Getting Me Cheap with Amanda Freeman and Lisa Dodson

Omkari Williams  0:19 
Hello and welcome to Stepping Into Truth, the podcast where we have conversations on social justice and how we all get free. I'm your host Omkari Williams, and I'm very pleased that you're with me today. Before I introduce today's guest, I want to mention that my book, Micro Activism: How You Can Make a Difference in the World (Without a Bullhorn), is available now from your favorite bookseller and I hope you'll grab a copy for yourself. This book is my guiding hand to all those who are looking to find their sustainable way to be a changemaker in this world.

Omkari Williams  0:52 
Now, onto today's conversation. My guests today are Amanda Freeman and Lisa Dodson. They are the authors of Getting Me Cheap: How Low Wage Work Traps Women and Girls in Poverty. Amanda Freeman is a sociologist with research interests in poverty, social policy, gender, family and education. Her current work explores work family conflict for low income mothers. At the University of Hartford, Professor Freeman teaches a variety of courses including Social Welfare, and Lisa Dodson is Research Professor Emeritus at Boston College. She's the author of the books, The Moral Underground: How Ordinary Americans Subvert an Unfair Economy, and Don't Call Us Out of Name. She lives in Portland, Oregon.

Omkari Williams  1:39 
It is my great pleasure to welcome both Amanda and Lisa to the podcast. Amanda and Lisa, I'm really pleased to have you with me here today. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast.

Lisa Dodson  1:51 
Our pleasure.

Omkari Williams  1:53 
When I was reading your book, which is really powerful. I can't tell you how taken I was with the stories that you shared and just the message that you're working to get out. Right at the start of your book, you wrote something that has haunted me, you say that there is a script that runs across race, ethnicity, religion, geography and country of birth. And you say that that script is, and I'm going to quote here. "It's about children who step into adult roles, because their parents do not earn enough to buy them a childhood", close quotes. And when I read those words, "do not earn enough to buy them a childhood" it really stopped me. I honestly never thought about it that way. But I think you're absolutely right. Would you start by speaking about that?

Lisa Dodson  2:48
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this is such a powerful theme. And yet it is not much talked about, you know, it's not something that is kind of a general part of our public conversation about childhood in the US. But the truth is that when working parents, and a lot of the women who we spoke with are single moms, when they don't earn what we think of as just a decent wage, when they don't earn a livelihood, some wage, but not a livelihood. That has an immense impact on how the children in their family are growing up. And in particular, we focused on how girls are often called upon to step up, you know, step into grownup shoes, and manage a lot of very complicated, demanding parts of what we think of as adult life. Mom has to be off working any job she can get. Working whatever schedule they throw at her, right. And she doesn't make enough.

And so the idea of buying childcare, buying the supports, which more affluent families, disproportionately white families, what they're just accustomed to, and it's hard. It's hard on middle class families too, but it is just brutal in families where we pay them poverty. And one of the elements that we feel has been pretty hidden is how, I mean affects boys too of course, but girls are most often called upon to kind of roll up little sleeves. The little girls sometimes are called upon to take on a lot of care, work, care, labor, and it's pretty invisible and it's just a powerful influence on their lives. You know, we really see childhood in the US as something you buy and if your parents can't buy it for you, you don't get it.

Amanda Freeman  4:43 
Lisa and I were actually just working on this for another piece really talking about all the kinds of summer activities going on. For high school kids introduction to college, these kinds of enrichment they can be quite expensive. And even targeting girls. Girls in STEM, girls in coding, there's waiting lists and all of that flurry of activity and money and enrichment kind of falling outside of that are families that, you know, the kids have to work. And it might not even be recognized as work because it's happening inside the home. So caregiving, especially by girls helping out with siblings, you know, so it's tied into this whole gendered system of labor, like we don't even necessarily recognize it as labor, but it's really impacting their choices and stories moving forward. A lot of the women that we talked to had been very invested in school, they had been really top students, they had lofty aspirations, and then were really impacted by the caregiving that they had to do when they were young.

Omkari Williams  5:46  
It's such a powerful indictment of our systems. Because in the United States, we are always talking about how much we value children and how important childhood is and all of the various efforts, many of them very misguided to, quote unquote, protect children. What is really the underlying thought of that is white affluent children. And the other children are kind of left on their own to their own devices, and to just the whims of fate and fortune.

