>> at a bookstore in washington d.c., author alissa quart discussed her new book, "squeezed". why our families can't afford america. she was interviewed by barbara - -. this is just under an hour. >> good evening everybody, welcome to politics and prose. please silencer cell phones and other devices. we are audio recording and video recording this event so we prefer no interruptions. you don't want your phone to be

the one going off on c-span. please use our microphone during our question and answer portion. we only have one tonight and it's over here. lastly, please fold up your chairs at the end of the event and place them against something solid bid our staff would appreciate that. i am pleased to introduce alissa quart, she's the author of four acclaimed books. branded, republic of outsiders. - - she writes a monthly column. in "squeezed", alissa quart analyzes the life of middle class americans that can barely afford to raise children. reporting on families just getting by as well as reporting on her own experience, she reports that parenthood is

financially overwhelming except to the wealthiest. she provides real solutions from necessary policy shifts from blueprints to see parenting as both professionally and politically valuable. david corn, co-author of russian black, rights 19 documents the dangerous pride of middle-class financial instability. "squeezed" is journalism at its best. exploratory, visceral and searching for answers. an important work for attention should and must be paid. alissa quart will be joined by barbara - - author of the classic nickel and dime which whom she cofounded the economic hardship - -. please join me in welcoming alissa quart and barbara - -. [applause] >> i am barbara and i thought i would spend - - start by introducing alyssa. start with how i came to know her. i started something called the

economic hardship reporting project which is this. >> there's more for people up here if they're interested. >> this is like five years ago. six, oh my gosh. before alyssa came along, we were floundering. in many ways. i take a lot of the blame. i'm not able to manage or figure out projects. i just like articles and essays and things like that. >> what are you trying to do with the - -? >> the idea was, we would raise money so that we could pay low income people, journalist generally. there's no shortage of low income journalists.

because nobody else is paying us anymore. i don't know if i should mention the atlantic.com. >> according to cdr there's been a 50 percent contraction of newsroom since 2005 so that's a lot of jobs lost. using a lot of people that needed help.>> but also who will turn in a 2-3000 piece to some well-known online. we thought we can pay you $75 for that. that's impossible if you've worked weeks or months on this piece. so we thought we would come in, we will pay you at what used to be the old standard like a

dollar a word. >> which was the standard in 1995. >> yeah. so we didn't have any trouble in attracting people that wanted to do this. one of them who came along as an editor with alyssa. not only is she an editor but a writer. she, i don't want to make this a machiavellian, she took over the organization. in no time at all. she was the executive editor and one of my - - she took it over because she had the vision. the imagination. she had the energy, the incredible energy to work with so many people. on their pieces. get those pieces placed and write her own. i would say this book, a lot of

it or most of it comes out of discussions at e hrp. we would talk about something like who takes care of the immigrant nannies children while she's here working for wealthy white people? that would turn into a series. >> then much elongated into one of the chapters in the book about a caregiver named blanco who was separated from her son for 10 years. he was in paraguay and she was here. she was taking care of you know, middle-class people's kids. what that experience is like. it's called the global care chain. you leave your kid back home. they're taking care of my

family and then you in turn become a caregiver for other people's children. >> yes. so care is being drained off from the poorer countries to the richer countries in the world. but anyway, that is one topic. there are so many that turned into finally, chapters in this wonderful book. which you'll find is a pleasure to read. as well as very instructive. now, i have a lot of questions. >> if anybody wants me to read, i will read. >> i think you can talk as well as you can read. >> okay. thanks mom. >>. [laughter] let's go with one i

heard before we started. is why is the work of caring for others so undervalued in our culture? and i mean caring in general what parents do, more specifically mothers do. and home health aides do and nurses do and so many other people. what is wrong with this kind of work that it gets so little respect or pay? >> what i was seen when i was going out reporting with nannies and i spent and bedded in a 24 hour day care facility. it's a growth industry. at now nine percent of caregiving is that off hours and on weekends. there's a lot of centers that have cropped up to fulfill that need.

