Forgotten families - Jody Heymann

In the last half-century, radical changes have rippled through the workplace and the home from Boston to Bombay. In the face of rapid globalization, these changes affect us all, and we can no longer confine ourselves to addressing working and social conditions within our own borders without simultaneously addressing them on a global scale. Based on over a thousand in-depth interviews and survey data from more than 55,000 families spanning five continents,Forgotten Families is the first truly global account of how the changing conditions of work threaten children, women and men, and the infirm.
It addresses problems faced by working families in industrialized and developing countries alike, touching on issues of child health and development, barriers to parentsgetting and keeping jobs, problems families confront daily and in times of crisis, and the roles of growing inequalities.
Rich in individual stories and deeply human, Heymann's book proposes innovative and imaginative ideas for solving the problems of the truly belabored together as a global community.

Jody Heymann M.D, Ph.D., is founder and director of the Project on Global Working Families. An Associate Professor at the Harvard School of Public Health and Harvard Medical School, she is author of The Widening Gap: Why America's Working Families Are in Jeopardy and What Can Be Done About It (Basic Books, 2000) and Can Working Families Ever Win? (Beacon Press, 2002).

Exhaustive in scope, meticulous in detail, her book is a damning indictment of what has gone wrong during the race to the bottom between developing countries amid globalizing markets. The book is peppered with heartbreaking stories gleaned from surveys of more than 55,000 families, depicting a worldwide squalor in which children, if they survive infancy, are usually doomed to re-enact their parents' lives at the sweatshop.... this volume will become a valuable
primary source for policy makers.

Publishers Weekly

Jody Heymann's groundbreaking research and insights on global families are remarkable for both their breadth and their depth. Forgotten Families describes in moving detail the common experiences shared by working families everywhere, from Botswana to Vietnam to the United States. Critical issues, if left unaddressed, will threaten families, businesses and whole nations. This thorough and thoughtful volume builds a powerful case for global action on decent
working conditions and basic social support for families as the cornerstone of continued economic and social progress. Heymann has sounded a wake-up call for leaders, policymakers, and citizens everywhere.

Senator Edward M. Kennedy

At crucial time in the lives of all families, Jody Heymann has led the first global effort to examine the conditions faced by working parents and their children around the world. Extraordinary in its scope and meticulous in the research on which it is based, Forgotten Families presents the results of a landmark decade-long study of the conditions working parents and their children face from Africa to the Americas, from Asia to Europe. Heymann passionately
and compellingly recounts the experiences of families and lucidly summarizes the statistics while providing a deeply thought-provoking analysis of where public policy stands and where it needs to go.

Robert B. Reich, Professor of Public Policy, University of California at Berkeley, and former U.S. Secretary of Labor

This book is a powerful and overdue wake-up call about the enormous challenges and awful choices working families around the world face. We can and must do better for all of our children.

Marian Wright Edelman, CEO and Founder, Children's Defense Fund