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Acknowledgments

This book is based on two rounds of interviews that took place ten years apart. Given that time frame, I have racked up debts to several waves of advisers, research assistants, colleagues, and friends from different institutions. My first and greatest debt, however, is to the women who agreed to participate in the study. They generously told me the details of their lives, even though I could offer them little in return other than vague hopes that the research would help women like them down the road. Many of the women I met reported feeling mistreated by those who represented mainstream institutions, and their resulting suspicions, which are the subject of this book, kept them from interacting with too many like me—a graduate student and later a faculty member at large universities. Their willingness to give me their time, their thoughts, and sometimes their secrets was thus an enormous gift.

I thank Susan Lloyd, Rhonda Present, and Jody Raphael, who helped connect me to service providers through whom I might meet participants for the study. In addition, Susan Lloyd allowed me to identify several respondents through her own study in a Chicago neighborhood. I also thank all of the directors and staff members of various agencies who gave generously of their time and who allowed me to approach their clients with invitations for interviews. I regret that to protect the study participants’ confidentiality, I cannot thank them by name.

I am deeply grateful to Rebecca Vonderlack-Navarro and Melissa Ford Shah for their hard work and great skill as they conducted almost half of the second round of interviews. They were also my partners in devising and implementing the coding scheme for the transcripts. Johanna Gray’s quick mind kept us organized through the data collection and coding processes. Thomas Nigel Gannon helped me tackle the literature on trust, served as a sounding board for the book’s major ideas, and was an insightful reader of drafts of most of the book’s chapters.

For additional research assistance, I thank Adam Avrushin, Valerie Bonner, Abigail Coppock, Jessica Iselin, Amanda Naar, Neelam Patel, Yvette Pettee, Sarah Pollock, Lauren Ross, Jacqueline Singer, Christina Stewart, Rochelle Terman, Michael Tower, and Corey Waters. Kai Andersen-Guterman, Bessie Flately, and Tatiana Poladko conducted analyses of census data to produce the appendix’s maps with advice from Melody Boyd and Richard Moye. Jorge Navarro translated research materials for Spanish-speaking research participants. Ellen von Schrott transcribed the majority of interviews for both time periods and encouraged me through her enthusiasm for the project.

I conducted the first round of interviews as a doctoral student at Northwestern University, where I had the dream team of dissertation committees. I am eternally grateful to Christopher (Sandy) Jencks, whose rigor made my work stronger, whose editing made my writing clearer, and whose warmth made my time in graduate school easier. I thank Art Stinchcombe for believing in this project, often seeing aspects of its conceptual significance that I was slower to discover. I thank Carol Heimer for her ability to advise on both the most abstract theoretical concepts and the most mundane tasks involved in conducting qualitative field research. One of the great rewards of academic life is that such relationships endure over the years. Even though my former committee members were not involved in the second half of the project’s design and data collection, each continued to indulge my requests toward the end of the writing process. Rebecca Blank, Julie Brines, Kathy Edin, Roberto Fernandez, Mark Granovetter, Kathie Harris, Susan Mayer, and Mary Waters also provided valuable guidance during my graduate school career. Kathy Edin and Maureen Waller advised me on my successful application for a National Science Foundation (NSF) Dissertation Improvement Award. Fay Cook, Greg Duncan, and Mary Patillo invited me back to Northwestern for a productive year as a visiting scholar.

My many wonderful colleagues in graduate school provided support, but I want to especially acknowledge my dear friends Elizabeth Clifford, Brian Gran, David Shulman, and Christopher Wellin, who lent their encouragement and perceptive advice throughout the duration of the project.

During a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Scholars postdoctoral fellowship, I enjoyed the hospitality of Sandy Danziger, Sheldon Danziger, Ariel Kalil, and Catherine McLaughlin. Mary Corcoran read my work and promoted it enthusiastically. Denise Anthony, Betsy Armstrong, and Paula Lantz not only became good friends but also gave advice over the years at key moments. Denise, an expert on the trust literature, provided entrée into it, read most of the manuscript’s chapters, and served as my go-to person for checks on how I was integrating concepts from the trust and poverty literatures.

