About this item
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 thingsFamilies 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.
About the Author
I am the author of the forthcoming Squeezed: Why Our Families Can't Afford America, the three non-fiction books Branded, Hothouse Kids and Republic of Outsiders and the poetry book Monetized. I am also the Executive Editor of the non-profit the Economic Hardship Reporting Project and write the Outclassed column for The Guardian as well as for publications like The New York Times, The Atlantic and The New York Review of Books. My poetry has appeared in the London Review of Books and The Nation et al. I was a 2018 Columbia University Journalism School Alumni Awardee and was a 2010 Nieman Fellow at Harvard and have been nominated for an Emmy and an ASME. I have also taught at Columbia University's Journalism School and many other universities. You can read more of my work at alissaquart.com or follow me on Twitter @lisquart. I live in New York City with my husband, daughter and hamster.