i wound up spending a lot of time at one of them. all of these people that were working, nannies and caregivers. nannies who left their kids overseas are being paid, not a lot. but part is devaluing of care and about gender and race. but i also think it's part of the trap of the middle class because a lot of the families paying these people, they themselves are not always so wealthy. that's what i'm trying to get at in this book. i think of them as russian dolls within each other. the caregiving crisis or how little these people are paid and the quality of their lives are within these strained middle-class moms and dads. i'm sure people in this room will talk to that. i think it's complicated. i don't think it's just - - we demonize care and i think

that's a different thing. why don't we care about care? i thought about it because i think it's partially we are afraid, we want to separate love and money. we don't want them to contaminate one another. so we imagine people to care work don't need to be paid. aren't interested in money. i think parents for themselves around that. they want to think they're doing it out of the goodness of their heart. it's complicated. >> in fact, in the history of nursing. nursing was originally thought to be instinctual. so why pay them? we just pay them a little tiny bit. >> in my book i called it, some of the social science on is the prisoner of love theory. they will work for very little money. our emotional economy depends on that love.

>> okay. one of the things in your book which is very upsetting to me, is the penalties placed on women for motherhood. the instant you are perceived to be pregnant, your boss may start ignoring you. you may be shoveled off to a less important department or something. then when the baby comes, well, forget about it. it used to be at one point, maybe i'm thinking of the 19th century. that giving birth and raising a child was seen as important work. and a contribution to society. now, it's something that has been penalized.

>> right. people here are may be familiar with the motherhood penalty. there was a survey that found people wanted to pay mother employees, would offer - - this is a hypothetical, would offer $11,000 less than childless women. and then a lot less than men. around that, there's become a whole sociological worldview. the motherhood penalty and a lot of women probably experience that it is not an abstraction. in my book i argue that there is the opposite of it. there's a motherhood advantage. a focus that people have told me about and actually exists. their social signs around that as well. and there's neuroscience on it. every time you get penalized, what i'm hoping people read in

my book. there may be an advantage that my employer doesn't know. i am sharper and more organized. i organize my time better.i know how to deal with other minds. children have radically different mines so maybe i'm more flexible with people i encounter in my daily life. for the most part, i don't think this awareness is in the workplace. >> i don't think so at all. [laughter] i did a journalistic experiment and went looking for a white-collar corporate job. to see what happens. >> bay and switched. undercover into white-collar jobs with using your maiden name. >> i changed to my maiden name, legally. and i started with a resume telling something of the truth. not that i was a writer but

that all of these things i had done. my activities at the pta, etc. organizing this and that. they laughed at me. they were sent laughed. any experience you have as a parent is not relevant. to your employment. we would like to convince that we are smarter because we are parents but we haven't done that yet. >> i would like to hear also at the end of the conversation, the women feel a parenthood advantage as a worker or a thinker. keep that in your mind. >> i was wondering what you think about this alyssa. it's never occurred to me to ask you this. given all of the penalties, on us for parenting. why should we do it anymore?

why are we doing it? i know so many women in their 30s were desperate to have a child before time runs out. after reading the book, why? i'm a very happy mother and grandmother so i understand that side of it. is having children getting to be a luxury like the angelina jolie's of the world? >> certainly, if you look at some of people with more children have more money than those with one child. it depends. there are these wealthy people with many children. >> you're more representative of your age group with one.>> what is it now, one point something. 1.6.

>> it's a question we have to throw out there and ask in our own lives. >> let's not wait until were old. but that's very bleak. >> it's very bleak but that's what your book got me thinking. but i always think bleakly. let's not go there. let's not talk about anything that's happening in the world. another kind of question, is this really new, the struggles of the educated middle class that wants to do creative things? seems that it's the story of my life and i am old. >> barbara wrote a very important book called - - in which you document, my interest

actually, do you see a huge difference now from these accounts from the world you look that back then in the 80s? >> it's a huge difference. the educated middle class once had some stability. you know if you could get your children through college and they could get a profession. everything would be okay, right? that was the goal. now those professions are crumbling. certainly you focus one chapter on the law which everybody thought was the stable list of them all practically. >> there are three states that don't have surplus lawyers or excess lawyers. and all the other states, there are too many lawyers to go around. much too many.

