Squeezed: Why Our Families Can't Afford America

by Alissa Quart

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062412263
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	05/07/2019
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

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.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

1 Inconceivable: Pregnant and Squeezed 11

2 Hyper-Educated and Poor 33

3 Extreme Day Care: The Deep Cost of American Work 63

4 Outclassed: Life at the Bottom of the Top 89

5 The Nanny's Struggle 111

6 Uber Dads: Moonlighting in the Gig Economy 147

7 The Second Act Industry: Or the Midlife Do-Over Myth 165

8 Squeezed Houses 189

9 The Rise of 1 Percent Television 206

10 Squeezed by the Robots 225

Conclusion: The Secret Life of Inequality 249

Acknowledgments 267

Bibliography 271

Notes 275

Index 297

Reading Group Guide 313

Further Reading 317

Editorial Reviews

The stories of a falling down middle class reflect a felt experience of anxiety that is often lost in data-driven tales of recession and recovery.

Financial Times

Think of Alissa Quart’s new book . . . as “What to Expect When You’re Expecting Under Late Capitalism.” Of the more than 50,000 books listed on Amazon under ‘Parenting,’ few engage as deeply with the economic pressures today’s parents must navigate.

In These Times

Quart is a sympathetic listener, getting people to reveal not just the tenuousness of their economic situations but also the turbulence of their emotional lives... We could all use her expert guidance through the maze.

New York Times

Squeezed captures well the toxic combination of American individualism and the disrupted evolution of particular professions that has left millions of millennials in a more fragile financial condition than they expected would be their lot in life.

The Washington Post

The issue is overwhelmingly structural and social, not individual or moral. We haven’t failed; Capitalism has failed us. As Quart reminds her reader—and as every story in the book is meant to illustrate—the economic bind we find ourselves in cannot be solved by personal discipline or better financial decisions.

New York Times Book Review

It’s not often that you can call a densely reported work of literary non-fiction about economic inequality a riveting page-turner, but Squeezed is just that.

The Guardian

What Alissa Quart does so beautifully is weave together textured, compelling portraits of individual families with big ideas. Read this important book to understand the challenges your own family faces in parenting, housing, planning for the future—and read it to find out what to do about them!

Peggy Orenstein

Eloquent and passionate . . . In deeply etched portraits of struggling professionals, Quart evokes how soaring costs and hostile social policy have trapped middle-class families in quicksands of debt and emotional stress.

The Forward

A thoughtful, enlightening and painful analysis of the ever-growing divide in the American economy.

BookPage

Profound, a sweeping, blistering portrait of hard-working people from all walks of life. It’s a rousing wakeup call that also points the way forward to a more equitable, expansive future.

Astra Taylor

Alissa Quart is a modern James Agee. Squeezed gets deep inside the increasingly perilous financial lives of American families showing that they are collateral damage of our disappearing government. A damning, necessary and intensely vital book.

Helaine Olen

A vivid prose stylist, Quart makes powerfully real what happens when those who were once middle class can now only window shop for the American Dream. She also offers crucial collective plans to get us out of our anguishing binds.

Arlie Hochschild

A disciplined journalist, Quart [frames] her facts and figures with unsettling personal stories of financial ruin... What stays with you is the precariousness and stress to which today’s capitalism subjects millions of even relatively privileged people.

Plough

A powerful book. . . . The color of your collar, or your red or blue state, doesn’t matter. Quart reveals in this work that we’re in this together.

Martha’s Vineyard Times

[Quart] shares familiar stories of economic frustration as well as hard evidence for the causes of it. It’s an often tough but deeply empathetic call to action, one that exists in the real world of family, work, debt and even dreams.

Salon

Quart deftly chronicles the plight of Americans confronting the dangerous rise of Middle Class financial instability. Squeezed is journalism at its best: exploratory, visceral, and searching for answers. An important work to which attention should—and must—be paid.

David Corn

What is perhaps unusual about Quart's book is her attention to how we feel…specifically our peculiar willingness to take personal responsibility for problems that are not our fault. Everyone Quart talks to is acutely stressed, which makes sense. But everyone also feels guilty. Why? People have been so successfully inculcated into neoliberal ideology that nobody thinks twice about feeling bad about not making enough money. Of course, what makes the ideology persuasive is that there's a grain of truth to it; there are people who through a combination of dedication and luck manage to overcome their inherited lot. Yet the issue is overwhelmingly structural and social, not individual or moral. We haven't failed; Capitalism has failed us. As Quart reminds her reader—and as every story in the book is meant to illustrate—the economic bind we find ourselves in cannot be solved by personal discipline or better financial decisions.

