Thank you to Net Galley and The New Press for the ARC in exchange for my honest review. It is hard enough to make ends meet but when you're a single mother our imperfect welfare system further magnifies the injustices when you're a woman, of color, single and with children. There are so many obstacles and injustices that this part of population face especially as they are the communities of gender and race that have been historically and generationally been kept back from gaining wealth and status within society. Even if one does qualify for welfare benefits, there are very strict and unfair rules around how much money one can make (very little) and, if one was to make just a bit more money a month say $25, you'd lose your childcare, housing and other other benefits that may equal several hundred dollars. Our system doesn't help people get to a place of getting the education or skills to get that next better paying job but keeps them in the lowest paying jobs and constant struggle. Not only does it affect them but also affects their children. This quick read is filled with statistics, first hand interviews and clearly points out how our society uses these workers, keeps their wages low and the stigma we place on these women creating a nearly hopeless situation. Very informative if you want to know more about this subject.

This book / journal reads so much like the booklet some non-governmental agency provides prospective donors / investors for funds. The advice to consumers / employees / citizens given at the end of the book is appealing and inspiring but someone needs to write a better book or do a merited documentary for anyone to care more about blue collar workers stuck in low-wage, low benefits, low-advancement jobs when all of us are trying to make the best of whatever end of the stick we have. I do believe privileged existence courtesy accident of birth is nothing to gloat about, and that these male and female workers are modern slaves and are probably kept poor, illiterate and opportunity-less specifically to serve the cheap-salaried labor-needs of the rich and middle-class (including those in Pakistan). That being said, I found the whining by some of the female workers in this book nonsensical, and criticism by authors of good-natured state programs as illogical. I also did not see any self-recognition and evaluation of life choices made by the workers and their parents in exasperating their poverty.

Thanks to the publisher for the ARC.

Getting Me Cheap explores the ways that girls and women get trapped in a cycle of poverty due to having so many extra responsibilities, often from an early age. It is a worthwhile book to read to understand these issues. It is not casual reading and should be explored by those who have a deep interest in the topic.

In this country, we constantly hear about upward mobility or social mobility. But who actually benefits from this economic gain & on to a better life? In Getting Me Cheap, researchers Amanda Freeman & Lisa Dobson examines the long wages of woman and girls living in poverty in the United States. In their research, Freeman & Dobson shows how the system has failed these women and girls. In addition to the everyday struggles of many systems, they also explored the impact of COVID & how the pandemic affected these populations. America, we're better than this & we must do better by our own.

A special thanks to Amanda Freeman, Lisa Dobson, The New Press & NetGalley for this advance copy.

GETTING ME CHEAP by Amanda Freeman and Lisa Dodson begins with a reference to a pre-pandemic report by the Brookings Institution on the low wage workforce in America. Referring to these retail clerks, cleaners, and health or child care providers (mainly women, disproportionately Black and Brown), the authors raise a key point: "They work to uphold the comfort and well-being of the affluent but are left to care for their own children and families on poverty earnings." Freeman and Dodson, both academic sociologists who met at Boston College, go on to share the findings of their interviews with roughly 250 low-income mothers. They definitely succeed in their goal to give these women more of a voice. However, it might be even stronger if it was provided in contrast to others (employers, older women, social workers, charity providers, even other family members) involved with the low wage work space. Eight chapters look at some of the obstacles these women face, particularly childcare, but another seems to be the lack of an adult support network since parents and partners are either emotionally or physically absent. One story is about a nineteen year old adopting her siblings (ages 14 and 12) and then having to care for a newly born nephew. Freeman and Dodson repeated note that "Daily needs and chronic disruption in working poor families call up gendered demands that many girls feel they must meet" and "that the burden on girls are not just heavy, they become toxic." A thought-provoking work backed by academic research, GETTING ME CHEAP contains several pages of notes and an extensive index.

Brookings report link:
https://www.brookings.edu/research/meet-the-low-wage-workforce/

Freeman and Dodson have succeeded in making invisible women more visible with this book. I think we all kind of know that there is this kind of inequity, but pointing it out with vivid examples, relatable stories, and how the system works and runs on so many women that are trapped by it... yes, it is an important book and I hope it gets plenty of readers.

Thank you to NetGalley for an advance copy of this important book.

