Catching up with the Kardashians

Families of today are forced to deal with high childcare costs and harsh employment policies to workplaces without paid family leave or even dependable and regular working hours and many find it impossible to attain the standard of living their parents managed so easily.

In Alissa Quart’s new book reveals in a montage of stories about people struggling to stay in the middle class, including a visit to 24/7 nursery in the city of New Rochelle, New York State, Dee’s Tot’s Childcare in which children are dropped off and picked up around the clock. It is candy-coloured brimming with cheerful seeming kids, some of whom will be tucked in by caregivers as dad starts the night shift as a manager at a local big box store or eat a group breakfast as mon scrambles eggs for others during the morning rush at McDonald’s.

All this is because the parents are trying to cope with the globalised computerised business world always on in which 40 per cent of the Americans really works for non-traditional schedule driven efficiency. 

These “middle precariat” who range from professors to nurses to caregivers to lawyers aren’t destitute and have made decent life choices, and yet, they are struggling to stay ahead in an economy in which technology is exerting a deflationary effect on everything except things that create middle-class life  including affordable housing, education healthcare and children.

Although employment in the US may be at a near 20-year-low, as Gallup figures show most Americans work more than 40 hours a week and 18 per cent work more than 60 hours. Thanks to lack adequate industrial policy and more responsibilities coping with a fast-changing labour market and the more bifurcated economy have been left to the individual.

The rise of 1 percent television popularity of shows such as Downton Abbey, Keeping up with the Kardashians, Desperate Housewives and Billions, all of which constitute a kind of “bling porn” that fuels anxiety among the lower 80 per cent of the socio-economic spectrum and allows the upper 20 per cent to feel a sense of self-righteousness.

 

Squeezed: Why Our Families Can’t Afford America by Alissa Quart Ecco $27.99, 308 pages.