenging.
At work we spend time applying for grants to make child care affordable. For children that need an aide to help them move/eat/communicate at child care, there are no guarantees. The state allots a little money for aides and it’s a competitive grant. The grant money usually runs out midway through the year, so that a parent might have to wait six months just to apply. Imagine that your job provides the health insurance covering the cost of the treatments and medications your infant or toddler needs to keep her healthy. Imagine that you have no idea whether your child will get an aide to attend child care so that you can continue working.
In the midst of these realities, I think we should harness our generosity to support the needs of the whole family. For a few years I worked at an agency that sponsored a gift-making activity for families. Any family could attend, so people were not segregated by income. Staff and community members volunteered their time and supplies to help people make their own gifts: candles, scarves, simple toys. Attendees were not passive recipients, but able to use their skills to make something of value for the people they loved. Now that is a good present to give.
