5 - How Have the OLS Children Fared?

Summary

We would stand on the side of the hill and she would hold up her sign saying, you know, “my daughter is sick and we need money to get her some medicine to help her feel better.” And I just had to sit down and curl up in a ball and cough all the time. That's what I was told to do. And her boyfriend, Derek, would sit on the block and make sure because [if not], I would get punished.

We lived, we lived in a trailer. It was me and mom, Derek, and his mom and his brother … we had dust storms there all the time. I was constantly locked out. I had to sit out in the middle of the dust storm on picture day … And I wore my favorite purple dress. We had a windstorm that day, a dust storm, and I was locked out and tried to climb through a window, and Derek's mom slammed the window down.

It is difficult to sketch a straightforward portrait of the lives of the children of the original OLS respondents, not only because there is much variation across families, but because each youth's own life history frequently included so many different “eras.” For example, at the time of her interview, Jana, quoted above, was actually living with her stepfather (not the Derek mentioned in the quote) and stepmother.