num_pages: 336
description: Families today are squeezed on every sidefrom 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 subjectsfrom professors to lawyers to caregivers to nurseshave been wrung out by a system that doesnt 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.
language: English
title: Squeezed: Why Our Families Can't Afford America
publisher: Ecco