Our social networks impact our ability to access a higher standard of living down the road. And when you take that away from these children, you're not only impacting their childhoods, you're impacting their adulthood, they don't have time to build these social networks, they don't have the wherewithal to participate in some of these activities that really do give them a stepping stone into the future. And I think that, just examining that very different expectation that we have of white children, specifically affluent white children, and other children, specifically children of color is something that you really dissect quite well in your book. And I would love for you to speak more about what you found in your experiences in doing the research that you did.

Lisa Dodson  7:22 
You know, I think one thing is really important that moms said to us, and Amanda, and I always want to bring this up is that a lot of the women we met whose lives as Amanda was just mentioning, you know, they had aspirations, I mean, we could ask them, What had you thought about you wanted to be and we heard everything, all kinds of jobs. And then they got diverted into helping their families. And there's a couple things I want to say about that. One is that almost all the women we interviewed who had that experience, and even thought that their daughters were having that experience in the households they were now running, that they recognized, you know, enormous sacrifice, loss. There's just big losses, you know, especially in contrast to what we've been saying about the opportunities wealthier, largely white kids get. But they also wanted to remind us that they saw themselves as very strong as being really important members of their family, as being decision makers pretty early on. As kind of recognizing they had a lot of value. And emerging as very young, too young, but emerging as pretty strong young women in many ways. But as you say, not with the opportunities that give you a chance to move ahead.

And that's the other thing I want to say is that we found that so many, we interviewed many women who were doing homecare, eldercare work childcare work, different kinds of domestic services, many, many of them connected that, and those are low wage jobs. Those are jobs without a future. And they connected that with having been kind of recruited into doing care work really early on. So it's not only that they don't get that social capital, that social network opportunity.

They literally get tailored to fill a labor market that wealthier, largely white, families are hungry for which is providing services providing care, labor. But we did also want to add this, that a lot of the women we met saw themselves as really strong, capable, very mature early on, often contrasting that with kids from other families that they thought were pretty immature, and didn't have the same sense of connection to their families and their extended families. And they encouraged us to bring that up to not just make it a deficit, but to talk about the strength of it as well. But as far as lifelong opportunity and making a decent wage, they are really stifled. They're really blocked from that.

Amanda Freeman  9:54 
And I think many of the strongest stories come from, like Lisa was saying, some of the moms who are nannies, right? And they would see sort of all the opportunities in the families that they're caring for, you know, the kids have a tutor or they might have a coach, and really wanting that for their own kids and talking about that, how can I access some of these resources. But at the same time, I think it's kind of a interesting dynamic, because all of the women talked about their motherhood, caring for their children as the most important central part of their lives. So everything is revolving around that. And of course, like wanting to give that value, but then the underside of that being the way in which care is so depleting. And then when you're caring for work, many of the women had to leave their own children, for instance, to go and care for other people's children. And Lisa and I were always struck by I mean, there are several people that I remember saying, I would say to them, so you can't just bring your children with you. And they would say, No, I'm not allowed to do that. Or remember, there was one instance, they could bring one child, or they had two children, how could you ask somebody to make that kind of choice?

Lisa Dodson  11:03 
Yeah.

Omkari Williams  11:04 
I think a couple of things struck me listening to you both here. One thing is that the women described themselves as mature for their age and strong and resilient. And that makes me kind of sad.

Lisa Dodson  11:21 
Yeah.

Omkari Williams  11:22 
Because they should be able to be kids. Right?

Lisa Dodson  11:25 
Exactly.

Omkari Williams  11:26 
And yet, they're doing what they need to be doing in order to survive, and in order to provide for their own kids, but they are paying a cost that I'm not sure they even allow themselves to recognize fully, right, because that would be really painful to look at. And I think it also speaks to the way in which built into structural racism is this notion of the strong Black woman, you know, the strong Latina woman, and how those standards are not applied to white women in the same way. Because the work that these women of color are doing is different kinds of work, right. And it requires a different kind of, literally physical strength often. Cleaning someone's home, caring for someone's children, these are physically demanding jobs. And I think it's just really interesting to notice how those women are being funneled into a structure that still supports this underlying racism that exists in the United States.

Amanda Freeman  12:43 
Yeah, many of the moms we talked to seem to recognize exactly what you're saying. And I mean, I think we said at some point, all of them wanted something different for their kids. And they all really wanted their kids to go to college, whether or not they had gone to college. That was certainly a priority. But so it's just seems like the collision to me of actual circumstance are the kids going to make it to college because of the material circumstance that their family is in? But certainly, we're not ignorant of kind of what you're talking about structural racism, the way that the system is really hindering their ability to get what they want for their kids.

