Tom Kawczynski - Off the Record

I've been reading much more lately than I had been for the previous months.  I wanted to share a review.

I recently read, The Moral Underground:  How Ordinary Americans Subvert an Unfair Economy by Lisa Dodson.  This is a book that talks about the experiences of workers and employers in situations where the rules established by work conflict with the needs of the people employed, and how that causes different responses.  Dodson spends time looking at ways how people adapt their lives to the rules imposed by employers and discovers that many employees and managers find they have to circumvent the established order in order to meet the basic needs of low wage employees.  Whether that means more flexible scheduling, adjusting hours, or a number of other things, what the book reveals is that people struggle between a question in many cases over whether following the rules is right, or whether to take care of each other.

For those who haven't been exposed to some of the issues that face low-wage workers, it's not a bad place to start, as they have certain systemic difficulties that are often not appreciated.  When you look at people with families, this becomes especially pronounced.  A poor person chooses to work, but cannot make a wage equal to childcare costs, and this is a situation the system faces all the time.  The range of responses goes from "don't have kids" and "it isn't my responsibility" to using kin networks and finding extra support from unexpected places.  It makes you think.

Regardless of your orientation, what makes the book especially insightful is that Dodson includes people in their own words, so you can see the attitudes without too much interference from the author.  She spends much time talking about people in health-care situations such as care homes, about educational problems faced by teachers when parents have to choose between the time for working and proper child care, and about the techniques used to make the scales balance.

On a personal level, this book contributes to a growing idea that I have that there is a larger disparity for people at the bottom that our system basically ignores.  I think it is a reasonable expectation for us to have people that work, but that I begin to wonder how well a system works when someone has two full-time jobs and cannot meet their basic needs.  I have begun looking around more and see this situation in reality as well as the books that have been written.  It seems wrong to me, and a perversion of the American Dream where hard work leads to the promise of a better life.

More chilling, I think of what is happening to the next generation.  I think of children who are being raised by proxy, who have no parent to direct them through school with encouragement and motivation (either through negligence on the part of the parent, or with the best of intention but an impossible economic choice, as the result is the same) and what this will mean for our future.  With so many people who call themselves responsible waiting longer to have kids, if they have any at all, and no clear resources to guide the next generation, here is what I see:  We have a hodgepodge of resources, schools that vary greatly in quality, and no real investment in the individuals who will make up the next generation.

Yes, we can say that it is the responsibility of the parents.  That has always been the tradition, and I think it is what most people desire.  But with the reality that we had a social system based on the nuclear family, where the father worked and the mother handled the child raising duties which far exceed infancy, what will it mean for us to have such limited parenting as our economic reality is forcing on these two income families where, realistically, both parents have to work.  I cannot imagine it is a good thing, so I find myself thinking deeply about the social cost with the realization that if we do not look after our children, then the price we shall pay later shall be great indeed.

I recommend the book.  If nothing else, it will make you look at a corner of the world that you may not see every day, and make you think about some problems that are faced everyday.  I am sure people will disagree about the solutions, but having greater understanding of reality and its challenges has value for absolutely everyone.