Non-fiction book Getting Me Cheap: How Low-Wage Work Traps Women and Girls in Poverty, co-written by Amanda Freeman and Lisa Dodson, explores the socioeconomic and wage disparity between men and women, in particular, highlighting how the intersectional confluence of gender, race, and immigrant status disproportionately affect Black, Latinx, and immigrant workers, an issue further exacerbated by the hardships of the COVID-19 pandemic. Freeman and Dodson cite a 2019 Brookings Institution report on the low-wage workforce, comprising approximately 53 million Americans who are earning $10.22 an hour on average: poverty incomes. While low-income occupations, like cleaning, food service, childcare, eldercare, and home-health assistance help provide the infrastructure that enable the affluent to juggle and balance their professional and personal/familial lives, ironically, the workers filling those jobs struggle to support their own families. The book represents the findings garnered from a decadeʻs worth of research and 250 interviews, and Freeman and Dodson provide moving, highly readable profiles and first-hand case studies and accounts of real women working in low-wage occupations, many of whom provided care and other uncompensated labor for their families from a young age.

An interesting read that comes as no surprise to those of us who have worked low wage jobs but still shines a light on an underrepresented population. Freeman and Dodson interviewed low income women, mostly mothers, and put together this clear, searing portrait of the way American capitalism exploits poor women and children, perpetuating the cycle with racism, misogyny, and indifference to the suffering of others. They trace the way low income girls are often pressured to care for their siblings to pick up the slack from absent or overworked parents, then pushed into care work that doesn't pay enough to cover bills, let alone improve their circumstances. As those girls grow, they often have to take on disproportionate burdens of caring for family, then for their own children. The lack of affordable childcare or set schedules leads their children, especially daughters, to pick up the slack at home, and the cycle begins anew. While unlikely to be a classic on the level of Nickled and Dimed, Getting Me Cheap is just as needed and almost as raw.

Can you take a star away if a book is very depressing? Probably not, if that is just the way it is. This book is full of anecdotes of women always putting their family ahead of their needs, be it an education, a job that provides a living wage or any self fulfillment that may come with having the luxury of knowing what your dreams are, much less working towards them.
Through their studies of poor women struggling to help provide, first for their original families then their own children, these two professors lay the groundwork for examining how "keeping families intact is the essential work of women and girls" (p. 184). They continually saw a common theme of "daily needs and chronic disruption in working poor families call up gendered demands that many girls feel they must meet" (p. 184). References from the women, on why and how they most often picked up the slack, included "racial identity, immigration experiences, kin networks, and culture" (p.78).
The one solution that they offered that I could discern was that the more affluent women who hired these women (at low pay scales and with no benefits) should step up to the plate to advocate and fight for these women for more equitable wages/benefits and safe and affordable childcare (at least for starters).
What I feel should have at least been mentioned (and why I gave 4 stars), not that it would have benefitted these women, was support and education while girls are still in school. Not necessarily strict birth control information, but at least cover the options/benefits of postponing childbearing until one is at the level of maturity to understand the potential losses, educationally, financially, and emotionally that early childbearing can bring.
I feel that this is important since so often the women interviewed, always put as their main concern, providing child care. This lack of availability is what kept them from getting necessary education and keeping the jobs with the better salaries.
This would be an excellent book for book club discussion, after copies are sent to the local school board and your elected officials.

Getting Me Cheap is an up to date account of the plight of low income single mothers in America. For those of us who live in Ferguson, we are talking about our own neighbors. For our readers in more affluent areas, think of the people who check you out at the grocery store, serve you in restaurants and coffee shops, and care for your children and parents. As a middle class person from a middle class family, the difficulties faced by such people would be unfamiliar. As a landlord in Ferguson, these are stories which I hear frequently.

The numerous accounts, gathered by the authors over years of work and in several states, will move all but the more heartless. At the same time, the reader can't help but be frustrated by the lack of solutions. Save for the occasional happy ending, this is a story of helplessness, not of hope. The reality is that without a tremendous amount of help, a poor single mother will have unending struggle. That help may come from family, though as the authors frequently remind us, poor families often lack the resources to provide help. It may also come through public assistance programs, though as the authors note, these programs tend to be designed to extend poverty rather than eliminate it.

There are a few important things missing from this series of meaningful personal anecdotes. It would have added tremendous value if, instead of general calls to provide help, the authors advocated for specific changes, and put a number to the cost. For example, a one year delay in reducing Section 8 housing subsidies when a recipient's income increases would allow voucher holders to establish a firm economic foothold before taking away their subsidy. I've personally known tenants who declined promotions at work, because a lifelong entitlement to housing security was too valuable to throw away on a promotion which might not even work out. The authors also entirely overlook the economic value of marriage. Again, from my own personal knowledge, a tenant with several children who often struggled, ultimately found financial stability when she found a terrific man and married him.