i talked to people who had a lot of law school debt practice as lawyers and these are not just people who didn't make it. it was also people who have been lawyers and they couldn't sustain it. this is kind of an interesting, it's also a way of thinking about what a middle-class person is. if you think of images from the 50s or 60s, it's like humdrum. everyone tried to escape from that trap and those conventions. this is like, can we ever get into the conventions? can we ever be boring and have a humdrum life. the commute is half hour on the train. not an hour -and-a-half. some of this is changing how we think, at least this is what my reporting showed me. changing the category of the middle class. >> look at college teaching

point another admired profession at one point. you were a professor, people immediately respected you. now, most of the teaching, 70 percent - - >> there's different numbers. some say 75 percent. i'm going with 40 percent. i'd be willing to tolerate 50 percent. there's a large number of adjuncts, there are temporary teachers who don't have tenure or permanent positions. they are renewable. teach course upon course and often make $3000 a class. 62 percent of adjuncts surveyed may $20,000. we are talking about after graduate school that they paid a lot for. it's poverty line kind of work. i documented one of them and talked to many others in her life was really hard. she was on food stamps. since i've written this i am getting constant reports from

people. someone else told me if the adjuncts can go to the food bank at the college that was meant for the students. they said we need to go to the food bank too. this was like two days ago someone was telling me this. these are the kind of stories. then there's broader question is like, should any of us be doing what we love. i try to address that in the book. can we afford that? that's another luxury it would seem. >> to points or questions. one is the old boring jobs aren't as stable anymore. the book you mentioned, the switch, was about the crisis among white-collar corporate workers. i was thought, they sold out. they got it all. no. they have no job stability. they can be gone at any time.

and have to start all over at the age of 50+. so that's not so great anymore. but it leads me to a harder question for you, are you ready? [laughter] i always tell young people, do what you want to do. follow your passion, you know. find out the color of your parachute. [laughter] but now, after reading this, i thought maybe that's the wrong thing to say. but i can't in good conscience, if you go get a job as an assistant departmental manager for x corporation, you will be safe. i can't say that either. so what do we say? >> i do have solutions in the

book but i think part of what we do is make people aware of what they're getting into. i tend to think awareness at least makes people less probable to self blame and self-hatred and all of the things - - why is this not working out? people are writing to me saying, why didn't i get that second job. but you tell me not to do that and i'm listening. that's what i want. then from there, look for more systematic problems. what is underlying this. how many administrators are in the university system. there is now these adjunct rights organizing movements. one of it is tenure for the social good. if anyone is in academia, i can tell you more about it.

they are organizing around this. i had this idea you go to u.s. news and world report and you say, put in how many adjuncts teach. put in how little they're getting paid. there is a sense of prestige and appearances and if that was tarred and feathered. i wonder if there are certain ways to put pressure on these institutions and the corporate overlords of these industries. i know these are technically nonprofits but we know that's not entirely true. can we put pressure on them? and once we've overcome the sense that it's us, only us, our fault that this isn't working out. can we look out and start doing things. >> that's an important point you make again and again to the reader, it's not your fault. this is not because you are stupid or not created enough.

>> not that you didn't work hard enough or did the wrong thing. i think there is so much language amongst liberal and conservative circles. what if we've done as much as we can? >> i don't know how many more minutes? okay. five minutes. we can consider some of the political aspects and the outcomes. is there a chance for building an alliance between the squeezed professional couple and their nanny? because your book puts them in the same. >> together. i did on purpose because i wanted to show a continuum of class instability. of what i call this shaken category of the middle class

resembles the - - in many ways in terms of contingency, hours, lack of security in old age. why don't we start thinking about reframing it so that there can be more organizing around these two groups? the election that alexandria oo asio, this appears to be what happened. these hipster, millennial latinos. in the area that were both voting her in and voting out - - the, don't say it. and i felt like this is potentially helpful to think.

i know occupied did not function entirely but to think about having a middle picture- organizing around their own instability and recognizing it. if you can name it as a class problem other than your problem, then you will recognize the similarity that you might have to others. that's the point of my book really. >> it will take some effort to bridge class differences like the wealthy employers or the seemingly wealthy employers. >> even the mothers and fathers with nannies. >> to the people they employ. >> we just wrote a piece together in this week's - - book taking this point around #metoo. we talked about an organization called hand-in-hand.

it's a small organization but it's kind of inspiring in this way. i mention in my book as well, they had parents and nannies kind of together in this group. working together. to have higher wages but also better household morays. cooking your food. believe it or not, people don't like when caregivers cook food that is aromatic in their kitchen. that kind of thing where you have a recognition of the intimacy and humanity of this relationship as well as what a decent wage is. so that's a great organization. it's a tiny start. >> there's a lot of problems in connecting. >> we are hoping many of you will have that element.

