Lives on the Edge
Single Mothers and Their Children in the Other America
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- $29.99
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- $29.99
Publisher Description
One out of five children, and one out of two single mothers, lives in destitution in America today. The feminization and “infantilization” of poverty have made the United States one of the most dangerous democracies for poor mothers and their children to inhabit. Why then, Valerie Polakow asks, is poverty seen as a private issue, and how can public policy fail to take responsibility for the consequences of our politics of distribution? Written by a committed child advocate, Lives on the Edge draws on social, historical, feminist, and public policy perspectives to develop an informed, wide-ranging critique of American educational and social policy. Stark, penetrating, and unflinching in its first-hand portraits of single mothers in America today, this work challenges basic myths about justice and democracy.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Gracefully and forcefully written, this study charges that the male-dominated culture in the U.S. has always created myths that allow society to cast poor single mothers and their children into ``otherness.'' The most prevalent myth, according to Polakow, who teaches educational psychology and early childhood studies at Eastern Michigan University, is that poor people got that way because of their own sociocultural or psychological pathology. Our ``public policy of detachment,'' writes Polakow, stems from our historical attitudes about the nature of motherhood and childhood and about ``normal families,'' contentions Polakow substantiates in her interviews with women who tell horrifying stories of how they fared under our welfare system when in need. Polakow calls for an overhaul of this country's social policies to make health care, housing, child care allowances and parental leave mandatory entitlements for all provided by government.