The New York Times Book Review - Emily Cooke

Quart is a sympathetic listener, getting people to reveal not just the tenuousness of their economic situations but also the turbulence of their emotional lives. A chapter on middle-age job-seekers who once worked as computer programmers or newspaper reporters captures the fallout of a discriminatory job market, which tells older unemployed people they should buck up and start over while also making them feel superfluous…[Quart's] reporting…is reason enough to read Squeezed, especially as she brings to light how parents try to cope with the financial strain of caring for children. For all that legislators like to sentimentalize family values and hard work, they've largely abdicated their responsibility toward families, who are left to navigate a job market that prefers its employees childless and unencumbered.

The New York Times - Jennifer Szalai

04/30/2018
Quart, editor of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, deep dives into the struggle of ordinary families whose middle-class American dream is frustratingly out of reach. Pregnancy discrimination, childcare that can cost more than college, crippling student loan debt, limitations on midlife career makeovers, and robots replacing humans are just some of the barriers to job stability and financial solvency she covers. Quart understands and communicates well about the myriad, complex, situations that prevent many contemporary families from achieving a standard of living comparable to that of their parents. Her profiles include the “hyper-educated poor,” adjunct professors who live in poverty, barely making a living wage; “extreme day care,” which can include 24-hour childcare for parents with harsh and erratic work schedules; and impoverished immigrant nannies, who are underemployed and often separated from their own families while caring for their employers’ children. Quart details sound policy-related solutions—an adjunct rights movement; free preschool; welfare-type assistance for elder care and childcare; an end to federal funding for sketchy, for-profit schools; and universal basic income. Her ambitious, top-tier reportage tells a powerful story of America today. (June)

Publishers Weekly

The issue is overwhelmingly structural and social, not individual or moral. We haven’t failed; Capitalism has failed us. As Quart reminds her reader—and as every story in the book is meant to illustrate—the economic bind we find ourselves in cannot be solved by personal discipline or better financial decisions.” — New York Times Book Review

“Quart is a sympathetic listener, getting people to reveal not just the tenuousness of their economic situations but also the turbulence of their emotional lives... We could all use her expert guidance through the maze.” — New York Times

“An eye-opening look at the forces that make it harder than ever for the middle class to survive.” — People

“Squeezed captures well the toxic combination of American individualism and the disrupted evolution of particular professions that has left millions of millennials in a more fragile financial condition than they expected would be their lot in life.” — The Washington Post

“It’s not often that you can call a densely reported work of literary non-fiction about economic inequality a riveting page-turner, but Squeezed is just that.” — The Guardian

“In a nation beset by income inequality and riven by conflict, the conception of the quiet contentment of middle-class American life appears to be on the wane. . . . Alissa Quart . . . lucidly demonstrates that for many, the dream of such satisfaction is increasingly out of reach.” — Boston Globe

“The stories of a falling down middle class reflect a felt experience of anxiety that is often lost in data-driven tales of recession and recovery.” — Financial Times

“On the day that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez accomplished her remarkable victory in the Democratic primary . . . a new book arrived, as if by cosmic fiat, to help explain the emerging realignments of the political order: Squeezed.” — Ginia Bellafante, The New York Times

“Squeezed captures the dazed uncertainty of a post-recession generation of would-be parents for whom stagnant wages and ever-rising housing costs make them can’t-be ones...Quart [has] a knack for immersive, in-depth reporting, as well as an often-bruised sense of unlikely optimism.” — Bitch Magazine

“Think of Alissa Quart’s new book . . . as “What to Expect When You’re Expecting Under Late Capitalism.” Of the more than 50,000 books listed on Amazon under ‘Parenting,’ few engage as deeply with the economic pressures today’s parents must navigate.” — In These Times

“A devastating report on middle-class American families struggling to stay afloat . . . Quart eloquently relates these families’ psychological and socioeconomic predicaments, and amplifies those personal stories with research confirming significant and growing income inequality.” — The National Book Review, “5 Hot Books”

“Lucidly recounts . . . wrenching stories of economic hardship, while meticulously deconstructing some of the prevailing myths about middle-class life in the United States . . . Squeezed stands out for its insightful analysis of class dynamics in the United States.” — Minneapolis Star Tribune

