The Free-Market Family

Painstakingly documents the plight of U.S. mothers and fathers from many economic backgrounds, career fields, and geographic regions. * Gracy Olmstead, Mere Orthodoxy * The real problem is not that American families are failing. It's that our government is failing American families. Maxine Eichner's powerful new book shows how a policy approach grounded in free-market fantasies has made it harder to raise kids than in almost any rich nation-and how that can and must change. -Jacob S. Hacker, Stanley B. Resor Professor of Political Science, Yale University, and author of The Great Risk Shift: The New Economic Insecurity and the Decline of the American Dream The United States imagines itself to be deeply pro-family. But Maxine Eichner demonstrates just how far our reality falls short of that aspiration, outlining what real pro-family policies would look like. Above all, she offers a compelling version of the American dream, focusing not on GDP but on GHP-the growth of human potential-of every American. -Anne-Marie Slaughter, CEO, New America Provocative, beautifully written, and illuminating-and directly addressed to some of the most important issues of our time. Highly recommended! -Cass R. Sunstein, Robert Walmsley University Professor, Harvard University, and author of On Freedom This book is an absolute must read. Packed with rigorous data and compelling stories of how American families are stretched to the breaking point, Maxine Eichner makes a convincing case that, far from a nation that values families, our free market approach stacks the deck against them - to the detriment of us all. To those who say we can't afford to support American families, Eichner shows that we can't afford not to, and that nothing is more crucial to the future of this country and the reinvigoration of the American Dream. -Brigid Schulte, award-winning journalist, author of the New York Times bestselling Overwhelmed: Work, Love & Play when No One has the Time, and director of The Better Life Lab at New America No families suffer more under our 'free-market family policy,' Eichner shows, than the poor, disproportionately African American families who, in spite of their best efforts, face powerful, intersectional, racial, gendered, and economic obstacles to providing what their families need. This book is a vivid account of the way our current social order is falling far short and therefore squandering the potential of our most vulnerable children, subjecting their parents to harrowing lives, and rending our social fabric in ways that will make it very difficult to repair. -Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Dean and Professor of Law, Boston University School of Law