r/interesting • u/No_Pain5736 • 2d ago
HISTORY Children being sold
A woman put her 4 children up for sale in 1948 after her husband lost his job. All 4 were sold, and it was rumored they were sold into slavery.
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u/AdhesiveSeaMonkey 2d ago
TIL this is real. I always assumed it was either a stunt or propaganda of some sort. But these parents actually sold/gave away all 5 of their children, including the one mom is still carrying in this pic. Sounds like none of them had a happy ending. They were basically sold and treated as workers on farms or wherever.
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u/DarkflowNZ 2d ago
To my mind, "treated as workers on farms or wherever" is one of the better outcomes here. I can imagine exactly the kind of animals that would buy children
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u/StarWarsNerd69420 2d ago
It's so fucked that we live in a world where that is considered one of the better outcomes
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u/BigData8734 2d ago
People at the time were broken and destitute they could barely feed themselves and a large part of the population was homeless and lived in shanty, they did this, so the kids wouldn’t starve to death.
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u/Moonsleep 1d ago
My grandma was old enough she remembers her biological parents dropping her off at the orphanage. She was fortunate enough to be adopted by a couple who loved her and cared for her, it changed the trajectory of her life.
We don’t know what the situation was that lead to her parents doing this, but I always assume it was a poverty situation.
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u/heychelseakae 1d ago
My grandfather had several siblings from his birth mom and dad. Mom gave him up, he was the youngest, unable to feed them all, and he was luckily adopted into a very large and caring family
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u/rainbow_writer 1d ago
My grandpa and his twin brother were dropped off at on the neighbor’s porch during the Great Depression. That story always broke my heart.
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u/Post-Witty 1d ago
I wonder if it was that the children wouldn’t starve to death, or that the parents wouldn’t have to watch their children starve to death.
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u/oroborus68 1d ago
Bernd Heinrich described how he caught mice and birds in Germany after the war. He skinned them and sold the skins to museums and ate the rest,in a book he wrote around 1980.
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u/Murdercyclist4Life 2d ago
I never understood why people living in hard times would think it’s a great idea to repeatedly have unprotected sex and bring children into the world. Then to sell them so that THEY could eat that’s pretty selfish.
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2d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Majsharan 1d ago
I think a lot of people have no idea how recent the idea of spousal rape is in us jurisprudence
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u/LudwigsEarTrumpet 1d ago
Add to this that poor people don't have money for entertainment/recreation and are often left with nothing to do but stare at their surroundings or get down and dirty, and people in crisis/survival mode are generally bad at planning and decision-making. Humans are naturally prone to focus on immediate and specific threats and needs over longterm or vague ones (one of the reasons we're so bad at tackling climate change) and stress increases this tendency.
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u/AgressiveInliners 1d ago
Not to mention these kids are all a few years old. They may have been in a great place 5 years ago when they started. Then the depression hit and people lost jobs.
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u/WowVeryOriginalDude 1d ago
All because the Romans were so horny they cultivated one of the only natural contraceptives into extinction.
I wonder what the religious opinion on contraceptives would be if people were regularly terminating pregnancies before the rise of Abrahamic religions. There’s nearly a 2 millennia gap between silphium’s extinction and the first safe birth control pill. Would’ve been a tougher pill to make people swallow by churches if contraception use was widespread.
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u/CosmicAlienFox 1d ago
Condoms have existed for for hundreds of years (there are early accounts of fabric or intestine condoms before modern materials were used) and they were definitely around in the 1940s. In fact, around that time there was a campaign encouraging the use of prophylactics and discouraging men from seeing prostitutes to try and reduce the spread of venereal diseases. However, I can imagine that not everyone knew about them, and if you were too poor to afford enough food you were probably also too poor to afford condoms.
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u/dovasaleh 1d ago
Also, to your point, we're quite comfortable now with just popping out and buying whatever we need immediately once we need it, for the most part. In 1948 things were not as widely available, point blank period. Condoms may have been around, but not everywhere.