“Eloquent and passionate . . . In deeply etched portraits of struggling professionals, Quart evokes how soaring costs and hostile social policy have trapped middle-class families in quicksands of debt and emotional stress.” — The Forward

“Quart captures how middle-class American families are struggling to attain the standard of living once enjoyed by their parents. [She] argues that higher earners, like most Americans, contend with income disparity and the extreme wealth enveloping metro regions.” — The American Conservative

“[Quart] shares familiar stories of economic frustration as well as hard evidence for the causes of it. It’s an often tough but deeply empathetic call to action, one that exists in the real world of family, work, debt and even dreams.” — Salon

“[Quart’s] ambitious, top-tier reportage tells a powerful story of America today.” — Publishers Weekly

“Vital to understanding American life today.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Reminiscent of Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed . . . will resonate with those feeling squeezed, and inform those who are not.” — Library Journal

“A compassionate, thoughtful examination of the economic struggles faced today by America’s middle class.” — Christian Science Monitor, “10 Best Books of June”

“Puts plain the economic predicament of the middle class in eloquent and heart-wrenching vividness.” — Electric Literature

“A powerful book. . . . The color of your collar, or your red or blue state, doesn’t matter. Quart reveals in this work that we’re in this together.” — Martha’s Vineyard Times

“Squeezed is at its absolute best when Quart combines her excellent reporting, rich with the perspective of that ‘Middle Precariat’, with a willingness to more openly and sharply decry the structural conditions that are giving way to such misery.” — PopMatters

“A disciplined journalist, Quart [frames] her facts and figures with unsettling personal stories of financial ruin... What stays with you is the precariousness and stress to which today’s capitalism subjects millions of even relatively privileged people.” — Plough

“A thoughtful, enlightening and painful analysis of the ever-growing divide in the American economy.” — BookPage

“Squeezed, like Nickel and Dimed . . . is worth reading if you’re invested in better understanding poverty in America.” — BITCH, “15 Books Feminists Should Read in June”

“A vivid prose stylist, Quart makes powerfully real what happens when those who were once middle class can now only window shop for the American Dream. She also offers crucial collective plans to get us out of our anguishing binds.” — Arlie Hochschild, author of Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right

“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

“What Alissa Quart does so beautifully is weave together textured, compelling portraits of individual families with big ideas. Read this important book to understand the challenges your own family faces in parenting, housing, planning for the future—and read it to find out what to do about them!” — Peggy Orenstein, author of Girls & Sex and Don’t Call Me Princess

“Quart deftly chronicles the plight of Americans confronting the dangerous rise of Middle Class financial instability. Squeezed is journalism at its best: exploratory, visceral, and searching for answers. An important work to which attention should—and must—be paid.” — David Corn, author of Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on America and the Election of Donald Trump

“Quart’s investigation, written with the elegance of a literary novel, forces us to examine the grave consequences of an economic structure that has crushed the very people it claims are at the heart of the American dream.” — Jeremy Scahill, author of Dirty Wars

“Profound, a sweeping, blistering portrait of hard-working people from all walks of life. It’s a rousing wakeup call that also points the way forward to a more equitable, expansive future.” — Astra Taylor, author of The People’s Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age

“Alissa Quart is a modern James Agee. Squeezed gets deep inside the increasingly perilous financial lives of American families showing that they are collateral damage of our disappearing government. A damning, necessary and intensely vital book.” — Helaine Olen, author of Pound Foolish: Exposing the Dark Side of the Personal Finance Industry

From the Publisher

In a nation beset by income inequality and riven by conflict, the conception of the quiet contentment of middle-class American life appears to be on the wane. . . . Alissa Quart . . . lucidly demonstrates that for many, the dream of such satisfaction is increasingly out of reach.

Boston Globe

An eye-opening look at the forces that make it harder than ever for the middle class to survive.

People

On the day that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez accomplished her remarkable victory in the Democratic primary . . . a new book arrived, as if by cosmic fiat, to help explain the emerging realignments of the political order: Squeezed.

Ginia Bellafante

Squeezed captures the dazed uncertainty of a post-recession generation of would-be parents for whom stagnant wages and ever-rising housing costs make them can’t-be ones...Quart [has] a knack for immersive, in-depth reporting, as well as an often-bruised sense of unlikely optimism.

Bitch Magazine

The stories of a falling down middle class reflect a felt experience of anxiety that is often lost in data-driven tales of recession and recovery.

