Years ago, I was in a maternity program for low-income people at a Catholic hospital in CA. Virtually all of the other women were lower income black people, all of them “single mothers” and from the black nabe in SF. I was there because my husband’s job had no medical insurance, but the other women were on state benefits. They weren’t Catholic, but their social worker had told them to sign up with a maternity program, and this was the best one in the city.
We had to meet once a week, mostly to get obstetrics care (such as doing the basic heartbeat monitoring, etc. - this was before instant ultrasound - and checking maternal problems, such as diabetes). The dietician was there at every meeting, because the hospital was sort of old-style holistic: eat right, live right, and your baby has a good chance of being pretty healthy unless there’s a problem outside of the normal range, which we’ll try to deal with.
BTW, they served a glass of wine at dinner to new mothers during their stay there! It relaxed the mothers and made them better at breast feeding, which the hospital encouraged.
I’ll never forget the first meeting with the dietician, when we had been told to list all of the things we had had for breakfast, lunch and dinner the day before.
Most of the black mothers had literally eaten only potato chips, Coke, and occasionally some KFC chicken the day before. Potato chips and soda seemed to be the dietary staples.
These young mothers were all on welfare and all got food stamps and every possible support, but they honestly didn’t know how to eat and none of them even had much connection with food (the dietician asked about favorite things they ate at home, and these girls didn’t have any).
So one of the big problems that lower income black mothers have is simply malnutrition. They have the income and the ability to buy foods but they simply don’t know what good eating is, and KFC is about the top of the dining chain for them. And poor nutrition is absolutely the main cause of maternal and infant death, as well as things like mental retardation or various syndromes. And we won’t even go into the effects of drug use.
In my opinion, if you want to improve lower income black statistics, improve nutrition...which means educating people in something as simple and basic as food.
Excellent commentary, thanks.
Improve nutrition ...
Very interesting post.
I think this is the only culture on the planet where homemaking is not considered a skilled trade. So no one teaches the younger ones how to cook nutritious foods. I also think all kids, boys and girls, should take some home ec and shop classes in junior high and high school.
I was uninsured with no prenatal care for months. A low-cost Catholic program accepted me in the 8th month. I wasn’t eating well, either. They were concerned that I was underweight. Yet, I gave birth to a big healthy baby. No pregnancy complications whatsoever.
If only we knew the causes of death... The article gives a few anecdotes that tell us nothing about all the other women.
Sounds like they can’t even get off their idle duffs to prepare meals; that became clear when some cities started offering free BREAKFAST programs in the ‘hoods. WE already buy their food, and now provide TWO meals per day during the school year? In NYC, they continued the “free lunch” program through the summer but had to open it up to everyone; this nonsense is just lining contractors’ pockets with taxpayer money.