The adults have a limited assortment of print media at home. While Michelle reveals that she uses at least ten types of media, over half of the other women use a mere five or fewer types. All of the women say they use dictionaries periodically, but only half of them read newspapers, the bible, puzzle books or craft patterns. Further, the low-income homes are clustered together in their community and the families face limitations in affordable transportation. Thus, they are not readily able to participate in activities that are outside of their neighbourhood with people from other areas. With these limitations, they become more isolated in their community and stigmatized by those who have limited or no contact with them.

Emotional and Motivational Climate for Learning

This section presents five stressors in the emotional and motivational climate for learning perceived to impact on literacy development in families living in low-income circumstances. First, I discuss the stress produced from trying to balance financial and family needs. The impact of health conditions and behaviours on the parents and their children is then featured, followed by discussion on the effect of having a present time orientation. Parental attitudes regarding how children learn and parental aspirations for their children is then presented. Finally, the importance of meeting affiliation needs concludes this section. A summary of these stressors is contained in Table 10 at the end of this section.

Stress from Financial and Family Needs

Natalie emphasizes how challenging it is for families struggling to survive where the income from a low skill job is less than what the family would receive being on Income Assistance, "You…Yeah…You go out and you get a job and you make $6.50 an hour…Okay, so you work 40 hours a week…Okay…even at six dollars an hour that's 240 dollars a week, well that's about 800 dollars a month." On Income Assistance, this family is receiving 881 dollars per month, plus have their health card. Cheryl Brown, an experienced adult literacy practitioner who is active in New Brunswick's family literacy movement has estimated that in New Brunswick an individual must make at least $13.00 an hour to have the same lifestyle they have on income assistance with their health card (C. Brown, personal communication, March 23, 2003).