Lalee's Kin

This was my second time seeing Lalee’s kin and once again I think the most striking thing was how incredibly poor this family was. It really is unbelievable that this type of poverty exists in our country.

The absence of any consistent and positive male influence in the household certainly has a negative effect on all the children, but it is most clear and most heartbreaking in its impact on Main and Redman. Even Lalee, who cares and sacrifices for all the kids, contributes to the destructive attitude of Main by making her negative opinion of men explicitly clear. When Main gets an attitude, Lalee dismissively attributes this to him becoming “mannish.”

One thing the movie mentions obliquely but never addresses fully is the enormous family sizes and the question of birth control. This family at least for several generations was having children far beyond their means to support them, which then created a cycle of unsupervised and uneducated children, many of whom would also get pregnant as teenagers. Just knowing about condoms and other forms of birth control is no guarantee that they will be used, but you get the feeling that maybe these kids don’t even understand. This family probably couldn’t afford any type of birth control, but you’d think that the state paying for a few condoms now and educating kids might save them money down the road. It’s patently obvious that most of these kids are having sex, so moral opposition seems a moot issue at this point.