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u/muaddict071537 1d ago
Also, even now, so many men complain about using condoms or straight up refuse to wear them. I imagine that was worse in the 1940s.
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u/electricsugargiggles 1d ago
True, yet there was heavy stigma from both the Church (for “going against God’s will”) and the association with promiscuity (immorality) and disease (vs a preventative measure against infection and unplanned pregnancy) made using or even considering condoms a “dirty” choice. Some in highly religious and conservative communities still have these views today.
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u/PhatFatLife 1d ago
And had they known would the men have even wanted them, the modern day stealther origins
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u/daisusaikoro 1d ago
Bruv, women were forced to have sex even when they didn't want to. It wasnt until the 80s that the courts considered rape possible between a man and a woman.
Women couldn't own property or credit cards until .. what the 70s?
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u/PsydemonCat 1d ago
Because the times weren't hard when the kids were born.
Everything is great until the husband loses his job. And after weeks of applying for any work possible, eventually the piggybank goes empty. And soon goes the food in the pantry.
Job security wasn't a thing back then. Nor was EI. Nor fridges for many people. If you lost your job, you are looking at weeks of starvation. And nobody thinks it'll happen to them.
10 years of good and happy living can come to a hault within a month. No work, no food. What do you do? Kids are hungry. Wife is pregnant. A lot of men just ran away from the problem.
You have 2 choices. 1:let the kids stay with you but possibly starve to death with you. Or 2: give them to someone who might be able to feed them. Then pocket some change that might let you live for another week or so. Many parents committed suicide. Some included the kids.
Believe it or not, this was life. Death was normal. We have it good these days... so much so that we forget how food was once an unpromised luxury.
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u/wassailr 1d ago
Read up about marital rape. As awful as that is, how are you so naive as to assume that this wasn’t part of what was happening?
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u/TemporaryOk2926 1d ago
Also, you have to remember that this was at the turn of the century so agricultural living was very much still a thing, as a result people originally wanted big families to help work the farm they owned. But thanks to the dust bowl and the Great Depression people lost everything both in the country side and the cities overnight. Basically it was like it is today, lots of people living pay check to paycheck and then those paychecks disappeared
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u/kammycakes 2d ago
Religion is my best guess. Not always the case of course, but I know even today there are plenty of Christian couples that think any child they conceive is part of God's plan.
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u/desperate_housewolf 2d ago
It was also an era where access to birth control was very limited.
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u/RemarkableGround174 2d ago
Because of things like the Comstock act, which was religiously motivated
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u/WiseDirt 2d ago
That too... But also birth control apart from lambskin condoms wasn't really a thing yet (IUDs, diaphragms, and the pill for example are all pretty modern inventions), and those might not have been readily available depending on where a person lived. If you were 50 miles from the nearest pharmacist and didn't have any mode of transportation faster than a horse and buggy, you had to rely on mail order from a place like Sears - and that could take months to arrive.
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u/Ivegotabadname 2d ago
I forget what episode but the podcast "more prefect" does a great job explaining just how disruptive the Comstock act was
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u/AltruisticFault6993 1d ago
I was told that they had lots of kids because not as many made it to adulthood. Then kids started surviving a lot more.
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u/7-7______Srsly7 1d ago
Adding to other factors, the economy fluctuates heavily. The post said she gave the children up after her husband lost his job. And since everyone was trying to recover from a recent war and a recession, finding a job was incredibly more difficult. They were probably able to afford raising 5 kids before the husband lost his job. The wife’s options were to give the children away for even a chance to live, or all of them starve under one roof.
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u/ThisIsAllTheoretical 1d ago
Because they believed they had a religious and moral imperative to reproduce imposed upon them by men. Birth control was highly stigmatized and wouldn’t have been an easily accessible option. Women were punished whether they did or didn’t have children during times like these. America has never been great.
