"
Trusting your child with someone else is one of the hardest things that a parent has to do — and in the United States, it’s harder still, because American day care is a mess. About 8.2 million kids—about 40 percent of children under five — spend at least part of their week in the care of somebody other than a parent. Most of them are in centers, although a sizable minority attend home day cares.... In other countries, such services are subsidized and well-regulated. In the United States, despite the fact that work and family life has changed profoundly in recent decades, we lack anything resembling an actual child care system. Excellent day cares are available, of course, if you have the money to pay for them and the luck to secure a spot. But the overall quality is wildly uneven and barely monitored, and at the lower end, it’s Dickensian."
posted by zarq
on Apr 15, 2013 -
139 comments
"Is she O.K.?" a customer asks.
"My mom?" asks Kristy, the waitress.
"Yes," the customer replies.
"No."
Since Sunday, the front page of the New York Times has been featuring
a portrait in five parts of Elyria, Ohio (pop: 55,000), seen mostly through the lens of a local diner.
(Second link is to a full multimedia feature, but direct links to the five individual articles can be found within.) [more inside]
posted by zarq
on Oct 18, 2012 -
42 comments
This summer, Gawker began soliciting and publishing a weekly series of first person essays submitted by their readers: "
True Stories." They include ten stories (to date) from struggling, unemployed Americans:
Hello from the Underclass.
(Those who dislike Gawker's interface can find direct links to individual essays within.) [more inside]
posted by zarq
on Oct 7, 2012 -
20 comments
"Imagine if you had never been homeless before and you'd just lost your job and you lost your home. What would you do? Would you immediately go begging or knocking on a door? No, you would downsize, move into cheaper accommodations, if that did not work you'd move in with friends or relatives and then you'd move into a cheap motel and then ... where would you want to go before winding up at a shelter door? You would much prefer to live at a park with your family and your dog." ... "In just about every major city, there are tent cities. Unfortunately, we're in a growth industry and the numbers are going to continue." -- Michael Stoop, a community organizer for the
National Coalition for the Homeless, explaining that the
surge in American tent city shantytowns, first highlighted on MeFi in 2008/09:
1,
2,
3, has not slowed.
The Great Recession: Life in Tent City, Lakewood NJ /
Photo Gallery /
Video.
[more inside]
posted by zarq
on Nov 10, 2011 -
40 comments