Lisa Dodson  13:22 
Yeah.

Omkari Williams  13:22 
I think as much as that I was really speaking to what it does psychologically to young girls and young women, to feel like doing the work that should be done by an adult in a society that actually pays a living wage to people is something to be I mean, it's not something to be ashamed of, by any means. As a society, we should not be proud of this, we should not be proud that they are stepping into these roles. That they are doing it is certainly a source of individual pride. But as a society, it feels like an incredible indictment to me that we are asking a whole swath of young girls and young women to step into roles that are only necessary because we're not willing to pay people a living wage.

I mean, I recently saw a mention online of how Target is raising the minimum wage in their company to $24 an hour. And I thought, Oh, that's good. And then I thought, Well, wait a second. Are they going to offset that cost by making cuts to employees hours so that they are below the line for receiving benefits? Are they going to reduce the number of full time employees so it sounds good on the one hand, but actually, the impact is that people are not really functionally doing better. So I think that there are a lot of questions, you know, things get projected to us in a certain way and is that actually the reality of it? I'm not sure anymore.

Lisa Dodson  15:05 
There is a pretty strong conversation, thank goodness, out there about poverty wages. And I think companies, you know, their brand, their face their public face, they want to say that they're treating their workers better. But the points you bring up, we actually documented you know, when some of those big companies like Target, Walmart, Amazon warehouses, if they're raising wages, they may very well be keeping people underneath the level where they can get benefits. And another technique they use is they subcontract certain jobs, and they, they have no responsibility for what kind of pay or what kind of benefits they're getting.

There's a couple of central issues here. One is that it has become increasingly okay to pay millions of working people, disproportionately women, disproportionately people of color, it's become just part of the structure to pay them way below what it takes to keep the child safe. To keep yourself safe. The minimum wage is still $7.25. It's 14 years later, and it was 10 years to get up to $7.25. I mean, it's just part of the landscape now. And that has these profound effects on how people can raise children, I mean, on everything, but also what kind of childhood they can provide their children with, yeah.

Omkari Williams  16:24 
$7.25 is not enough money for a single person in this country to live on.

Lisa Dodson  16:31 
Nowhere near.

Omkari Williams  16:31 
It's not possible. You can't rent an apartment, anywhere in this country, for what $7.25 an hour allows you to pay. It's just horrifying.

Lisa Dodson  16:43 
I mean, three times that.

Omkari Williams  16:46  
Yeah, at a minimum. At a minimum. And something else that you bring up in the book is you talk about labor law protections, and how domestic workers have been excluded from those protections. But that is a critical piece of this whole problem. Would you speak to that?

Lisa Dodson  17:08
Yeah, I mean, the Fair Labor Standards, when they were developed, they excluded certain chunks of workers. And those were workers, domestic workers, people doing care work. Actually, some people who do agrarian farmworkers as well, all disproportionately people of color, I mean, in the field or in the home. And there's been pushback on that the Domestic Workers Alliance. And some other organizations have been fighting that by Fair Labor Standards, they just, they literally excluded millions and millions of workers, and we're still fighting just to reach that level of fairness.

Amanda Freeman  17:46 
I was just gonna say that also, when we would talk to different groups of people about protections that they might have, sometimes they don't know about them. And then there is I think, when you're, you know, a marginalized person for different reasons, right? Maybe immigration status, or maybe the Pregnancy Discrimination Act should apply to you, but you feel like it doesn't. I mean, they would say, well, that's not going to help me, I understand from just thinking about how long it takes for things to process, it's almost laughable that you would go and file a complaint of some kind, that it would help you in enough time to feed your family kind of thing. And feeling just really endangered. Right, like I need this work, I can't risk losing a job, even if I'm being mistreated. And that's, you know, a lot of it, it's like, because I have kids to care for, and that kind of thing. So just being in this really vulnerable place, where even when I mean not to say that we shouldn't also be advocating for protections. But even some of those protections are not reaching the people that they could be helping.

Omkari Williams  18:50  
Something around that that I find really interesting is when you talk about these protections, they're so nuanced that at some level, there are many that actually become disincentivizing for the people they're theoretically supposed to be helping. And a place that that shows up a lot is actually in programs that are ostensibly designed to support the poor, but function as a way of keeping people trapped in poverty. Would you talk about what you wrote about in the book about some of those programs and how they become this really vicious circle experience for these women.