>> when we were writing about the #metoo movement, as we were emphasizing really should be a movement of working-class women. because for most abused and assaulted women workers in this country are hotel housekeepers. agricultural workers was a surprise to me. and cleaning people. there's been very little outreach to bring them in to the #metoo movement. not enough anyway. >> so we're hoping there will be more. also the recognition was having your career derailed which is what many of the for hire echelon #metoo people are

worrying about. they're not thinking of a career. there thinking i need to get paid and i don't want to be deported and i don't want to be raped. more severe stuff. but we can still make connections between these two conditions. >> okay. i guess this will be the last question i have before i let you all loose on alissa. there was an article in the new york times just a couple days ago suggesting that some of the kinds of frustrations and discontent that went into the trump phenomenon and his election might also account for the election of alexandria ocasio-cortez. if that is true, that is very interesting. it's an interesting way to begin to look at something. do you see some chances for

alliance across that gap? that political gap. >> yeah, i hope so. i'm happy to be a small pebble. i'm hoping that's what my book will be useful for. that's one of the things i'm hoping people wereout there for policy people can take it places that i as a journalism or author chance. that's my hope. >> does anybody want to come up? choose a microphone and ask a question. it doesn't have to be a question. it can be an answer. [chuckle] >> thank you for coming. in the federal reserve, we've had so much quantitative easing which is printing money.

has that helped us, the local people? i feel that we are just spinning our wheels in the federal reserve is just printing money. >> i don't know. we will think about it but we don't have an answer at the moment. we will come up with an answer for you. if you give us your email, we will get ananswer for you . >> according to the charitable trust, our fertility rate in america is 1.8 which means were in a situation of population decline. my question is, are people aware of this and is anybody besides me concerned that we are an endangered species?

>> i think the overall issue, not about the u.s. but worldwide, we have achieved populations that our distant ancestors could have never imagined. in fact, we may have went too far. too many people on the roads, too many people competing for housing, etc. but this is something to take into account when we decide to have children or not. >> i think people are, at least some of my subjects. thank god i only have one. they make - - about that. my book isn't about fertility but it factors into my own decision too to have one child. >> i think some of the reasons for that decline in american fertility are in this book, "squeezed".

>> yes. >> hello. the problem is so big and the progress we're making is so slow that we are really in trouble. we don't have a format of economics and statistics to even indicate what's going on now. we are at a loss to understand it so were not getting the solutions. we are not dealing with distributional wealth. for not dealing with cash flow through the economy and how jobs in the future. okay, so do you see any place where this kind of thing is starting to take place? where the planning and the economic overview of what's happening to our culture is starting to be retooled so that we understand what's happening to us? >> i've seen a lot of smaller

things like platform cooperative is- - it's a moveme to rethink corporate acts like uber worker owned apps that are collective collected so that people are part of the court then possess part of the share of it. i think one huge problem is the gig economy. it has created a new ownership class. that would be one small thing i think is really useful. a lot of it is broader stroke things but i spent time at a co-op. i talked to a lot of people into universal basic income who were ubi enthusiasts. that was interesting too. i think that's a potential solution which is probably

impossible. >> do you want to explain what that is? >> it's an allowance for every family. it would be $12,000-$20,000 a year per se and it would provide an offset job losses for automation. daycare costs. as i write in my book, many of the families i spoke to were middle-class spent at least 30 percent of their take-home pay on daycare. new york was, sometimes up to 38 percent. so it would be like this has been this problem. or adjunct that had a disabled son she had to care for him. how basically it will allow - - but it's actually supported on the right as well which is interesting.

a lot of libertarians too, not just progressives. >> thank you. >> you're welcome. >> i'm a mother of one child who is now 43 and has twins. one of the phenomenon and part of the reason i only had one child was so that it would not be an impediment to my career and i had a very good career. but, one of the phenomenon you haven't addressed at all is the role of grandmothers and grandparenting. and that's critical among middle-class families. i said to my daughter, i will help you in a pinch but i'm not going to spend my time babysitting during my semi retirement years. but i have a lot of friends who are committed to monday and

tuesday and wednesday and thursday or they split with the in-laws four days a week and their retirement is geared to taking care of the grandchildren. what are the economic implications of that? part of it is certainly that when i babysit or my friends be busy, there's no cost involved. there's cost to me and my life but there's no economic cost to my daughter and son-in-law. they're typical middle-class, both professional, family in this town. >> thank you for bringing that up. i'm one of those committed grandmas who's always available. we go ona notice to the perpetuation of this class. >> maybe it's something for you to write about. >> yeah, okay. i take that as an assignment.

