Lives on the Line: American Families and the Struggle to Make Ends Meet

Rating:
Summary: Review from Publishers Weekly
Review: Review From Publisher's Weekly - Almost half of the nation's children live in officially defined poverty or near-poverty. Putting a human face on this and other statistics, the authors present a disturbing and provocative composite portrait of 10 families struggling to make ends meet--four white, two Hispanic, three black and one Hawaiian/Samoan. Bennett and Aber, both directors of Columbia University's National Center for Children in Poverty, and freelance journalist Shirk (a veteran St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter), identify three factors--teen parenthood, low educational achievement and temporary or low-wage work--that they call "the `Bermuda Triangle' of family poverty." Add the associated risks of domestic violence, poor child care and damage to early brain development from malnutrition, preventable birth complications, environmental toxins, etc., and readers will begin to see why poverty cuts across urban, suburban and rural areas. A few of the parents profiled here battle drug addiction; one gambles; several suffer from disabling depression; one single mother bravely raises a severely disabled five-year-old son afflicted with spastic quadriplegic cerebral palsy and a 234-pound, 12-year-old daughter. In almost all the profiled families, one or both parents work, contradicting the widespread stereotype of the poor as lazy or irresponsible. In a succinct closing chapter, the authors call for a combination of public- and private-sector measures to help prevent or reduce child poverty. The issues they raise should fuel election-year debate. (Oct.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Rating:
Summary: Heartbreaking and Inspiring
Review: There are few books I've read over the past few years that have really stuck with me, and this is one of them. With the economy in a downturn, I find myself wondering what's happening to the families whose lives the authors tracked for a couple of years in the late 90s. The real-life families that are profiled here are truly memorable. Fans of "Nickel and Dimed" will like this book because it fills in a lot of the blanks about how poor families cope. The authors keep themselves out of their subjects' stories and basically let the families'words and actions demonstrate how difficult it is to live in poverty. I was inspired by the resourcefulness most of them bring to the challenge.

Rating:
Summary: Heartbreaking and Inspiring
Review: There are few books I've read over the past few years that have really stuck with me, and this is one of them. With the economy in a downturn, I find myself wondering what's happening to the families whose lives the authors tracked for a couple of years in the late 90s. The real-life families that are profiled here are truly memorable. Fans of "Nickel and Dimed" will like this book because it fills in a lot of the blanks about how poor families cope. The authors keep themselves out of their subjects' stories and basically let the families'words and actions demonstrate how difficult it is to live in poverty. I was inspired by the resourcefulness most of them bring to the challenge.