Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother’s Will to Survive

Stephanie is the author, narrator, and heroine of Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother’s Will to Survive. The book tells the story of her struggle to negotiate her identities as a mother, a writer, and an independent person amidst the challenges of systemic poverty.

Throughout her experience living below the poverty line, Stephanie battles intense feelings of loneliness, despair, and isolation. The clients whose houses she cleans seldom acknowledge her existence—treating her like a ghost. Many of the people with whom she comes into contact throughout her daily life treat her like she is leaching off the government for using seven different kinds of aid just to survive. In Maid, Stephanie suggests she pursues relationships with two emotionally abusive men—her daughter’s father Jamie and a farmer named Travis—out of her desperate need for companionship. In so doing, Stephanie insinuates many women like herself become trapped in poverty—and codependent relationships—as part of a vicious cycle: a cycle that is both emotionally and financially driven.

Stephanie also significantly discusses that when she was a child, her family was tenuously middle-class, meaning they were able to afford everything they needed but only one generation removed from poverty. After her father and mother split up, they became absorbed in their own life struggles, and thus provided little support for Stephanie.