An Analysis Of Barbara Ehrenreich's 'Nickel And Dimed'
692 Words3 Pages
Nathaniel Dyer
Dr. Carroll
English III
21 August 2015
The Poorest Gender According to the 2013 U.S. survey of socioeconomic indicators, 41.5 percent of single-mother families live in poverty, differing greatly from the 8.7 percent of married-couple families who are impoverished (Yen huffingtonpost.com). In the novel, Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich tells her true story of how she tries out the life of a low wage female laborer. In her experience, the majority of people she works with are female, thus hinting that women may be more likely to live in poverty than men. Due to many divorced families and out of wedlock children, which seem to be society’s norms of today, it is true that women are more likely to be poor than men. “40 to 50 percent of marriages will end in divorce if current trends continue” (divorcestatistics.org). This statistic is very upsetting due to the fact that divorce not only ruins families, but it also helps lead to single-mothers and uneducated women who have to learn to depend on themselves. In the book, Nickel and Dimed, consider the lady who works at the optical…show more content… Both these scenarios effect obviously both men and women, but women are especially more susceptible to suffering from them if they have children. As mentioned in the introduction, statistics show a mother is 30 percent more likely to live in poverty if she is without a husband. They are of course very helpful subsidies given to single mothers near the poverty line, but there is one way to really fix this problem. Society needs to turn back to morally correct values, especially concerning sex outside of marriage. Many years ago, this concept seemed rare, but now it’s considered by many as something as simple as a kiss. When our country realizes the importance of a unified family, things just might start appearing