Lisa Dodson  19:32 
The whole way that social welfare policies were developed in this country, to me they were from the start, first of all, deeply racist and also misogynist. Way back in history in order to be worthy of getting supports if you were a single mom and you were really poor and you were raising kids, you had to face certain kinds of eligibility issues and those continue to this day. I mean, the hoops you have to jump through the questions that you're asked. The way these systems don't, for instance, getting nutrition programs like SNAP supplemental nutrition programs are trying to get housing or trying to get income supplement transitional benefits for needy families, they don't necessarily talk to each other at all, you're jumping through hoops on every single one of those. And really the goal of those programs, which we see, you know, policy discussions right now is to cut you off. I mean, that's the goal of those social support programs is to minimize how much money they're spending on our people, on our families, our children.
 
If you make poverty wages, if you're raising a child, you need more subsidy, you need more support, and what you were greeted with, when you go to try to get support you are in fact eligible for based on on your family, you are met with all kinds of barriers, right straight along. Particular women talked a lot about in some of these community conversations that we held, they were giving each other advice on how to answer a question like and how to make sure you kept your documents with you don't give them over because they'll get lost.

Strategies that are right from the ground up. And one big part of this is something we talked about in the book, is this thing called the cliff effect. And the cliff effect is, if you do start to actually make a slightly better income, that will be taken away from you sometimes more a good deal more than what you're earning in the form of childcare voucher if you're lucky enough to have gotten one or food support. So it's just a morass. And we in all the conversations we had with women over many years now, talking about the public assistance systems, consistently, they felt like it was an attempt to degrade people, and to be very disrespectful, and to cut you off. The only reason they're there is because wages are so low, that they're simply desperate for some subsidies.

Amanda Freeman  22:00  
And this is the way I think the United States is really different from many other countries and their approach to the welfare system. This idea of just shaming, and there's some punitive element, you're allowing this regulation, or this over regulation into your lives. I worked on another project about just the way in which even SNAP doesn't allow you to choose the foods that are going to be the most healthy for your family. You know, depending on the state where you live, can you buy seafood? Can you buy a rotisserie chicken? I mean, these are some of the things that actually got discussed, because of COVID. Because I think it's not a cultural conversation we have generally and all of a sudden, more in the news. But yeah, just the time consuming nature, the shaming nature.

And then something that emerged too was most of these programs are set up to help women or parents of young dependent children. And the programs themselves are generally not supportive of the kids, right, or the parenting. Like a lot of them would require attendance at meetings, but not provide babysitting. And as Lisa was saying, you know, not communicating with each other. So there are a couple examples in the book of a required meeting on one side of town to get your childcare voucher. But if you also want to get cash assistance or TANF, you have to be at a meeting at exactly the same time on the other side of town, and just not being sensitive to the idea that many of the families are receiving both right? That makes some sense. But you know, the system's really not working together in that way to support families.

Omkari Williams  23:35
I think that this is one of those situations where unfortunately, the system is working exactly as it was designed to work. And it is designed to look on the surface like it's doing something helpful. But underneath the reality is no, that's not the case. And I would be more generous if it weren't for the fact that this has been going on for decades and decades and decades. And there is abundant research and abundant data to show that there are these problems and that the problems are consistent from decade to decade, to decades. So if they'd wanted to address them, they could have addressed them by now. It's just they're not interested.

Lisa Dodson  24:22 
Yes.

Omkari Williams  24:23 
And I find that surprising in some ways, because while yes, Black and Brown women are disproportionately impacted, there is not a small percentage of poor white women. Many also find themselves caught in these impossible situations that forced them to work two jobs and still ask their children to take on even more responsibility than they're really old enough to take on or should have to take on. So it feels like the system is really designed to just be punishing with a thin veneer of, we're helping you and if you would only pull yourself up by your own non existent bootstraps. And that has to be so frustrating for you as researchers and beyond frustrating for the women you were speaking with. I'm really curious as to what keeps them going, because I can't imagine. I mean, I would, I think I would just be so enraged all the time.

Amanda Freeman  25:30 
I mean, I think their kids keep them going. That's what they would talk about all the time. But also, I was really impressed by a lot of the moms talked about wanting to work kind of after their childcare responsibilities, you know, the kids move up and out, and they wanted to work in in jobs helping people like they had been helped. Sadly, I remember thinking many times, it's too bad that those jobs don't pay very much, either. Several of them talk about wanting to be a counselor, or work in a shelter, to be able to help moms like some individuals had helped them. That's kind of contrasted with some of the women who are working with different nonprofits, they would have advised them about what jobs would pay enough for them to make a living wage. And often it's not those nonprofit jobs.