It also troubled me that the prevalence of single parenthood was taken as an unalterable fact. While it is often not a choice, as the current debate over abortion brings to the forefront, it often is a choice, albeit a difficult one. The authors point out the real difficulties faced by unmarried mothers, both in employment and the pursuit of higher education. But they leave entirely unspoken the fact that one way to avoid those difficulties is to delay having children.

While it lacks the "down in the trenches" accounts of Nickel and Dimed, the groundbreaking firsthand account of low wage work by Barbara Ehrenreich, Getting Me Cheap provides a contemporary update of the terrible struggles of single, low wage workers. For that, it is worth the read. But be forewarned, when you read the last page, you'll still want for the rest of the story.

Getting Me Cheap: How Low-Wage Work Traps Women and Girls in Poverty, by Amanda Freeman and Lisa Dodson, will be available on November 29, from The New Press. (Available at Amazon and can be requested at the Ferguson Municipal Public Library)

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this arc!
This one's important. These researchers investigate the phenomenon of what poverty and low-wage work do to complicate and limit the lives of women, who bear much of the burden and costs of our neglect of social welfare. From stories of teenage girls who leave school to care for siblings, to the child care struggles of women with multiple part time jobs who must somehow juggle schedules and child care, to the indignities of accessing the scant help that is available, this is a catalogue of the ways poverty costs women dreams, peace and health. This one belongs on the list of books like Evicted, 2$ A Day, Broke in America, Tightrope, On the Clock, and Heartland to illustrate what our economic system is costing us. Highly recommended.

I was let down by this book due to its lack of originality and scope. I requested it as a follow up to a pioneering book I read years ago named ‘Nickeled and Dimed’ by Ehrenreich. That’s still in print. It deals with women who are caught in a cycle of poverty that’s difficult or even impossible (in practice rather than theory) to break from. The women and situations in this earlier compilation are truly stuck.

This book is heavy on sob stories narrated by anonymous sources who are choosing paths that condemn themselves to their dead-end lives. If one is to get a picture, for example, of why these women are considered disposable, generic workers who remain, for the most part, in entry level positions, one has to investigate the entire scope of where they are.

This book fails miserably in doing so. I saw no interviews with those, such as employers, who are supposedly oppressing these women, Instead we have to hear from them solely from their alleged victims. Why are these women (if true) viewed as disposable? What could they do to not be such? Ask the employers - not the sad sack women.

For example, there doesn’t seem to be a single man helping to support these women yet they also seem to put themselves into vulnerable (valueless) employment and then have another baby or pick up another dependent. Who should be responsible for the fallout from that? The book classes all these women as ‘victims’ meaning they are, based on the current Woke theory, completely irresponsible from the fallout due to their own choices.

Instead of the solution to invest these women with a sense of responsibility for their behavioral consequences, it sadly veers into leftwing orthodoxy where the two forks of change grow from the fertile soil of discontent. The answers to the claimed oppression are first to form unions that will force employers to pay more than these women’s labor is worth along with overcoming the terms of the ACA to add munificent benefits to these jobs. The second fork is to add vast quantities of public support in the form of enhanced welfare.

The latter is absurd from a nation that’s not just bankrupt but also a captive of a failed welfare system that makes conditions worse for its recipients. The former will force employers to automate turning low pay jobs into non-existent ones.

While this book is a good tearjerker Hallmark Channel style exercise in pathos, it’s been done earlier and better.

This was an amazing but tragic book. I know a lot of stories like these, unfortunately. This should be required reading I all middle schools and high school, so that it is brought to the forefront of young peoples attention, so they do not continue these devastating cycles. I am a firm believer in shining a light on things, albeit uncomfortable will result in change and progress.

This book tells the story of women held down by low paying jobs and the effect that has on family dynamics. It's most always the females who bear the burden and have to sacrifice their futures. I found the book interesting but yet where is the individual effort to change. Second half was bogged down with politics. Okay the system is bad - supply some suggestions for change.

This book was very well researched with many personal interviews of women in poverty situations. It could be a social work textbook on this subject.
I was surprised that most of the women started caring for elderly and children when they were very young themselves. Their families expected this and they sacrificed school, sports and a social life to give family care.
Most of the women who contributed to the research were black or Latino with a few Native women. They all showed a great deal of ingenuity in scheduling work, childcare and education needs. They don't get enough credit!
Thanks to Netgalley for the chance to read this book.

3.5 stars

I started out loving this book, but the second half was more frustrating.

The beginning accurately describes the duty girls feel to provide financially and especially domestically for their families, even at the expense of their own dreams/"betterment."

