ALISSA QUART: Squeezed

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.

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.