Alissa Quart

Harvard Book Store welcomes acclaimed author and journalist ALISSA QUART for a discussion of her latest book, Squeezed: Why Our Families Can't Afford America. She will be joined in conversation by LISA MULLINS, the voice of WBUR's All Things Considered.

About Squeezed

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.

Praise

“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 Russell Hochschild, author of Strangers in Their Own Land

“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