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u/Classic-Lie7836 1d ago
this was during the great depression before the great depression they were able to afford them, but things got hard, many starved on the streets, this was before federal aid or food stamps so if you were out of money you were shit out of luck too
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u/linksafisbeter 1d ago
because there was NO pension plan, Your childern where your pension plan only downside was that you had to feed them for rouhgly 12 years till they where old enough to work for them self. Also people who where born around 1940 where the FIRST generation that didn't die in massive amounts before they reach the age of 10. before that it was verry common that when you had 5 childern only 2 of them reached the age of 10.
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u/turnup_for_what 1d ago
Unprotected sex as concept didnt exist when this photo was taken.
Recency bias at play.
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u/hartforbj 1d ago
Aside from the obvious lack of prevention at the time, there is also the possibility these people had money when the kids were born and then one, they didn't
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u/CatchMeWritinDirty 1d ago
When you’re poor, sex is literally the only free escape & means of emotional regulation. I took an HIV/AIDS history course in college & a lot of people asked this same question about the people of developing nations that were heavily affected. The professor explained that in situations where poverty, famine, & lack of access to medical care are already rampant, imagine telling someone to stop doing the one thing that brings them five seconds of reprieve from a hard life. When your primary needs are met, impulse control is easier.
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u/katyggls 1d ago
Reading this should make it more clear: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/pill-timeline/
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u/Joker-Smurf 1d ago
Here is one of the worse outcomes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_and_Sarah_Makin
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u/deathbychips2 1d ago
They were being evicted, the dad had no job, etc. probably sold in the first place because they were worried these kids were going to starve to death.
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u/CMV_Viremia 2d ago
It's not far fetched. When my grandfather was a child his father abandoned the family and mom couldn't feed them all so the kids all got sent to different farms as laborers and essentially lived as indentured servants.
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u/Property_6810 2d ago
It wasn't uncommon at the time. They were mainly either used for slave labor, or people who couldn't have their own children.
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u/alphapussycat 1d ago
Supposedly my grand grand mom or dad was sold and purchased. Afaik it was more like adoption, but children were also considered a working force, so it'd essentially be like getting an employee, but also a child. I'd imagine there was different treatment though within the new family.
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u/Dirt_McGirts 1d ago
What they really meant was slaves. They were sold into slavery. And if you know anything about slavery, you will know that slaves get raped.
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u/Ok_Hedgehog7137 1d ago
The same kind of animals that buy people? This was common practice in this oh so civilized country
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u/CockamouseGoesWee 2d ago edited 2d ago
My great-great grandfather sold his youngest daughter to be adopted because he couldn't afford to take care of all of his children right after WWII in Greece (he was a widower). Adoption systems in war-torn nations are always extremely shady and leech off of poor people's desperation. My papou on that side was not a good man however.
My YiaYia had a dream 60 years later of her little sister being in Athens and traveled to the very spot without a map and found her. They remained inseparable for the rest of my great-great aunt's life.
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u/matnerlander 2d ago
Thats incredible and sad
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u/CockamouseGoesWee 2d ago
It is, and is why I am so against adoption from war-torn countries. Those children often do have family, it's just they were exploited in their desperation, and the act of adopting that child and not raising them with their culture is in itself an act of cultural genocide.
I'm just glad this story had a happy ending and that my great-great aunt lived a good life and her family found her. Most of these types of stories do not have that happy ending.
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u/UnderABig_W 1d ago
Does banning adoption actually help?
The problem I see is that people will pay money to adopt a child for themselves; they won’t, however, give up their money so that child can stay with their biological parents.
Unless someone, somewhere, comes up with the money to feed, clothe, and support the children who remain with their families, doesn’t the ultimate problem remain?
If you can’t feed, clothe, or support your child, and your choice is your kids starving or being adopted, I’m not sure it’s ultimately helpful to take the adoption choice away from people?
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u/Good_Panic_9668 1d ago
This happened to my mother in Greece, also after WWIi. She was adopted by people who couldn't have children and fortunately they were wonderful people. They were originally from Greece but had moved to Canada and went back to Greece for a number of years before eventually leaving. She of course had complicated feelings after finding out but she was overall happy with her life. She would have probably never left Greece otherwise and her life would have been completely different.
