meless, faceless individuals who do not have much emotional impact on the average person. Not so the story of Holly and her family as described in Kozol's book.
Holly, who spent most of her childhood in foster homes, first became pregnant in 12th grade. At that time, she became the victim of discrimination and stereotyping as an unwed, teen-mother. This led to a series of low-paying jobs, lack of confidence, and in time another child. At one point, she tried to go back to school to complete a GED, but this educational attempt was interrupted when her mother, with whom she was then living, was evicted. At this point, she was forced to turn to welfare to support her children. She was living in a homeless shelter when she learned she was pregnant for the third time, this time by her new husband, David. Now her nuclear family consisted of her two children, by different fathers, and her husband, who was out of work.
Subsequently, she lost her place in the homeless center because she wanted her new husband to live with her. During the rest of her pregnancy, she lived in seven different centers, and when the child was born she was living in a center with no heat and no refrigeration. Some days after her son was born, he contracted a viral infection which eventually led to blindness, and finally death. This short narrative roughly outlines the social problems that affected Holly and her family. One way to characterize this family would be as dysfunctional; another way would be to say they were victims of their circumstances, poor education, lack of social stratification, and class. Neither Holly or her husband knew how to solve problems such as securing the medicine their child needed nor how to resolve their unemployment or housing problems. They merely tried to live from day to day.
Holly and David are examples of the conflict theory, which states that conflict is a permanent feature of social life and that as a re