The strong moral and social stigma associated with being poor may explain the women's reluctance to use the term. Women's conceptions of their future include issues of finitude, death and dying, spirituality and the afterlife, and thoughts about subsequent generations. Participants have a strong sense of the sacred that is internally focused, personally constructed and built from life circumstances. As well, there are telling differences between the Caucasian women who see death as a time of sleep and the African-American women whose primary concern is whether or not they will suffer violent deaths but who view death as a portal to a better life. In Chapter 7, the discussion regarding subsequent generations includes harrowing tales of drug use, estrangement, and death that characterize the lives of the children and grandchildren of the poor African-American women.
Poverty is also a moral issue.
The various aspects of the paradox of poverty find their meaning in American society in which poverty signifies moral failure and lack of status as an individual. Poverty is built into the structure of American society, but it is the individual who is poor and accepts the blame for her own poverty. The narratives of non-poor women identify the moral aspects of success in terms of choice and protection. Poor African-American women equated success with the ability to survive in the face of class, racial and gender discrimination. For them, moral success had little to do with poverty.