Hillbilly Elegy: Drugs and Violence

Parents who use drugs while raising children are likely to have a lower socioeconomic status that will affect their academic success. The negative effects that younger children experience can differ depending on the type of drugs used by the parents. Vance started to see the negative effects of his upbringing in the poor grades he received in middle school. Exposure to both violence and drugs can lead to other disparities that may go unnoticed, causing physical alterations in a child’s body, and soon leading to lifelong health issues. In Hillbilly Elegy, writer, J.D Vance talks about the depth of drug addiction, violence, and rural poverty. These events are a worldwide problem that not only affected Vance as a child but many other children of different races living in America.

Vance grew up living with his mother who had an opioid addiction, and multiple relationships with different men while exposing Vance to domestic abuse. Like many other communities, these behaviors are looked at as normal, yet widespread throughout the United States. Many children who witness domestic violence have a way of reacting to drugs and violence by developing emotional, behavioral, and learning problems. There are community, school, and family programs put in place and used as prevention strategies to help children deal with issues of violence. Outreach programs such as the, Community that Cares (CTC) is an example of an available resource. The Community That Cares program was put in place by the government to help the children ages 10 – 17 years old who are dealing with drug abuse and/or living around violence. These community programs show positive results with many benefits for young children like Vance. Research performed by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) shows a “study looking at long-term outcomes from the Communities That Care (CTC) program showed remarkable success in preventing substance use and antisocial behaviors in adolescents”.

Children with a similar childhood like Vance that lives in a household with drugs and violence are unable to obtain access to most resources when the parent guardian is unwilling to find the proper help needed. Some children will begin to think the negative behavior is normal until an adult intervenes, showing the child more positive behaviors like Vance’s grandparents.

It was not until Vance moved in with his grandmother and grandfather that his life would begin to change in a positive way, that he was not expecting to happen. Vance moved from an area of poverty, to an area of middle class during the time he lived with his grandparents. Both grandparents were religious people that spent years showing him the value of love and stability, teaching him life lessons that he was unable to learn from his parents. Both grandparents push him to be different and to receive better grades in school. Although his grandparents were not his mother and father, they played the role of parents who made sure their grandchildren had a stable household that did not promote drugs and violence.

Other than his grandmother and grandfather, Vance had other positive people in his family that he looked up to, one person being, his cousin Rachel. She influenced him to join the Marine Corps stating, “they’ll whip you into shape” (Vance, 156). His enlisting into the Marine Corps provided him a way to afford college and attend law school eventually. The Marine Corps changed his perspective, and the expectations he had for himself. Vance was taught discipline, and leadership skills. He gained confidence eventually while escaping the destructive mentality of “I and the people like me weren’t good enough” (Vance, 176). Most kids like Vance lack the opportunity to achieve the things he was able to achieve.

When living in high poverty neighborhoods, some children are left with little to no resources, eventually becoming unable to separate from the same poverty issues J. D Vance faced during his childhood. Drugs can influence people to commit crimes causing it to place an enormous burden on society when people commit a violent or nonviolent crime to support their habits. This is something Vance and other children go through today.

During Vance years with his mother, she began to steal opiates from her place of employment causing her to face criminal charges. An example of the lengths that many abusers take to feed their addiction. Younger children are known to suffer from depression due to and stressful atmospheres at home, which hurts their academic performance in school. Had the school staff notice the decline in Vance grades and intervened, could have saved him from the childhood abuse he had to endure from his mother. Families with a history of drugs and violence stem from generations of repetitive behaviors. With grandparents like his, he was able to not follow in his mother's footsteps.

Vance's mother, the daughter of both grandparents, lived in a household where violence and alcohol abuse happened regularly. The article, Child Abuse and Neglect, states statistical information stating, ‘drug abuse in the family was documented in 44 cases (24 %)” this data shows the connection between the number of children who have families that abuse drugs.

Past events begins to shape his mother as an adult, causing her to put Vance through the same thing she experienced as a kid herself. His grandparents were known to have a history of violent fights when the grandfather would become increasingly intoxicated, making the grandmother very angry, she would throw things and they would fight. Changing the generational patterns of abuse, Vance was never spanked nor exposed to drugs and violence by his grandparents. Many children that are Vance’s age, become immune to violence the same way he did. One day, they will hide during a violent episode, and the next day they will become the aggressor in a situation or stay to watch or listen during a violent situation.

In Hillbilly Elegy, Vance believed that spending time in the same house with the same person is what helped him to build lasting friendships with the kids at his school. Vance is an example of letting childhood disparities shape young adults positively. He grew to have many friends with successful careers who also had happy families and lives. This fact, was different from what he had believed about the children from his hometown. Vance’s determination to succeed shows the youth, that social isolation, drugs, and violence should not determine your future. He ends up graduating from law school and living his life educating and giving back to the same high poverty community he grew up in.

Vance came from a dysfunctional family; some being discouraging and others being encouraging and influential to him and the future he now holds. This issue is something that still lacks currently in poor households where drugs and violence are seen to be normalized. Changing his perspective on life is how Vance changed his outcome and success. Having at least one role model or mentor in his life is what turned his bad experience into a positive one thanks to the grandparents he had. Vance is like many other children in America who refuse to remain a stereotype when referring to their cultural background and way of living. Having Christian grandparents that embedded values in him at a young age is what helped Vance become the man and college graduate he is today.