A lot of the moms would talk about, we called it, I think, deferral of dreams, they're focusing on their kids, but they definitely did have these ideas about when the kids are older, I'd like to either go back to school, or have this for myself. And sometimes they circle back to dreams, they talked about having when they were kids, I just always wonder, hope that it happens, because we know how it's possible that they are still in the care cycle as they get older, maybe with grandparent care. I mean, I wonder just in terms of later in life, do they have a chance to come back and focus on themselves and their dreams? I certainly hope so.

Omkari Williams  26:59  
It's really interesting to me, when you think about education in this country, and the value that we ostensibly place on education. But for these women, to try and get better educated in order to try and move themselves out of poverty and take themselves out of the role of being in the need for services sector. They are not supported in getting an education that will move them out of poverty. I mean, it's part of what you were saying about the cliff effect, isn't it? Where if they do, let's say, take a class and get a promotion at work, that can make them just a little bit more money, but enough money so that they're now ineligible for other services? Or how are they supposed to pay for an education? I mean, what's the tension that you found that they were feeling with trying to get a better education because that does translate into more money. And still being able to navigate the system of "these are the parameters beyond which you cannot extend yourself, or we will just yank the support rug out from under you"?

Lisa Dodson  28:18 
Yeah. The two main ways we heard from women about how they were trying to get ahead, were going to college getting a college degree. And the other one was apprenticing in jobs that are traditionally men's jobs. You know, trades jobs, which actually, when you're done, you get paid a better wage than a lot of people graduating college these days. Those were the two ways and neither of those systems, the culture in either being an apprentice or being a student, a full time student, neither of them accommodate women who come with kids, women who are low income, who don't have all that social capital in their families or actual money, you know, to write tuition checks.

Amanda and I were just astonished at the tenacity of some women, they went to college, and they, some of the women I interviewed, it was their fourth or fifth time they were trying to get through to get that degree. And I really want to emphasize because it's just amazing strength that doesn't get public notice, you know, it's amazing strength. And some of the women who are trying to be electricians and carpenters, same thing, they had to drop out, but they went back. We do not provide childcare for parents. And above all, you know, 80% of single parents are women.

In 25 developed nations around the world 24 of them will invest in childcare so that they can get through those programs. So that they don't even have to worry about the cliff effect anymore because their income is high enough. So that's not an issue in their lives, and they'd love that. We just don't provide the livelihood, it's a lousy wage that makes profits for some and does not sustain a family. But we also don't have a universal investment, an investment into universal care of every child, if we did that those women could get through school, and they could get that degree. And it would be really rough for a while. I mean, Amanda, and I've had that experience in our lives, it's really tough when you're a single mom, and you have, you know, debt and you have this and that. But if you can get far enough along, you can become an electrician, or you can get a degree and get a decent job, not necessarily a high paying job, but decent, you know, you walk away from that whole welfare system, you walk away from all of that. There are other things people need, women need, to get through school to get through these apprenticeship programs and such. But above all, they need safe, decent, culturally sensitive childcare for their children. That's what they need. And that is a major policy issue we feel can't be overstated.

Amanda Freeman  31:06 
No. And studies show 80% - 90% of women who earn a four year college degree no longer rely on welfare assistance in the following 10 years. So to me, it just doesn't even make practical sense, right? Because that's what we want, culturally, right? If you look at welfare reform, the point is to move people from welfare into work. And the way to do that in a sustainable way is to help them to get educated. And yet welfare reform made it so much harder for specially single parents, low income single parents, to earn college degrees.

Omkari Williams  31:42 
Which makes me wonder whether the point of welfare reform actually is to move people from welfare into other more high paying kinds of work, because there is a role that these women are filling. They are taking care of millions and millions of people in this country. And that is hard work. And if you can get that hard work done cheap, then that increases your profit margins. And so I'm not at all sure that the intention is what we're told it is all the time. And that is both heartbreaking and infuriating. But the whole welfare moms stereotype beyond even the racism attached to it, but the notion that people would rather not be able to spend time with their kids because they have to work two jobs to survive. And they still need public assistance, because if you're working two $7.25 an hour jobs, you're still making under $15 an hour. I mean, I have friends whose kids make that babysitting for one kid. 

Lisa Dodson  33:02 
Yeah, yeah.

