--- title: Stephanie Land on Why Poor Children Deserve Treats Too description: 'Class' author Stephanie Land writes about create moments of joy for her daughter amid financial precarity. canonical: https://time.com/6328912/stephanie-land-class-poverty-joy-essay/ author: Stephanie Land article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2023-11-07T12:00:00.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T08:06:03.459Z article:section: Ideas og:title: We Didn't Have Much Money. My Daughter Still Deserved Joy og:description: 'Class' author Stephanie Land on creating special moments for her child amid financial precarity og:url: https://time.com/6328912/stephanie-land-class-poverty-joy-essay/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt5a867b336969a334/698a41ecdb29876e6f269822/zp_time_poverty_final_web.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2400 og:image:height: 1350 og:image:alt: zp_time_poverty_final_web og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: We Didn't Have Much Money. My Daughter Still Deserved Joy twitter:description: 'Class' author Stephanie Land on creating special moments for her child amid financial precarity twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt5a867b336969a334/698a41ecdb29876e6f269822/zp_time_poverty_final_web.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # We Didn't Have Much Money. 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Named editors include Richard Hall (The Brief), Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs (Inside TIME), Eliza Berman (Worth Your Time), Philip Elliott (D.C. Brief), Justin Worland (Future Proof) and Harry Booth (In the Loop). Health Matters is written by TIME's health desk. #### How do I sign up for a TIME newsletter? Go to time.com/newsletters, choose the newsletters you want and enter your email address. There is no cost and no subscription requirement. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-network-2026q3/newsletters?i=f9ad86cf-7f07-4034-b34f-f226d5f61d07&cr=time-nl-network-2026q3-v1) ## Video: How to Overcome Self-Criticism [Watch (HLS stream): How to Overcome Self-Criticism](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/cu4hzoAn.m3u8) (5:23)  _Published 2023-06-08. “People treat their self-criticism as though it’s part of themselves, like their eye color,” says Rachel Turow, a Seattle-based clinical psychologist who’s the author of The Self-Talk Workout. But there’s good reason to work on silencing your self-criticism, which has been found to worsen depression, anxiety, disordered eating, and self-harm._ by [Stephanie Land](https://time.com/author/stephanie-land/) ## Stephanie Land Stephanie Land is the author of Class: A Memoir of Motherhood, Hunger, and Higher Education. Nov 7, 2023 12:00 PM UTC  Illustration by Zara Picken for TIME by [Stephanie Land](https://time.com/author/stephanie-land/) ## Stephanie Land Stephanie Land is the author of Class: A Memoir of Motherhood, Hunger, and Higher Education. Nov 7, 2023 12:00 PM UTC Seven years out from needing to use food stamps, and it’s interesting what still triggers that dreaded feeling of humiliation that consumed my life back then. Yet I always feel it when I use a self-checkout station at the grocery store. Back then, as a college student who earned money by cleaning people’s homes, I used an EBT card, the debit card supplied to spend funds granted through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), to purchase food I couldn’t afford otherwise. Often my cart held our usual essentials like butter, pancake mix, and eggs, but on the days I added candy, cupcakes, or cookies, I hoped no one witnessed me using the card. I’d seen the posts on social media and heard the complaints about what people bought with their SNAP funds. Somehow it was wrong for me to buy treats for my daughter’s Christmas stocking. This sentiment–that a child whose family relies on government assistance should be denied something that other children feel entitled to–goes beyond the “poor people can’t have nice things” outcry. When people projected anger toward struggling parents like me for purchasing Christmas or Easter candy with food stamps by complaining about it online, it felt like an attempt to punish or shame me, a poor person, for getting pregnant in the first place. **Read More:** [_The Love Story of My Chosen Family_](https://time.com/6330882/zooey-zephyr-chosen-family-essay/) I started writing about parenting under the poverty line when I lived in low-income housing and still needed food stamps to feed my daughters, who were around 8- and 1-year-old. Just a year out of college, somewhat propelled into the niche after an essay about working as a maid went viral, I began experiencing some success as a freelance writer. It should have been a moment of pride. But every personal essay published brought with it hordes of hate-filled messages. People sent me emails to tell me I was a cockroach, no better than vermin, and needed to be committed. I’m not sure why I thought the anger would die down after I shared my experiences in a [bestselling book](https://bookshop.org/a/4973/9780316505093) or after a [limited series inspired by it](https://time.com/6102655/maid-stephanie-land-poverty/) had some unprecedented success. Perhaps I expected a little more empathy for a mother who is just trying to do her best for her child and create moments of joy amid financial precarity. And yet there it was, one of the first online reviews of my new book, and the woman was upset that I’d given my kid so much ice cream. ### More From TIME The book she read, called [_Class: A Memoir of Motherhood, Hunger, and Higher Education_](https://bookshop.org/a/4973/9781982151393), was a free, advanced copy given to her by my publisher in exchange for an honest review. Most people will tell authors not to look at these early reviews, but when it’s been just you, alone with a vulnerable story that you’re somewhere between terrified and mortified for people to read, you needed to prepare for the reaction. Or that’s what I told myself as I typed the title and my name into the search bar on Goodreads. **Read More:** [_8 Rules for Navigating Your Family Text Chain_](https://time.com/6330928/family-text-chains-how-to-navigate/) My second book is a sequel to my first book, but to me it’s also a continuation of a love story. The books are an intimate, recorded history of the first seven years I spent mothering my oldest daughter alone. For nearly that entire time, I fought for resources, for housing and food security, and to obtain a degree from a four-year university. I went hungry often, lived off peanut butter and jelly, and worked a physically demanding job before fighting to stay awake deep into the night as I wrote reports and essays that were due the next day. Through it all, I relished