All of the struggles with government employees and paperwork, etc., to try and receive the benefits you need are completely true, as well. I have been treated like trash by the people whose job it is (supposedly) to help. And, yes, those individuals hold all the cards and there is no recourse if they decide they don't like you.

The title and subtitle mention "girls and women," and yet the book focused on single mothers, even though most of the problems they struggled with are the same for childless individuals. Low-wage jobs suck for everyone.

The last couple of chapters were a stretch, in my opinion. First, a couple people lament in the discussion on college readiness that they weren't taught what things like "office hours," "credit hours," "concentration," etc., were, and that they struggled to fit into campus life. Um… doesn't everyone struggle to fit in? This is not unique to poverty, even. And I wasn't taught any of those terms above, either, as a homeschooler who pretty much homeschooled myself through high school. I was the first and only one of my siblings to go to college (though I never finished). But the internet exists at public libraries and I used it for my research and questions. The people quoted just didn't seem to have any initiative or common sense when it came to college.

Then came the Covid chapter, and the authors clearly have different opinions from me… one woman they quoted claimed she was "risking her life" by being a cashier during the pandemic. How dramatic. Anyway, you'll either agree or disagree with everything in this particular chapter.

Which brings me to politics. The book is full of it. The authors are clearly very liberal - and play the blame game. The culprit is always whoever happens to be conservative. It's republican this, democrat that, and I wonder if the authors realize that not all Americans subscribe to the ideas of one of these two parties? Other parties do exist, many (like myself) don't belong to a political party at all, and there are people in poverty of any and all political persuasions.

I was frustrated with the ending, too. There is no hope given, no action points for readers who feel spurred to create change - no examples given, even, for how the system could improve if anyone in power cared to do something. So, everything about low-wage work sucks. Yes. Now what?

Note: There is some profanity.

Getting me Cheap by sociologists Amanda Freeman and Lisa Dodson is a love letter to poor working mothers and the activists who advocate for them. This book tells the story of the brutal inequity in the United States among poor working class women who struggle to make ends meet for their own livelihood and that of their children. The challenges of being a low wage mom in today's society are innumerable and in this book we read the stories of women living in the margins while trying to hold their families and communities intact.

I also learned so much new information while reading this book. For example, I didn't know that The National Domestic Workers Alliance is a fairly new organization created in 2007 to advocate for the rights of domestic workers in the US. Despite the organization being in existence there continues to be an issue with addressing the sexual and racial harassment endured by domestic workers. I also learned that according to the International Labour Organization, 36% of domestic workers are still excluded from labor law protections. The many ways that low wage women are vulnerable to having their families torn apart and their finances stripped away becomes apparent while reading these interviews and community conversations.

I am grateful that this book exists in the world and hopeful that it will contribute a humanizing effect to the conversation on the invisible labor of women, particularly for impoverished women of color.

Thank you to the author and publisher for the e-arc copy!

Deep breath in.....this book is all about working poor mothers, trying to make ends meet with work, school, kids, childcare, other care, etc.
At points it was hard to read how unfair the system, employment were to the women.
At other points, I wanted to shake my fist at the system at how unfair their situation was, and they knew it.
I hate that in America mothers MUST choose between their children and work or family obligations.
Women, especially women of color, are often poor, and paid less for the work that they do. They often have no benefits and are living paycheck to paycheck.
We must have a better way to do things. IT can be possible but it will take all women working together.

“They get me cheap.”

This is an interesting study conducted over years by the authors that really needs to be seen. Especially right now, post(ish)-COVID with people back at work and wages raised, which doesn’t mean much with inflation but I have found it interesting how desperately needed some of these formerly replaceable low-wage workers are.

It’s almost as if an essential part of the economy is to hold these workers down, then accuse them of being lazy or not pulling themselves up by the bootstraps. People also don’t want to look too closely at it because it gives them the sads.

This isn’t all new information exactly, aside from the frightening statistics which I’d never seen laid out before, but it’s presented in a way that’s easy to digest and with stories of real women living it along the way. It’s heartbreaking how hard these women and moms have worked only to be given roadblocks to every opportunity.

As someone who worked in these jobs, without children or dependents luckily, I know all too well how they use the cheap labor. I never had a paid sick day or decent insurance. They keep you right below full-time hours(or sometimes as part-time but working full-time hours) to avoid offering insurance. Then you get fines for not having it.

It’s heartbreaking and the story of Chevelle and Michele at the end was particularly moving. This is important and I’d recommend it. I knew it was bad but after seeing these numbers, I’m again shocked by how we are still treating a large portion of our population.

Thanks to NetGalley, the publisher, and the authors for the opportunity to read and review. Keep doing what you’re doing!