Sometimes I scroll through Twitter and it feels like I’m losing my mind. So many people are struggling out there, and it seems like no one in charge gives a damn. It’s why I so consistently read books like Squeezed: Why Our Families Can’t Afford America by Alissa Quart (Ecco, 2018). I’m just trying to make any kind of sense of what’s going on out there. Though this book was written before the pandemic, it doesn’t back down in showing exactly how bad it was and still is out there. Sadly, not much has changed since its publication.
Life is tough these days, for so many reasons. The rent is too damn high, and it just keeps getting higher. Home ownership is completely out for far too many people, the price of food is ridiculous, and have you HEARD what people are paying for daycare? It’s all too much, and Alissa Quart, who has experienced all of these problems herself, decided to write about it.
Jobs that expect you to work like you don’t have a family. Daycare that costs more than your mortgage and expects you to pick up your kids like your boss lets you out on time and traffic doesn’t exist. Rent that goes up and up and up, even when you haven’t gotten a raise in six years (but your boss has, and the CEO’s pay has doubled in that time!). Families today are squeezed to the max (and yet people are out there screaming, “WHY IS EVERYONE DEPRESSED? WHAT COULD POSSIBLY BE CAUSING THIS???”) in almost every area, and it’s affecting every part of our society. Property ownership is down, people are having fewer children, and everyone is struggling.
Alissa Quart does an excellent job of illustrating so many of the areas in which American families are hurting. She highlights a few solutions, but not many, because there just aren’t many good ones. These problems are caused by the top, and the solutions will need to be implemented from the top down, something that still hasn’t happened yet despite even more people struggling than when this book was first written. This does give the book an overall depressing feel – I kept having to put it down to scroll through my phone, because somehow that wasn’t as much of a downer – but it does help to know that it’s not just me who’s seeing this, that the problem is widespread and societal, and it’s not getting the attention it needs.
Excellent read, if depressing.