Squeezed : : why our Families Can't Afford America

Locations
Call Number: 305.5 Qu
On Shelf At: Downtown Library

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	305.5 Qu	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	305.5 Qu	4-week checkout	Due 04-22-2024

Inconceivable : pregnant and squeezed -- Hyper-educated and poor -- Extreme day care : the deep cost of American work -- Outclassed : life at the bottom of the top -- The nanny's struggle -- Uber dads : moonlighting in the gig economy -- The second act industry : or the midlife do-over myth -- Squeezed houses -- The rise of 1 percent television -- Squeezed by the robots -- Conclusion: the secret life of inequality.
"Squeezed" weaves together intimate reporting with sharp and lively critique to show how the high cost of parenthood and our increasingly unstable job market have imploded the middle-class American Dream for many families, and offers surprising solutions for how we might change things. 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"-- Provided by publisher.

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