Ehrenreich Why Me Analysis

Through the survey “Why me?” researchers “found these women were most likely to attribute their poverty to issues related to having children, their romantic relationships, and structural government blame” and the “least endorsed attributions for poverty were fatalistic and individualistic reasons” (“Why me?”, 320). This concept was evident in Ehrenreich’s case as she found it extremely difficult to find a job, “no one of the twenty places I’ve applied calls me for an interview” (Ehrenreich, 249). She also emphasized the unrealistic salary provided for workers especially who are single mothers, “by taking $6 to $7 an hour, perhaps subtracting a dollar or two an hour for child care, multiplying it by 160 hours a month, and comparing the results to prevailing rents” (Ehrenreich, 247).
The “Why me?” experiment found the effect of
This relates to the idea that Ehrenreich found as she stated that welfare reform jobs are not “morally uplifting and psychologically buoying” but rather full of “insult and stress” (Ehrenreich, 264). According to “Why me?” they found that poor women deal with the continuing basic economic stress of obtaining food and shelter, but also are faced with a wide range of physical and psychological effects. This finding was exhibited in Ehrenreich’s study as she learned that many of her co-workers did not live in ideal or necessarily safe areas; such as living in their cars, sharing rooms with intolerable roommates, or staying night by night in a hotel room. Her co-workers were identified as being single mothers too soon to be ones, “everyone who lacks a working husband or boyfriend seems to have a second job (Ehrenreich, 259). The physical aspect demonstrated in “Why me?” was also evident in Ehrenreich’s study as she began depending on daily doses of drugstore-brand ibuprofen