At 4 p.m., when Veronica Marentes gets off work, she rushes to pick up her 4-year-old from daycare and her 12-year-old from school. If she’s late for the little one, she risks being charged a dollar for every minute she’s tardy. If she’s slow to pick up the older one, who waits for her in his school’s library, his homework will suffer because there’s no one there to make sure he completes his assignments.
Still, Marentes is often late to pick up her sons, because her manager sometimes asks her to do extra tasks at the end of her shift. As a single mother, these changes add to other stresses in her life. She works 35 hours a week, receives no child support, and lives with her three children in a garage that she rents.
[For more of this story, written by Alissa Quart, go to http://www.theatlantic.com/bus...dules-grades/485174/]
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