Commissioned Book Review: Sarah Halpern-Meekin, Social Poverty: Low-Income Parents and the Struggle for Family and Community Ties
| Date | 01 May 2021 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1478929920901959 |
| Author | Adam Neal |
| Published date | 01 May 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Commissioned Book Reviews |
Political Studies Review
2021, Vol. 19(2) NP17 –NP18
journals.sagepub.com/home/psrev
Commissioned Book Review
901959PSW0010.1177/1478929920901959Political Studies ReviewCommissioned Book Review
book-review2020
Commissioned Book Review
Social Poverty: Low-Income Parents and the
Struggle for Family and Community Ties by
Sarah Halpern-Meekin. New York: New York
University Press, 2019. 295 pp., £23.99,
ISBN 9781479816897
In this thoughtful book, Sarah Halpern-Meekin
investigates the ways poverty affects our abil-
ity to form and sustain close, trusting relation-
ships and, in doing so, contributes to the debate
around poverty and loneliness.
Halpern-Meekin (2019: 5) defines the con-
dition of social poverty as when people lack
‘dependable friends or family members who
provide emotional support and companionship,
and to whom you can safely disclose your vul-
nerabilities’. Halpern-Meekin arrives at this
concept as a result of ethnographic research
she conducted with participants of Family
Expectations, a service which provides rela-
tionship and parenting education to low-
income couples. These kinds of relationship
programmes were heavily criticised for failing
to reduce income poverty. Despite these criti-
cisms, the participants themselves appear to be
huge advocates of the Family Expectations
programme. This leads Halpern-Meekin to
conclude that Family Expectations is meeting a
different need; protection from social poverty.
The first two chapters examine the ways in
which the participants in her study lacked
social support and the difficulties they faced
transitioning into adulthood. Chapters 3 and 4
outline the specific difficulties the participants
confronted in their relationships. Chapter 5 dis-
cusses Family Expectations while chapter 6
discusses critiques of relationship education
programmes.
This book is highly valuable in its discus-
sion of some of the ways in which poverty
affects our ability to meet our interpersonal
needs, something often neglected in discus-
sions of disadvantage. For example, Halpern-
Meekin interviewed a couple whose daughter
was born prematurely. Their lack of a car
meant that they were unable to visit their
daughter in hospital. Their economic condition
meant that both parents and baby missed the
opportunity to bond with each other in the
early stages of the child’s development. As
Halpern-Meekin (2019: 67–68) puts it, ‘their
economic poverty . . . contributed to their
social poverty’.
By focussing too narrowly on economic
conditions of poverty, Halpern-Meekin argues
that we miss the social. She suggests economi-
cally deprived individuals are often willing to
put themselves in further financial hardship in
order to meet social needs. She tells the story
of a woman who, despite serious financial dif-
ficulties, including being unable to pay her
rent, spends significant amounts of money to
call her partner in prison. Halpern-Meekin
(2019: 72) argues that her spending emphasises
‘the financial costs that individuals are willing
to pay to secure the family lives they want,
paying to avoid social poverty’. While it is true
that individuals do make use of their financial
resources to meet their social needs, it is not
clear whether the above examples support her
claim. We can view this situation using the lens
of social capital: When one partner spends her
limited money on prison calls, she is investing
both in the relationship itself, and in the
resources, both emotional and financial, that
she hopes the relationship provide.
Halpern-Meekin thinks of social poverty as
its own distinct condition, but as a feature of
those who are disadvantaged. There is, in other
words, a clustering of disadvantages. This is
similar to the account developed by Jonathan
Wolff and Avner de-Shalit (2007), and, like
their account, Halpern-Meekin (2019: 219–
220) suggests we work to both reduce disad-
vantage and de-cluster it. Providing those with
low incomes the opportunities to learn and
develop skills that they can use to strengthen
their relationships is one way in which we can
help de-cluster disadvantage. There may be
other more effective means of reducing social
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