Within the film, the negative perspective of welfare is seen along with the lack of respect individuals have towards one another when it comes to accepting welfare. Duffy and Mandell mention the cycle of poverty in their article. This is seen through the long chain of poverty within the mother’s side of the family and this idea of cycle of poverty it is feared by the children of the Rice family. they are afraid to grow up and don’t want to live in Canada anymore. They feel like they don’t matter because of their social class. Another aspect shown within the film is seen through the emotional and physical struggle the Rice family went through, such as the grandmother was a victim of domestic violence, making her single mother for 9 kids which also has an impact on their current social class. The Rice kids were also bullied and were dehumanized at school for being poor. This affects their personal life and plays a crucial part in their growth in relation to their social …show more content…
The Rice family has been seen to be struggling financially and as a middle class citizen of today’s society, we are told that’s because they’re lazy or irresponsible. We blame them for their problems and turn a blind eye towards the real issues. We don’t investigate as to why people are living in such terrible conditions and how we, as society can do something to change this, instead we just absorb the discourse on socioeconomic class and accept it. After looking at Young’s two approaches to understanding class on a more conceptual level, I realized that I made assumptions towards poor people and generalized them into a category. Young’s approaches made me criticize and analyze what was going on around me and why it was happening and the repercussions of it. One idea of this is seen though the negative perspective of welfare. The rice family was eligible for welfare but did not take it due to the stigma towards it, along with the fear of losing their baby bonus. The other thing is that we automatically assume that the Rice family is not budgeting their money properly and if they wanted to get out of this mess they could have got rid of the dog, or the mother did not buy cigarettes or hair dye, because that’s what we are taught, that poor people can not have luxuries because they do not deserve it, but in reality, it is seen as a stress reliever. Living in