Getting Me Cheap by Freeman and Dodson

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.