Temple University has been a wonderful environment in which to bring the project to fruition. I treasure the support and insights of my colleagues here. Julia Ericksen, who (as chair at the time) recruited me to the department, read the manuscript in its entirety—including some chapters more than once. As both cheerleader and insightful critic, she was invaluable in helping me complete the book. Sherri Grasmuck and Matt Wray both read chapters and advised on how to make the arguments clearer and more engaging to readers. Conversations with Gretchen Condran, Kim Goyette, and Josh Klugman helped me hone my arguments. My current department chair, Bob Kaufman, is supportive in every way. Thanks are also due to Rebecca Alpert, Kevin Delaney, Rosario Espinal, Joyce A. Joyce, Laura Levitt, Peter Logan, and Heather Thompson.

I also benefited from the knowledge and supportiveness of a host of other colleagues. Evelyn Brodkin gave early encouragement to pursue this project, and her ethnographic work on caseworkers has been an invaluable resource for checking the validity of my respondents’ reports. Susan Lambert was central to helping me see the consistency of the theme of distrust across the contexts I studied. Julia Henly is a steadfast friend who spent endless hours talking with me, reading my work, and generally being in my corner. Harold Pollack discussed the book’s ideas with me and offered his support in multiple ways. Aimee Dechter has continually provided constructive criticism and equally enthusiastic support. Kate Cagney, Peter Conrad, Clifton Emery, Malitta Engstrom, Helen Levy, M. Katherine Mooney, and Bill Sites have given me both encouragement and insights. My students in both my graduate course on inequality and my undergraduate course on poverty have given me helpful feedback on the book’s material. Susanne Rosenberg, my dear friend since childhood, proofread the manuscript meticulously.

Annette Lareau has long been a champion of this project. She read the entire manuscript twice. I thank her for her tremendous generosity and sage advice. Maia Cucchiara also read the entire manuscript and provided terrific insights on how to reshape several chapters.

The project was sustained through funding provided by a variety of sources. During the first round of interviews, I was supported by an NSF Dissertation Improvement Award; the NSF fellowship program in Poverty, Race, and Urban Inequality at Northwestern University; a Northwestern University Dissertation Grant; and a Northwestern University Alumnae Association Dissertation Fellowship. In later stages, I received funding from the Center for Health Administration Studies; the Center for Human Potential; the Sloan Center for Children, Families, and Work; a Temple University faculty summer research grant; a Temple sabbatical semester; and a Center for Humanities at Temple faculty fellowship.

It has been a pleasure to work with my editor Naomi Schneider, who has given me astute advice throughout, and with the editorial and production staff at the University of California Press. I thank the reviewers whose thoughtful suggestions benefited the manuscript greatly. I also thank Carolyn Bond for her keen editorial eye.

I was blessed with parents who considered it their job to provide unending support without ever expecting anything in return. It is painful that my father, who was in effect my earliest academic adviser, is not here to see the completed book. But I am comforted that he knew of my contract with University of California Press before his death. My mother’s quiet sensitivity and insightfulness set a great example to try to follow in conducting qualitative work. I thank her for all the sacrifices she has made for me. No sister has ever had her sister’s back better than Jan Levine has mine. And my brother-in-law Michael Zuckerman is right behind her. I thank them for all of the meals, conversations about politics, and encouragement. My brother Jonathan Levine died before I knew what profession I would pursue or that I would write this book. But the gifts he gave me while he was here—his confidence in me, his wisdom about what is important, and his example of how to tell a story well—will last my lifetime. My parents-in-law Shelly and Bob Sobel arrive for visits wanting to know what they can do to help and how my work is going. I thank them and my siblings-in-law Laurence and Joan Sobel and David Sobel for their wonderful support. I also have a rich network of aunts, uncles, cousins, and dear friends. I am deeply grateful to them all.

My daughter Julia has brought pure joy to my life. She has supported me in numerous ways, from decorating my office with signs, to coming up with ideas for the book’s cover, to being more patient than children should have to be when their mothers are busy working. Writing the book would have been a much drearier experience without exposure to her cheery disposition. Ed Sobel has seen this project through from glimmer of an idea to completion. He has listened to me battle through the ideas, given me writing advice, and put up with my faulty estimations of when I would be finished. There are many positive adjectives I could use to describe Ed. If I were forced to pick one, though, it would be trustworthy. Now that I have written this book, I understand how valuable that is.