Imparing My Childhoods: A Comparison Of Childhoods

Comparison of Childhoods:

As the youngest of five children, to many it is not too astonishing that both my mother and father are a bit older than my friend’s parents. By the time I was born in March of 1998, my parents John and Luann had been married for nearly thirteen years and already had their hands full with my four older brothers Justin, Brendan, Conor, and Ryan. My dad and mom, forty-four and thirty-nine respectively were born in the 1950’s, were children of the 1960’s and both can vividly recall their 1970’s “glory days”. Needless to say, my parents and I had experienced drastically different childhoods.

My father, John was born in 1953, the fifth of seven children. Born into a lower-middle class Irish Catholic family, he often reminds

My mom, Luann was born in 1958 to an Italian immigrant mother and a second-generation Italian father. From the time my mom was twelve, she not only worked, but worked in order to provide for her family. She held several jobs at once, and by the time she was sixteen she was regularly grocery shopping and preparing meals for her family. My grandmother, a seamstress whom held a business out of their home was often too busy working and placed her former duties of cooking and cleaning for the family on my mom. In comparison to my mom, I often worked on the weekends and spent the forty or fifty dollars I made that weekend on food and gas for myself. It was not until I began college that I began giving the majority of my money to my parents in order to help pay for my schooling. In addition, and unlike my dad, my mom was very invested in her schooling. By the time she was seventeen she had enrolled at William Patterson and commuted daily so that she could continue working a full-time job. Moreover, a major difference from that of my mother’s childhood and mine is the difference in college tuition. While my parents are currently paying upwards of twenty-five thousand a year for me to attend college, my mom spent no more than three or four thousand annually. Therefore, she is always quick to tell me of how she never took out a loan and paid out of pocked without her parent’s