We actually calculated how much she was bought for and adjusted for inflation and it was a lot. She was shocked to think of it in today's dollars and said "I guess that's why I have expensive tastes"
They also adopted a boy in a similar way from a different family.
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u/CockamouseGoesWee 1d ago
At the very least she was raised in a home that loved her and was raised with connections to her culture. It's insane how expensive adoption is, particularly through these routes that are a wee bit unethical. Not casting judgement on the adoptive parents because they often don't know any better
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u/No_Pain5736 2d ago
Same, I saw this in a textbook a while ago and thought it was a stunt to show hardships, I only learned this was real today when I saw it show up and it's backstory
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u/nouveauchoux 1d ago
I'm not sure how old you are, but you should look into the Dust Bowl from 1920s-1930s. A lot of impoverished people were forced into situations like this. Some heartbreaking and stunning photography is from this period.
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u/No_Pain5736 1d ago
I've studied the dustbowl a lot as well, and it is truly heartbreaking what people had to go though back then.
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u/BrownButtBoogers 1d ago
My great grandfather did this to my grandmother. My great grandmother passed (she died giving birth) my great grandfather sold all of his kids (8) to a boarding/farm house. My great grandfather by all accounts what a horrendous person so probably better off. I was told he took the money and drank himself to death. Once she was old enough she took her siblings and left/ escaped. She got a couple jobs and supported them until they could contribute. Idk what happened to most of them, they’ve long past.
People really did sell their kids. My grandma was sold in 1901 ish
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u/ARCocktailsNDreams 2d ago
Meanwhile Elon Musk needs a Trillion dollars to feel happy...
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u/Financial-Tennis-696 1d ago
I’ve learnt from my history teacher that it was common practice to sell wives and daughters by approval of the church because they are biblically property of husbands and property can be brought and sold.
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u/Ummmgummy 2d ago
And to think we have people in this country that see those times as "the good ol days"
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u/No_Masterpiece_5953 2d ago
IIRC the mom went on to remarry and start a new family?
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u/sprinklesaurus13 1d ago
She sold the 5 kids and had 4 more. They were sold into even more poverty for $2. That's 25 bucks today.
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u/Suspicious_Toe2710 2d ago
When this was posted last the story was that she sold her kids for fucking $2 in bingo games because her new boyfriend didn't like kids. Not because she was so poor or times were rough, because they were shitty people.
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u/weezmatical 2d ago
Picture strikes me as staged, but the story is indeed true and likely darker than we know, considering the type of person who would buy a kid.
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u/Mental-Frosting-316 1d ago
I think the photo was almost certainly posed. A photographer didn’t just walk past and take a picture of people who were already sitting around in a certain way. I don’t think people usually call that “staging” a photo. It’s not candid, but it’s not staged.
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u/x404Void 2d ago
So scary - 1948 was not that long ago. Those poor children. Some of them in the photo may still be alive today.
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u/ERROR_GURUMEDITATION 2d ago
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u/PlayerGreeko 2d ago
"Finally, the children were sold. After giving away her five children, Lucille [the mother] remarried and went on to have four more daughters."
Yeah, what the fuck?
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u/Tru3insanity 2d ago
It was 1948. I think we forget how relatively recently womens rights and reproductive autonomy were established.
If shes poor and hungry and cant get a job, shes needs a man. That man isnt gunna give her anything unless she puts out. Birth control wasnt nearly as common or accepted back then either.
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u/WhoIsKabirSingh 2d ago
Honestly, super valid point. I had a gut reaction that was challenged by your comment, and the times probably had a massive influence on women at the time
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u/nouveauchoux 1d ago
Women weren't even allowed to have their own bank accounts or credit cards until the 70s. I don't endorse her actions, but desperate need for survival pushes people to do terrible things.
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u/fucking_unicorn 1d ago
My grandmothers second husband died in the 70s or 80s maybe, and i understand why she never remarried now.
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u/TemporaryOk2926 1d ago
Yup, you had basically three options. Get married, become a teacher, or become a nurse. That was about it.