Financial Times

Quart captures how middle-class American families are struggling to attain the standard of living once enjoyed by their parents. [She] argues that higher earners, like most Americans, contend with income disparity and the extreme wealth enveloping metro regions.

The American Conservative

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

Quart’s investigation, written with the elegance of a literary novel, forces us to examine the grave consequences of an economic structure that has crushed the very people it claims are at the heart of the American dream.

Jeremy Scahill

Squeezed is at its absolute best when Quart combines her excellent reporting, rich with the perspective of that ‘Middle Precariat’, with a willingness to more openly and sharply decry the structural conditions that are giving way to such misery.

PopMatters

Puts plain the economic predicament of the middle class in eloquent and heart-wrenching vividness.

Electric Literature

Lucidly recounts . . . wrenching stories of economic hardship, while meticulously deconstructing some of the prevailing myths about middle-class life in the United States . . . Squeezed stands out for its insightful analysis of class dynamics in the United States.

Minneapolis Star Tribune

“Squeezed, like Nickel and Dimed . . . is worth reading if you’re invested in better understanding poverty in America.

“15 Books Feminists Should Read in June̶ BITCH

A powerful book. . . . The color of your collar, or your red or blue state, doesn’t matter. Quart reveals in this work that we’re in this together.

Martha's Vineyard Times

Narrator Carly Robins takes her tone for much of this narration from the author’s anger at the predicament of “the middle precariat,” the struggling (often failing) middle class. These are the families who are trying to hold onto jobs, homes, and status in the face of declining salaries, uncertain work, and rising costs. But Robins’s pervasive tone of wry cynicism and arch disapproval toward the status quo soon becomes tiresome. Eventually, however, she varies her tone as the book changes focus. From that point, she is admirably clear, energetic, and adept at conveying the emotions behind the issues. Unfortunately, her pronounced lisp is distracting and has to be gotten used to after every break from listening. Still, her expressiveness and deftness in conveying sense overcome the reading’s shortcomings and make for a generally positive experience. W.M. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

SEPTEMBER 2018 - AudioFile

Narrator Carly Robins takes her tone for much of this narration from the author’s anger at the predicament of “the middle precariat,” the struggling (often failing) middle class. These are the families who are trying to hold onto jobs, homes, and status in the face of declining salaries, uncertain work, and rising costs. But Robins’s pervasive tone of wry cynicism and arch disapproval toward the status quo soon becomes tiresome. Eventually, however, she varies her tone as the book changes focus. From that point, she is admirably clear, energetic, and adept at conveying the emotions behind the issues. Unfortunately, her pronounced lisp is distracting and has to be gotten used to after every break from listening. Still, her expressiveness and deftness in conveying sense overcome the reading’s shortcomings and make for a generally positive experience. W.M. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

SEPTEMBER 2018 - AudioFile

★ 2018-04-16
Fighting to stay in the middle class."The middle class is endangered on all sides," argues journalist Quart (Republic of Outsiders: The Power of Amateurs, Dreamers, and Rebels, 2014, etc.), executive editor of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, a nonprofit journalism group. In this highly thoughtful and compassionate account, she describes the forces that are making the traditional aspects of the "American Dream" out of reach for many Americans. "It's not your fault….The problem is systemic," she writes. She cites the rising costs of education, health care, rent, and day care as well as the negative effects of unstable work hours, declining unionism, the gig and freelance economy, the bias against mothers and older workers, automation, and the political shift to the right. In chapters highlighting the experiences of men and women (especially pregnant and single-parent), Quart demonstrates that the social system has left the middle class "stranded, stagnant, and impotent." The biggest culprit is "growing income inequality." Many people who "believed that their training or background would ensure that they would be properly, comfortably middle-class" are now " ‘fronting' as bourgeois while standing on a pile of debt." The author delivers painful portraits of underemployed law school graduates, Uber-driving schoolteachers, and adjunct college professors—the "hyper-educated poor"—who earn less than $20,000 annually and shop exclusively at thrift shops. Often wracked by self-blame, isolated, and ashamed of their lack of money, those interviewed by Quart wonder how they are supposed to survive "doing what we love" in a society that undervalues caring and intellect and lacks subsidized day care and affordable housing. Some readers may balk at Quart's concern over the "psychological burden" facing upper-middle-class denizens in overpriced cities, but she offers excellent discussions of co-parenting, the problems facing immigrants, and the perils of enrolling in for-profit schools.Well-written, wide-ranging, and vital to understanding American life today.

Kirkus Reviews