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    Squeezed: Why Our Families Can't Afford America
    Unavailable
    Squeezed: Why Our Families Can't Afford America
    Unavailable
    Squeezed: Why Our Families Can't Afford America
    Ebook372 pages6 hours

    Squeezed: Why Our Families Can't Afford America

    By Alissa Quart

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    One of TIME’s Best New Books to Read This Summer

    “Brilliant—a keen, elegantly written, and scorching account of the American family today. Through vivid stories, sharp analysis and wit, Quart anatomizes the middle class’s fall while also offering solutions and hope.” 
       — Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed

    Families today are squeezed on every side—from high childcare costs and harsh employment policies to workplaces without paid family leave or even dependable and regular working hours. Many realize that attaining the standard of living their parents managed has become impossible.

    Alissa Quart, executive editor of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, examines the lives of many middle-class Americans who can now barely afford to raise children. Through gripping firsthand storytelling, Quart shows how our country has failed its families. Her subjects—from professors to lawyers to caregivers to nurses—have been wrung out by a system that doesn’t support them, and enriches only a tiny elite.

    Interlacing her own experience with close-up reporting on families that are just getting by, Quart reveals parenthood itself to be financially overwhelming, except for the wealthiest. She offers real solutions to these problems, including outlining necessary policy shifts, as well as detailing the DIY tactics some families are already putting into motion, and argues for the cultural reevaluation of parenthood and caregiving.

    Written in the spirit of Barbara Ehrenreich and Jennifer Senior, Squeezed is an eye-opening page-turner. Powerfully argued, deeply reported, and ultimately hopeful, it casts a bright, clarifying light on families struggling to thrive in an economy that holds too few options. It will make readers think differently about their lives and those of their neighbors.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateJun 26, 2018
    ISBN9780062412270
    Author

    Alissa Quart

    Alissa Quart is the author of four previous books of nonfiction, including Squeezed: Why Our Families Can't Afford America and Branded: The Buying and Selling of Teenagers, and two books of poetry, most recently Thoughts and Prayers. She is the executive director of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project and has written for many publications, including the Washington Post, the New York Times, and Time. Her honors include an Emmy Award, an SPJ Award, and Nieman Fellowship. She lives with her family in Brooklyn.

    Read more from Alissa Quart

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    Reviews for Squeezed

    4/5

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    • 2/5
      While the writing is first rate, it covers nothing more than the author discovering that pregnancy is tough, kids are expensive, and a masters in poetry is not in great demand in the job market. Essentially a protracted observation that a liberal arts education is not a ticket to fame and wealth.

      A sequel determining that water is wet, gravity makes things fall, and that air is good seems inevitable.
    • 2/5
      Very weak book. Mostly a series of anedoctes, intercalated with the feminist and leftist feelings of the author, without any data to support them. The illegal immigrant from Haiti makes $48k , probably ten times what she would make in her birthplace, and the problem is America. Teachers make $69k but she says they are underpaid. Fathers drive Uber cars but, instead of acknowledging they do it because they love their families, she says it is because they are insecure in their masculinity. It's all about her opinions, even when they don't make any sense..Skip this one.

      3 people found this helpful