So far, Squeezed has been named one of the books of the summer by Time Magazine and Nylon and one of the books of the month by Bitch Magazine and the Christian Science Monitor as well as one of the most anticipated books of 2018 by Publishers Weekly and The Week.
Squeezed: Why Our Families Can’t Afford America
by Alissa Quart
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.
Here’s what they’re saying
ABOUT THE BOOK
SQUEEZED: Why Our Families Can’t Afford America by Alissa Quart 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.
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
Photo by Ash Fox
Alissa Quart is the executive editor of the journalism organization the Economic Hardship Reporting Project. She is the author of three nonfiction books—Branded, Hothouse Kids, and Republic of Outsiders—and the poetry book Monetized.
She writes the “Outclassed” column for The Guardian, and won the 2017 Los Angeles Press Club Award for commentary. She also writes regularly for publications including the New York Times, The Nation, and The Atlantic and is a former Harvard University Nieman Fellow as well as a finalist for a National Magazine Award and an Emmy.
She was a Columbia University Journalism School’s Alumna of the Year in 2018. She lives in New York City with her family.