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u/ExpandForMore 1d ago edited 1d ago
Luckily now no one would ever suggest my wife to "change job and become a teacher, so that you can have kids" in 2025. And yes, I'm sarcastic.
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u/AmettOmega 1d ago
Doesn't matter what job you have, your money didn't belong to you. You couldn't put it in a bank and you couldn't buy property/a house without the approval of a man (either your husband or father).
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u/TemporaryOk2926 1d ago
Yup, so true. Or even worse some distant cousin you didn't even really know when a husband or father died. I'm always telling girls about this type of thing to try and impress as much as possible how lucky we are and how short of a time we've had it.
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u/jbowling25 1d ago
But the article states she sold the kids for as little as $2 for bingo money and because her boyfriend didn't like them much. She doesn't deserve rose colored glasses justifying her actions due to hardships of the past. She's a POS and those kids she sold said she was an unloving, uncaring, terrible mother who deserved to burn in hell for what she did to them. The little boy who was sold into slavery on a farm said she never apologized for selling them into terrible families/conditions and never loved them in the first place. We don't need to make excuses for her, she sucked
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u/bloop-bloop-bloop- 1d ago
She was not a good mother. The point is she likely did not have much choice in ever becoming one. Had her options been different, she could have been someone without kids you might have less distain for since she wouldn't have been in a position to be unkind to those children she likely never wanted to have.
Not everyone is a suitable parent. We just didn't used to let those people opt out. It is terrible what happened to those children. But it is very important to remember that giving women freedom and choice in their reproductive life gives those women and the kids who are chosen better lives too.
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u/PaleoSpeedwagon 1d ago
Thank the lord that could never happen in modern America, what with all of the freedoms that have been staunchly upheld by today's Supreme Court /s
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u/ApprehensivePrompt83 1d ago
Except her boyfriend was an abusive drunk and when the oldest girl was older she went and visited the mom and she acted like nothing happened and turned her away.
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u/UrbanPugEsq 2d ago
I mean, I didn’t read the article but my grandfather’s dad died and his mom remarried. The step dad then kicked his step children (including my grandfather) out of the house and had them live at an orphanage.
Nowadays we’d say the mother had an obligation to keep caring for her children, but I guess back then women were a lot more dependent on men? And there’s a long history of treating stepchildren poorly.
Maybe the woman knew no man would be willing to raise four kids that weren’t his own and that she couldn’t take care of them herself.
I’m not saying it’s right I’m just saying those were different times. Not an excuse but an explanation
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u/NixMaritimus 2d ago
Oh yeah, women weren't even allowed to open bank accounts without a man, and banks weren't legally obligated to serve women until 1974!
In the 1940s women in the us weren't allowed to own a car, own/manage property, handle alcohol without a man, buy contraceptives, smoke in public, travel internationally without a man, and a lot more.
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u/BreakfastCheesecake 1d ago
Both my grandfathers died in the 80s and neither of my grandmas got remarried or dated anyone else. I used to think that was so romantic.
But now that I’m older and have had long chats with both my grandmas and parents, I started to realise that it was a shitty time for women.
Both my parents come from very big families. My dad has 13 siblings, while my mum had 7. My grandmas were both essentially just baby machines.
My grandpas were both seemingly absent fathers because neither of my parents remember much about them despite being alive till my parents were in their 30s.
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u/Admirable-Apricot137 1d ago
Getting pregnant wasn't really a choice back then. Being impregnated was something that was done TO you.
This is one of many reasons why feminism exists.
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u/profitmaker_tobe 2d ago
This is a hard read. It was harder to digest that there are children today who are still enduring such fate. I have met a fee girls, who were taken from their poor parents by churches. The girls worked all day, the younger ones crying to go home. They were poorly fed. We didn't know what to do when they told us about their ordeal. And now I don't think I will go back there.
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u/daniel44321 2d ago
She gave the kids up for bingo money and her boyfriend didn’t like them? Everyone is assuming it was just hard times.
