cover image Cut Adrift: Families in Insecure Times

Cut Adrift: Families in Insecure Times

Marianne Cooper. Univ. of California, $29.95 trade paper (284p) ISBN 978-0-520-27767-0

With this well-researched book, Cooper, a sociologist at Stanford University’s Clayman Institute, leads a grand return to a publicly committed sociology that is accessible, elucidating, and grounded in real stories. The book charts how individual American families at all income levels have dealt with the anxiety induced by the recent recession. Though each story is sensitively told and rich with personal details, the research focuses on the author’s core finding—the variation of “security strategies” among families. Though conventional wisdom dictates that wealthier families feel more secure, Cooper finds the opposite is true: they experience a mixture of status anxiety and the sense that everything they have isn’t enough. Parents fret about having enough money to send their children to elite schools, even if they have more than enough to pay for state universities. For the poorer and middle-tier families—contrary to popular stereotypes of the grasping, entitled modern American—many are figuring out how to survive with less, and even valorizing that. Cooper offers a robust analysis of gender dynamics, with sharp insights about the heavy burden on women to manage the family’s anxiety. Cooper’s necessary and timely study is a discomfiting reminder of the human cost of the recession. (July)