Author and Westport resident Amanda Freeman talks about her debut book, Getting Me Cheap: How Low-Wage Work Traps Women and Girls in Poverty.
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Freeman and fellow sociologist Lisa Dodson (The Moral Underground) spent more than a decade talking to these workers, who make the conveniences so many of us depend on possible. These women provide child and elder care, grocery and package delivery, and service work while struggling to balance mothering with bad jobs and without public aid. While these mothers tend to the needs of well-off families, their own children frequently step into premature adult roles, providing care for siblings and aging family members. Based on years of in-depth field work and hundreds of eye-opening interviews, Getting Me Cheap explores how America traps millions of women and their children into lives of stunted opportunity and poverty for the convenience of the affluent.
Freeman and Dodson provide both policy solutions and a keen moral vision for organizing women across class lines. Getting Me Cheap is essential for readers of Barbara Ehrenreich, Arlie Hochschild, Sophie Lewis, Kathi Weeks, and anyone with an interest in equality, feminism, and labor.
About the Author
Freeman is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Hartford and a writer and researcher of motherhood and work.