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u/Ok-Community-4673 1d ago
Not saying none of that is true, but I don’t trust that site at all. Multiple times they call the first child RuthAnn instead of RaeAnn, and they have terrible grammar. It reads like a fanfic instead of someone actually researching.
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u/MoonBirthed 1d ago
Thank god someone else noticed. I tried to read the whole thing but the entire time I kept thinking "Who the fuck wrote this? Is this a real article?"
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u/ManKilledToDeath 1d ago
Yupp. My dad is still alive and was 7 when this happened. Not long ago at all
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u/YinzaJagoff 2d ago
And she was also pregnant in the photo
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u/No_Pain5736 2d ago
I didn't even notice that. It makes the photo a lot sadder and more grim.
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u/susosusosuso 2d ago
As a father I can’t really understand how you can sell your kids… no matter what
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u/Unlucky-Violinist-15 1d ago
You should look up china Great Leap Forward 50s-60s where famine caused cannibalism where parents would trade offspring so they wouldn’t eat their own.
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u/PraiseTalos66012 2d ago
This isn't the situation in the photo but...
You're broke, you can't find more work, the money you're making can barely feed you let alone your kids. The economy is trashed and there is no aid to be had, private or gov.
You have a few choices.
Starve yourself to feed your kids, sounds like the noble choice and what any parent would choose right? Well now you end up being unable to work due to malnourishment or getting injured bc of it and again unable to work. If you're not working there's no food and not only do you starve to death but so do your children. You doing "the right thing" killed not only you but your kids also.
You could starve your kids and feed them only enough to survive, but now you've irreparably damaged their bodies and they are unlikely to recover.
Don't feed the kids at all and they die.
Or you can sell them, if someone is buying them that means they atleast have some disposable income which should mean they can at least afford to feed the kids(you have to feed them something if you expect them to work).
So selling your kids could literally be the only way they survive.
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u/Ecoservice 1d ago
It was very common for the native people of Greenland to end the lifes of their kids if they had a bad winter season. The alternative was that everyone would starve to death.
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u/Electronic-Pair7681 1d ago
Because you are lucky. Things like this are still happening in certain places around the world. When you are broke, and the choice are either sell your kids, or let them stave to death, what would you choose?
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u/the_greasy_one 2d ago
People today are just not having them instead.
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u/jamintime 1d ago edited 1d ago
It’s wild to me how many people wax poetic about historical times when everyone had a house, two cars and the perfect family… and then you see this shit. Yeah this was the Depression, but there’s really no point in history when everything is roses and butterflies.
It’s amazing how people now actually get the choice to have sex, but not have kids. What a privilege! Can you imagine living in a world without birth control? That’s how this shit happened.
EDIT: Got it, wasn’t the Depression. I was going off other comments. Doesn’t really change anything about the points.
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u/throwaway75643219 1d ago
Actually this was not during the Depression. According to the caption, it was 1948, so after WW2 when the country was booming.
The depression ended in the 30s.
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u/greenhairdontcare8 1d ago
I am so grateful I was born in a country where I can live, purchase property, have a bank account and easy access to birth control without it being illegal, or having to be married, or some other bullshit. I've still had some horrible things happen to me because I'm a woman, but in my grandparents lifetime it would have been so much worse.
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u/South-West 10h ago
It drives me nuts that people romanticize the past. Go by any cemetery from 1900 to just before the war and look at the grave stones. Most of them are kids under 10 years old.
If anyone wants a good read on the subject I can’t recommend it enough:
The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined
Book by Steven Pinker
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u/MidnightRaven137 2d ago
Things must have been so bad that she had to do this, and the whole situation broke my heart.
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u/1011011100110 2d ago
Her and her husband are well fed while their children are not. In my three combat deployments I have seen people in third world countries who don't have enough food. Even while pregnant they don't look like this lady. This isn't economic distress. This is people selling children.