Omkari Williams  33:03 
And their parents are still supporting them. So it's really frustrating. And I'm so glad that you two are bringing light to this, because I think it's enormously important. Our time is getting short. So I do want to ask you the question that I ask everybody. And that is, can you give us three things that those listening can do to make a concrete difference in moving this conversation and action on this subject forward in a positive way?

Amanda Freeman  33:38 
Yes, I mean, I think we've been talking about trying to move forward in different ways. So one level being kind of in your own life to try to become more aware of if you have someone cleaning your home, if someone is taking care of your children, you know, your relationship with them. What are you paying them? What are the circumstances that they're dealing with? How can you help on an individual level?

There's also organizations that you could join to advocate for domestic workers in your own home, you could join with them. And then another level being in your workplace. I teach at the University of Hartford, they have different policies in terms of parental leave for staff versus faculty. And what are those policies and that's very common for corporations, even like Starbucks, McDonald's to have policies that apply to salaried workers and policies that apply to hourly workers. It can also differ because of franchise and all of that, but there are many instances where, and the New York Times has actually done an article listing out different employers, but you can work 40 hours in the bottling factory and have very different family supports available to you and benefits than if you work in a corporate job for the same company.

So, I would say becoming aware of those things and then also holding your employer accountable, or at least trying to increase awareness among employees, you know, if you belong to a union. And then I would say the third level being policy, being aware of policies that impact families being aware of the way in which they impact all families, we talked about the child tax credit. So that impacts people on one end of the income spectrum, and as you go further down, right, there's less support for making the Child Tax Credit refundable for keeping the COVID expansion of the Child Tax Credit, that kind of faded away. So that's an example of people not being supportive of policies, like Lisa said, that help all families, like universal childcare would help all families.

Omkari Williams  35:52 
Lisa, I'm gonna give you an opportunity to add some things in here as well.

Lisa Dodson  35:57  
I think just starting from the beginning is, for people who aren't facing these circumstances, we have responsibility, be aware, to pay attention to make it a conversation. You know, higher income women, particularly white women, they don't talk about these issues. Like, does a cleaner come to your house? Do you even know she has children? You know, lots of people have cleaners who come to the house. You know, who are the women who are taking care of your elder or your disabled kin? Do they have benefits at their job? You know, what are they paid? Bringing this up is a little bit of a taboo. It's like how much do you tip? These people get rate wages are way below minimum wage, so they're relying on tips. Do you routinely tip 25%? Those are things. And I think that's part of what protects but keeps invisible the ways in which a lot of people who have their struggles and all, but we're really standing on the shoulders of all of these low wage working women who are raising kids.

So to me, you know, the opening thing is, we got to start talking about this. And and that's why we wrote the book, we have to start looking at this is what our society is doing to millions of, of hardworking people are raising a big proportion of our children. And, and then when we be aware there is, as Amanda said, there are things we can do personally. And then there are organizations, we don't just start them, there's a lot of great organizations can join them. And we can listen, we can listen to what they know, because they know a lot, they've been fighting this good fight, you know. So there's a lot we can do. But we have to start with seeing it as our responsibility to face this really profound inequality.

Omkari Williams  37:41 
I can't thank you both enough for this conversation. It has been really powerful. And so thought provoking. Your book is just wonderful, and gave me so much insight into things I honestly didn't think about. So I couldn't talk about them, because I hadn't thought about them. And now I get to think about them and have conversations about them in a more informed way. And I really appreciate that you both have brought this book into the world. Thank you so much. And thank you for taking the time to speak with me. Thank you.

Amanda Freeman  38:18 
Thank you so much for actually reading it.

Omkari Williams  38:25 
It's a really good book. And it's a very compelling read. So I'm just saying that for everybody listening to this podcast, you will not struggle your way through this book. It is a really compelling read. So thank you both.

Lisa Dodson  38:39  
Thank you so much, really appreciate your time, too.

Omkari Williams  38:42  
Thank you.

When we look at the reality of life for many low income families, we see that the word choice isn't an accurate description of what these women are facing. Is it really a choice if your options are staying in a crappy job that does not meet your basic economic needs, or losing custody of your kids or being without housing? Questioning the framing of our assumptions is critical and being able to actually address the challenges that we face in our efforts to create an equitable society. There is so much work to be done. And we can't do that work without hearing the stories of those whose experiences are very different from our own. I'll be back with another episode of Stepping Into Truth very soon. And until then, remember that change starts with story. So keep sharing yours.