>> - - just wrote a book about it. >> she did and it came out mother's day last year. yeah, the joy of grandmother ng or something like that. >> i think barb's book would be different.[laughter] ...

>> workers are probably around minimum wage give or take. why is this such a differentiation between the childcare providers get and how much the family has to pay? and second you talked about this before but who is taking care of their kids? talk about that. the people who ran the daycare their kids were very involved in daycare. that was in their house so talking to six or seven other caregivers they left their kids at home with a grandparent.

but then they are separated from their kids. it is local daycare's that are even cheaper so to talk about the global care chain within the neighborhood. like where there is informal daycare or unstable and informal networks. so takes care that andy's kid? >> yeah there question is talk about this as an afterthought and we don't have a good family leave or the support

that other countries give their working families. what country does it right? is there a model that we can examine? and is there a movement to integrate those best practices? mimic you must be a journalist. [laughter] those are really good. before you go, what was the first? i don't want to say denmark and sweden but also québec people pay between seven and $20 per week it is very small amounts of money. because they tax there's more that is right across the border.

>> we cannot pay attention to those that we cannot learn from them? how can we get anything from canada? they are exotic left this is a tremendous american air again but to always have a social safety to deal with these problems so much better than we do and all northern european countries. >> in 1871 nixon would sign and asked or pass something to

give substantial amount of child care people then he vetoed it. i love these moments in history that are more progressive than ours and and people say this is impossible that this happened in 1971. i thank you for making these dynamics visible and those who work on this issue will take it back to look at policy and other changes but as you were talking i was thinking about and increase them what they call the depth of despair and your comments about the internalization people think it's about them individually or to transcend classic economic challenges or structures locking them into create a freefall.

what have you seen in those conversations? is that as policy or do they internalize that about their inability to transcend? and for me this is high to the rags to riches that propels people forward but it is poisonous to believe that to a certain degree i am curious what you find in that. >> a lot of people that i spoke to blame themselves with this internalize self-doubt and some of this and i said

this before but also blaming the other and it's like two sides of the same coin so what's wrong with me? i want to cancel myself out sometime i would talk to the subject. and explaining what happened. but a number of them wound up okay in the end so it's not force they are living the american dream they are on dry land i don't know what that is

attributed to that to get out of that patient fatigue you know what that is? it is the exhaustion where you can't make choices and i think now that affects the class in the way i did not use to pass you cannot take it clearly you cannot me at clear of choices you don't know what the future will hold so some people got into another position to make better choices be back in my home country we have our own economic problems there is an agency to spanish government

one of the main outcome and in a way of expectation so in your research have found any sense of the american middle class? because they try to its way why they don't have enough time to be or working out for many hours spending as much time as they should with the kid even while they vote for those extreme political parties. >> i love that that is what

you see 40% of people look on nontraditional hours in america didn't mean there working at night it could be very part time but it probably does need anxiety just not to have that regularity. >> or where you are on call? we don't know what your hours will be. the american people to help with homework because they come home at strange hours so the kids were doing more poorly in school that was another finding. the next first of all your

book nickels and dimes of the first book of nonfiction i ever read so thank you but your book squeezed if you go online it is side-by-side and his thesis is not book is that there is so many people employee during who knows what and that is the interesting idea to ask for to be overeducated but still poor. but i just graduated from columbia and everybody wondered if we would sell out to investment banking that if it is a situation that we

still have a reason to write a whole book that have jobs to make that is part of the same thing they pursue what they loved that they were often penalized for that for those who did what they had to do are penalized in a different way. they are alienated labor for that attempt was not to meet those have jobs they don't care about at all like i would say to david graber almost any job you have to pretend to be busy at all times. you know that right? manual labor or whatever. that is the trick in medicine

colleges should teach. [laughter] how to look busy. >> i will be here for signing you have been an incredible idea if you want to find out more about our organization we have information thank you. >> we have copies of barbara's book register please hold your chairs to form the signing line. [inaudible conversations]

>> hello john i am the president here freedom works at the center for economic freedom. i hear you have a new book? yes i do it is about an exciting explosion of jobs that don't feel at all like work that more and more people go to do something at which they are the superstar. work is were they triumph and where they want to be increasingly because they can showcase their unique skills and intelligence.