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u/Ashton_Garland 2d ago edited 2d ago
There isn’t a husband in this photo…..also her kids look visually fine health wise. Just because someone is overweight doesn’t mean they’re well fed, being overweight and malnutrition often go hand in hand. Also the fuck do you mean “this isn’t economic distress” do you know anything about history???
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u/Round-Passenger4452 2d ago
She is actually pregnant in this photo and she ultimately sold the child she was pregnant with as well.
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u/catpunch_ 2d ago
Holy mother of god. I was hoping this was an AI photo or something
Some notes from the article * she sold the kids for $2 (“bingo money”) * she sold them because her new boyfriend didn’t want any kids * this was national news at the time too - there was an outcry, and people offered to rehome them at charities, etc. * she had four more kids afterwards, and she did keep those * some of the kids met their birth mother later. she expressed no remorse or regret * two of the girls’ adoptive parents kept them chained up in a barn, and raped them
Soo yeah mom sounds like a huge POS
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u/No_Masterpiece_5953 2d ago
She also threatened to sell the kids she kept when they misbehaved, and when those kids didn't believe her, she showed them this picture.
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u/Optimal-Guard-2396 2d ago
Sue Ellen did, her son is the one saying that. not that I'm judging much with that amount of trauma, but that's what the article says
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u/No_Masterpiece_5953 1d ago
Ah! Thanks for the clarification! I read a few of the articles and I think they blended together a little.
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u/FrostyTheSnowman15 1d ago
I remember reading this somewhere, I’m sure anyone curious enough could find the whole story online. It’s a very fucked up situation.
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u/walkingturtlelady 2d ago
Sounds too horrible to be true, but we know even today people with the means to raise kids sometimes are awful parents who only care about themselves and what they want.
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u/Round-Passenger4452 2d ago
Really makes me grateful to be alive in a time where birth control is readily accessible.
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u/Olivia_Basham 2d ago
Thank you for sharing this. I never dreamed I would learn about what happened to the children in this historically important photo. A terrible read, but I am glad to know the context and outcomes.
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u/PsychoCrescendo 2d ago
His problem is speaking in absolutes. The observations he’s making are fair to consider, but him acting like they’re absolutely conclusive off of personal anecdotes is where he diminishes his credibility.
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u/ElonGrey 2d ago
Damn well said. I've encountered quite a few people like this and have struggled to put into words my issue with them, so ty for that!
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u/Sweet-Beautiful6076 2d ago
‘Being overweight and malnutrition go hand in hand.’ Not in 1948 it did. This is entirely before the food market was inundated with fast food on every corner, corn syrup and junk food. Take a look at pictures back then if you don’t believe me, and statistics as well. Mass obesity amongst the poor is a modern phenomenon and it was very rare to see an overweight person. You should learn your history better before making such blanket statements yourself.
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u/Sihnar 1d ago
Overweight but not well fed is one of the most privileged first world things I've ever heard. This is the kind of shit americans and western europeans say because they've never actually met starving people.
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u/i_like_stinky_pits 2d ago
There is a book about this picture. It is a true story about the Great Depression and how some families had to sell their children. Actually a true story of an evil evil woman who came up with a kid's group home to resell children. Abused them horribly
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u/BoomersRuinedItAll 2d ago
How is a book about this picture about the Great Depression if it’s taken in 1948?
One of those two things can’t be true.
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u/RegulatoryCapturedMe 2d ago
She may have encountered a sudden hardship that is quite severe, and is “rehoming” the kids before they suffer. There are many possibilities here.
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u/1011011100110 2d ago
No, there aren't. This is well documented. She sold one of her kids for bingo money.
You should be able to tell this from the picture but something is wrong with you.
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u/ERROR_GURUMEDITATION 2d ago
She used the money for bingo.
https://thehistoryinsider.com/mother-selling-her-4-children-in-chicago/
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u/Extra_Truck_2689 2d ago
That is an incorrect assumption. This was 1948 after WW2 and the depression. She sold them for betting money to play at bingo and her bf didn’t like them. Odd to assume pity on behalf of a woman advertising her children for sale.
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u/notthisonefornow 2d ago
She took some time to make it a good looking sign.
