Welfare Brat: A Memoir

"Exceptional…A classic American success story, Horatio Alger's Ragged Dick come true, told here utterly without self-congratulation or sentimentality."—WashingtonPost

Mary Childers's intimate and frank memoir tells the story of growing up in a family in which five out of seven children dropped out of high school and four different fathers dropped out of sight. With this lyrical and often humorous examination of how she became the first person in her family to attend college, Childers illuminates the causes of welfare dependence, generational poverty, and submission to a popular culture that values sexuality more than self-esteem and self-sufficiency.

An intimate and frank look at poverty, abuse, and welfare dependence by a "welfare brat" who came of age in the blighted Bronx of the 1960s.

Mary Childers grew up in a neighborhood ravaged by poverty. Once a borough of elegant apartment buildings, parks, and universities, the Bronx had become a national symbol of urban decay. White flight, arson, rampant crime, and race riots provide the backdrop for Mary's story. The child of an absent carny father for whom she longed and a single welfare mother who schemed and struggled to house and feed her brood, Mary was the third of her mother's surviving seven children, who were fathered by four different men.

From an early age, Mary knew she was different. She loved her family fiercely but didn't want to repeat her mother's or older sisters' mistakes. The Childers family culture was infused with alcohol and drugs, and relations between the sexes were muddled by simultaneous feelings of rage and desire toward men. Fatherless children were the norm. Academic achievement and hard work were often scorned, not rewarded; five of the seven Childers children dropped out of high school. But Mary was determined to create a better life, and here she recounts her bumpy road to self-sufficiency. With this engaging and thoughtful examination of her difficult early years, Mary Childers breathes messy life into the issues of poverty and welfare dependence, childhood resilience, the American work ethic, and a popular culture that values sexuality more than self-esteem.

The Washington Post - Jonathan Yardley

It's the law of the Bronx, not of the jungle, but to all intents and purposes it's the same law. A hard life produces skepticism and bitterness. Childers has plenty of the former and, by her own testimony, has had more than a few flirtations with the latter. Yet her story is one of deep, resilient optimism, of believing that it is possible to pull yourself up and out by hard work, determination and smarts. Along the way, she had a bit of help from a few people who recognized her promise, but mainly she did it on her own, against odds -- and cultural expectations -- that were overwhelming.

Mary Childers is a consultant who mediates conflict and provides discrimination prevention training for higher education and corporations. She has a Ph.D. in English literature and lives in Hanover, New Hampshire.