Article

“How a recession changed a family’s path”

Authors: Walter Hamilton and Shan Li

Date of article: September 22, 2013

Latimes.com

Family, Community

The article describes a family with big dreams that became affected by the financial crisis. Janet Barker who is an eighth grade English teacher with two sons, Ryan and Jenny. She then got married to Bruce Hazelton in which let to a having a daughter Katie. Janet had hopes and big dreams for her family and her until things started to go in the wrong direction. She ended up taking care of her ex-husband, daughter, and son in law and grandchild. Plus at her job her raise where being cut because of furlough days, which meant more financial worries.

One of the things that caused Janet to have a more difficult time while supporting her family was that her ex-husband, which she was still living with, had gotten fired. Bruce Hazelton was a full time photographer and was let go unfortunately at age 60, in which he then hasn’t worked as a full time again. Another tragedy that occurs was that her daughter Katie had also big plans after finishing college. But after graduating Katie had no luck finding a job with her degree in sociology. She ended up getting a job as a receptionist and with a low salary that barely paid her bills for college loans. It seems that the family had plans but where affected and couldn’t keep up with financial needs.

I believe that the article showed a lot of support in the family, because although like for Janet getting divorce she still manage to support the ex husband. Janet also supported her daughter although her small business wasn’t going so well. Every time someone had some sort of problem they ended up supporting each other some way. But I also thing that this family had bad luck because they had everything plan towards their future but something also got in their way. Even when thing went wrong they manage to stick together.

Personally the point of the article was to show a story...