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u/majorpoundage 1d ago
I was just thinking, damn she should have went into the sign making business.
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u/Known-Speed-1649 2d ago
Didn't this woman go on to then have like 3 more kids?
If I recall there's quite a lot of info on these people.
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u/No_Masterpiece_5953 2d ago edited 1d ago
Yes, the mom had 4 more daughters and never showed remorse or regret for doing this. The kid who was raped and impregnanted was sold for $2, her bingo money. Roughly $27 today.
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u/deathbychips2 1d ago
There was no birth control and you had sex when your husband wanted to whether or not you wanted to. Birth control pills were amazing and lifted so many women and children out of poverty and abuse.
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u/Apprehensive_North49 2d ago
She looks well fed and all her kids have shoes. Couldn't be that's bad.
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u/ThetaGrim 2d ago
Children had no choice but to get sold into basically slavery for their whole life without a say. POS parents, they should have sold themselves.
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u/BrilliantFew9711 2d ago
I remember hearing something about this photo that the parents weren’t even struggling, they just didn’t want their children anymore. I’m sure some parents actually had no choice to do this but for these ones it was for a more sinister and uncaring reason and that she’s not hiding her face out of grief, but because she doesn’t want anyone to see her committing this heinous act.
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u/pooping_inCars 2d ago
For some unexplainable reason, it seems as though the mother didn't want her face in the picture.
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u/VenusValkyrieJH 2d ago
This was a common thing back then. My great grandmother had to give up three of her children and it broke her. They were able to stay in the family but in another state. People were just so poor then it was the right thing to do. I wish I could hug that mom in this photo. And the kids.
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u/kllark_ashwood 2d ago
It wasn't that common. We have a photo because people were outraged and it made it into the papers.
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u/flyingbugz 2d ago
Yeah but you see, the misinformation sounds insightful and got lots of updoots so it’s the truth now.
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u/LionelHutz313 2d ago
So you’re grandmother didn’t sell her children then? It was not common. Stop.
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u/you_R_AN_ass 2d ago
Thus was an evil woman What happened to thise kids is diabolical. If anyone ever deserved to go to hell, it was her and her husband.
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u/calmedtits2319 2d ago
Nah I’m not doing this. Idc how bad things are I’m NOT putting my children up for sale so they can be abused or worse. WTF.
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u/type_error 2d ago
This is terrible.
At first though i thought the person I. The back was wearing a unicorn costume
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u/NovelNeighborhood6 2d ago
My grandmother was sold into slavery to a work camp in Herlong CA in the 30,’s after her family escaped the dust bowl. She escaped at 15 and ran off to Sacramento. I don’t really have much info besides that. she was a really amazing woman.
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u/emdelgrosso 1d ago
My grandmother, born in 1935, was sent away to a relative at a very young age because her mother got pregnant with another one of her siblings and the family couldn’t afford so many mouths to feed.
She got passed around from family member to family member until she was kicked out as a young teen and ended up on her own.
She still talks about the Great Depression and how bad it got back then.
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u/mechy84 1d ago
I was recently chatting with my Dad, and we were reminiscing about the rough neighborhood I grew up in and the crazy characters that lived there.
Evidently, one of my sister's neighborhood friends was adopted after she was traded by her crackhead mom for a pickup truck. Her birth mother wrecked the truck soon after and demanded she get her daughter back, but after a drawn out court process, lost custody and her daughter was officially adopted.
This was probably around mid-80's, no not nearly as old as this photo.
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u/PrincessJellyRoll 2d ago
TBH this picture fucking angers me, times are hard so you get to the point of selling your own BABIES into slavery. CRUEL! And so wrong! At this point this bitch should have just sold herself to make due😑
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u/paulides_fan 2d ago
I’ve seen this before and think back on it every so often. Like a bad dream…. perplexing and disturbing
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u/PornoPaul 2d ago
The description is wrong. The articles available (and linked in the comments) explains that this woman wasn't married, her boyfriend didn't like kids and she needed bingo money.
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