Abandoned Families: Social Isolation in the Twenty-First Century

Seefeldt explores the economic and political obstacles that have altered the pathways for opportunity. Abandoned Families is a timely, on-the-ground assessment of hardship in contemporary America. Education, employment, and home ownership have long been considered stepping stones to the middle class. Through in-depth interviews over a six-year period with women in Detroit, Seefeldt charts the increasing social isolation of many low-income workers, particularly African Americans, and analyzes how economic and residential segregation keep them from achieving the American dream of upward mobility. The book is published by the Russell Sage Foundation.. Seefeldt exposes the shortcomings of the institutions that once fostered upward mobility and shows how sweeping policy measures - including new labor protections, expansion of the social safety net, increased regulation of for-profit colleges, and reparations - could help lift up those who have fallen beh