One of the things that lands deepest about the new Netflix show Maid—Stephanie Land’s memoir turned drama about a single mother, Alex (Margaret Qualley), who bolts with her two-year-old daughter, Maddy (Rylea Nevaeh Whittet) from an abusive relationship with boyfriend Sean (Nick Robinson) and sets off on a chaotic, grinding slog to survive—is its vivid portrait of the agonizing bureaucracy required in seeking government assistance.
We see it when Alex is handed a labyrinthine load of forms to fill out in the hopes of qualifying for aid; when she loses custody of Maddy in a retaliatory legal move by Sean that paints her as the unfit parent, in spite of his alcoholism and abuse; when she is given only a week to file proof of housing to show she’s “stable and able” to care for Maddy; and when there isn’t a character in her life capable of producing court testimony advocating for her parenting skills. All this happens alongside a running tally showing us she has all of $6 in her bank account, and it’s draining fast. Did I mention she no longer has a car, either? This logistical scramble forces her to miss crucial housecleaning shifts, putting her once again in the red.
If you’re exhausted just reading that, imagine living it. Some 37 million people in this hellish predicament in the U.S. alone have to navigate the system as Alex does, securing each form of aid by solving a jigsaw puzzle of making just little enough to be eligible, but never too much to lose benefits. One of them was my mother, a high school teacher on food stamps who started teaching an extracurricular program for another grand a year just to feed her four daughters. But she soon found out that earning $83 extra a month before taxes put us just over the line for WIC eligibility, which then forced her to take a third job at a gas station up the street on nights and weekends to cover the loss. Now we at least had food—just no mother in sight.
Watching Maid put me right back in it, though I wondered how effective the show would be for those who’ve never experienced challenges like Alex’s. Then I remembered a poverty simulator I attended once as a reporter in Nashville, where I watched freshmen at the more than $50,000-a-year Vanderbilt University come as close to real hardship as they likely ever would. They were issued a family, insultingly low income and a set of disadvantaged data points (health issues, no car, a sick child). At first, they scoffed. But as they were sent off around the room from agency to agency, they met every iteration of derailment known to the impoverished: late-payment penalties, bounced checks, and unexpected car repairs (if they were lucky enough to have one). I still remember one student telling me, beleaguered and upset after a grueling hour with no relief in sight, “There was no one to take care of my kids.”
The simulation and the show’s message are painfully clear: If you’re poor, you will spend nearly every waking moment of your life trying to stay afloat, making trades for your children’s safety and your own you never imagined. You might occasionally hit a victorious moment of a semi-full fridge, only to find yourself sucked back down by the undertow of a broken-down car or abusive relationship. There are no truly “good” options, just piecemeal solutions—and the cycle is merciless and exhausting.
Maid also excels at showing what that cycle forces many poor mothers into: an often toxic dependence on unhealthy relationships. We had a babysitter who put us on strict cleaning duty in exchange for payment, and who would later do jail time for dealing drugs and murder. Alex often has to rely on her mother, Paula (a fantastic turn for Qualley’s own mother, Andie MacDowell, as an outrageously unstable “arteest”), out of desperation for childcare; Paula’s own undiagnosed mental illness makes that chaotically impossible and often unsafe for Maddy. She must co-parent and sometimes move back in with abusive Sean, whose own trauma makes him pathologically unpredictable and scarily vindictive. Her father, Hank (Billy Burke), who tries to offer help without any mea culpa for his own past, presents another devil’s bargain: Would you let your father watch your child for desperately needed day care, knowing he once abused your mother?
It would be easy to argue that Alex doesn’t always make the “right” choices, something I often thought then about my own mother. To wish that she’d document and report every instance of Sean’s abuse. To want her just to call Nate (Raymond Ablack), a fellow single dad in her orbit who’s eager to help her (and date her). He’s a nice guy—so willing to pitch in, and with the resources to boot! But Maid upends any notions of an easy out, showing us carefully how poverty and abuse have a way of robbing your judgment, your spirit, and your will. You can’t weigh options you don’t see, much less don’t have. It recalls the standout line Mia (Kerry Washington) hisses to Elena (Reese Witherspoon) in Little Fires Everywhere when accused of being a bad mother: “You didn’t make good choices; you had good choices.”
And while Alex is a white woman who has vastly better choices than the many more women of color facing poverty in this country, on Maid, it’s those women who give Alex a blueprint for action. Domestic violence counselor Denise (BJ Harrison), shelter resident Danielle (Aimee Carrero) and Value Maids boss Yolanda (Tracy Vilar) all demonstrate that when the deck is that stacked, channeling a hell-hath-no-fury rage and grit is your only hope. In contrast, Regina (Anika Noni Rose), a wealthy Black lawyer whose house Alex cleans, offers the stark lesson that wealth doesn’t confer the happiness we imagine either, but that the struggles of single motherhood can still bond women from vastly different backgrounds.
As in real life, everyone on Maid keeps muddling through, hoping for that beam of light to burst through and point to a better way out. Sadly, for many people, there is no light, and author Stephanie Land’s work (and the show) succeed because it’s self-aware about the privilege inherent in her success. In a piece at Time, Land makes clear that getting her airlift out of poverty—a book deal of the sort BIPOC writers are rarely offered; a TV show easier to nab when you’re the kind of poor person we love to see “win”—was rare, but still better odds than most.
Anyone who watches Maid through the end ought to leave with the sense that while poverty often swallows good people whole, there is real dignity in the struggle—and yes, sometimes an exit. But if you find yourself leaving with armchair speculation about how much better you think your choices would’ve been if you were Alex, maybe look up your nearest poverty simulation. Then thank your lucky stars it’s the closest you’ll come to finding out.
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