xxxx REVIEW BOOK
America Overworked and Underpaid in No-Vacation Nation Squeezed: Why Our Families Can’t Afford America, by Alissa Quart (HarperCollins, 2018) Reviewed by Lindsey Parent
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hy do so many people feel as though they just can’t seem to get ahead nowadays? In Squeezed, author Alissa Quart roamed the country to seek answers to that common question, interviewing large numbers of both close contacts and strangers with varying occupations and backgrounds. Quart found that they had one thing in common: all felt drained both financially and physically, but with scant sense of progress. They worried that the so-called “American Dream” no longer applied and had simply imploded in the faces of anxious middleclass Americans. Author Quart explains that insecure jobs, outrageous childcare costs and pay flatlined by profit-centric employers have left too many Americans burdened with college debt and living paycheck to paycheck. While it has always been every parent’s dream to give their children a better life than what they had, many adults are finding that they are struggling to even achieve the standard of living that their parents once had, never mind going above and beyond that.
working-age population: the scarcity of paid parental leave and the debt load borne by college-educated Americans who are now struggling financially. Alissa Quart’s decision to start her book with the chapter title of “Inconceivable: Pregnant and Squeezed” was a great idea because it immediately grabs the reader’s attention. While Quart seems mostly of a liberal bent, the majority of Americans of all political persuasions are either experiencing or know someone dealing with the financial pressures of having children, so they can easily relate. Quart starts by describing Daniela Nanau, a woman in her thirties working for a law firm in New York City when she unexpectedly gets pregnant. Why focus on Nanau, one might reasonably ask? The author feels confident from her research that she is representative of huge numbers of other struggling Americans. Nanau explained that she had purposely put off having children because she knew how costly it would be, but mainly because she knew her career did not support the childbearing process. There are so many families across the country that feel as though they can’t afford to have children. However, this is no surprise since only 14% of American workers have paid family leave. Quart argues that the employers are not the only ones to blame. The U.S. is alone among advanced economies in its lack of a national law that requires all employers to offer paid family leave each year.
Quart, a Columbia Journalism School alumna who is now executive editor of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, has been nominated for an Emmy and a National Magazine Award and published four acclaimed books including Branded and Monetized. Her motivation in this latest was to share the common experiences that so many families, including her own, have been dealing with for years. By writing Squeezed she not only wanted to highlight those struggling financially, but also some potential solutions proposed to improve their condition.
Nanau, just like many other women, immediately upon finding out that she and her husband were expecting their first child, thought of how this would affect her career. She knew that “if she wanted to survive in the field, she couldn’t have children until her forties.” She considered hiding her pregnancy in fear of being laid off or of hurting her chances of moving up in the law firm. Eventually she decided to tell her boss that she was expecting and, sure enough, the poor treatment followed immediately. Nanau’s boss began ignoring her completely and when they did speak he said nothing but rude remarks, all because he didn’t support her decision to have a child. Eventually Nanau quit her job due to the cruel treatment she was receiving just like so many other women who shared with Quart that their pregnancies got them fired or ruined their careers. So many people wonder why this behavior is still allowed in the workplace and the truth is that there are some laws against such discrimination,
Every chapter shares a different family’s experience of living in an America where they feel the system is constantly working against them. From nurses, to lawyers, to professors, to caregivers, each chapter tells the exhausting story of just how hard people are “fighting to stay in a class that may be melting away.” Squeezed not only assures the millions of struggling Americans that they aren’t alone, but it also strives to draw policy makers’ attention to the kinds of legal and institutional changes that could transform those people’s work lives. Out of all of the topics Quart tries to cover, she gives particular attention to two issues that currently affect a large share of the U.S. 28