the moments I could create that were purely for my daughter. Sometimes things were made possible by unexpected events, like all of my housecleaning clients tipping me ten bucks before Christmas so I could afford to take her to the local production of _The Nutcracker,_ the only thing she’d asked Santa Claus for. During the intermission, I spent a somewhat precious five dollars on a small, wooden ornament that she cradled in her arms like Clara had done on stage. She didn’t beg me for cookies, even though all the other kids seemed to have one or two, and maybe that’s what made the moment so bittersweet. Over the years, I’ve learned the “things” poor people supposedly don’t deserve have broken through boundaries to categories of what most would consider basic needs. A safe place to sleep, three meals a day that cost more than a dollar, diapers, soap, autonomy, mental-health care, and a trusted environment to leave their children so they can work. There’s no government assistance money for toilet paper, and a spare roll from a public bathroom is easy to fit under a sweater, but other things were a lot harder to obtain. I had to prove I was working to get childcare so I could work. The hours that counted toward that impossible equation had to be proven, often with multiple receipts. It was exhausting, heartbreaking, and necessary to survive. And my kid lived it with me. By the time we moved to Missoula, Mont., where I would finish school, she had lived in 15 different homes. At ages 5 and 6, she sat through college classes with me, or waited patiently at the kitchen table of a house I was paid $10 an hour to clean, when I couldn’t secure babysitting, or just couldn’t afford it. Kids at school made fun of her for having clothes with holes in the knees. A parent yelled at her in front of a group of kids for taking a piece of candy from a jar. She didn’t ask for any of this, but she endured it, not because she was “resilient,” as people liked to call her, but because we didn’t have other options. So yes, woman on the internet, whenever I happened to have a few bucks, you better believe I bought her some ice cream. ## Transcript A lot of people have the idea that self-criticism is helpful or motivating and maybe I can be, if it's really specific like, okay, I want to improve his aspect of my athletic sport. So I'm going to really focus on making it better and critiquing it, I think that could be really useful if we're it gets dangerous is when people feel bad about themselves overall and we have a lot of really strong research evidence. Now that a style of Habitual self-criticism is linked to worst, mental, health, or stress, or anxiety, or depression, or eating disorders, more addictions and more stop to do. None of that is what we want. There's lots of factors that contribute to self-criticism. So I think it's a little bit of an inner exploration to consider some of the ways that you've been affected. There's definitely the cultural components of the idea of looking beautiful. There's a success components wanting to achieve a lot. We have sort of a culture of competition. We are used to judging ourselves and comparing ourselves to other people and then we know that if you've been mistreated in your life, it's really common to internalize that. There's awesome evidence that mindfulness meditation that's making time to actually sit and tune into this present moment right now without judgment that. That habit is very helpful in reducing self-criticism. There's also a strategy called loving kindness. Meditation basically your training yourself to be friendly towards your own Belle and the way to do that is by repeating phrases and you can choose what they are. Some people like may, I be safe and happy, happy may I be healthy mad lib with the ideas to do those, for about 5 minutes, to really sit with those phrases when your mind goes away. Try to bring it back without judgment. Because an interesting dimension of this work. When you're training yourself to be less self-critical, you're also training where your attention goes. You can try to ask, is there any valuable information here? But maybe my upgrade isn't is trying to tell me something, like, I want to take better care of my body. I want to be in better, touch with my friend. Okay, well, that might be important. I still think the self-criticism could be maybe phrases that gentler way like hey let's figure out how you can start exercising this week instead of like you're so awful cuz you don't exercise, right? There's a difference there. I also recommend an exercise called bought the success. It's kind of like a done list instead of a to-do list, right? I haven't a minute, I haven't done that and that, you know, makes all of us feel kind of crummy and like, we haven't done enough. So a done list is noticing what, what are 10 Things I have done today? That contributed to my life or someone else for the world and were used to dismissing. So just take a minute to marinate in those to feel like oh I did get out of bed I did take a walk with a friend, I did send an email okay that's real too. There's a lot of wonderful evidence showing that some specific kinds of breathing exercises and help reduce yourself criticism. So the core instruction is you sit and pay attention to your breath. When your mind goes away, you bring it back. Your mind is going to go away because that's what mines do now. Here is the muscle work. Try not to judge yourself when your mind goes away, instead, your mind goes away, you bring it back, it goes away, you bring it back. So you become skilled at both noticing where your mind is Shifting attention, which is awesome and protect you against rumination. If you develop that muscle, that Skillet meal, to shift your attention when you want to, and it's raining non-judgment. So those things are all happening, whether you use the breath itself or something like mindfulness of sound, it doesn't necessarily matter what the focus is, you're still doing that mental, work of Shifting, where your mind is and try not to judge yourself. I think you can think of this is kind of like the fruits and vegetables, right? So self-criticism is the stuff that's not so great for you and might not work to get rid of it entirely. But if we can have more fruits and vegetables, we have better help and evidence is great. That practicing self-compassion intentionally. That means trying to be friendly to yourself. Even if you failed messed up, things didn't go your way your suffering. If you can generate some friendly feelings, like a, that's really hard. I'm so sorry you're going through this. How are we going to support? You do myself right now? What do I need today? If you can get that practice into your routine, the benefit show at helps your relationships. 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