This title describes how the financial pressures of paying for college affect the lives and well-being of middle-class families. The struggle to pay for college is one of the defining features of middle-class life in America today. Across the country, parents agonize over whether to burden their children with loans or to sacrifice their own financial security by taking out a second mortgage or draining their retirement savings. The book takes readers into the homes of middle-class families throughout the nation to reveal the hidden consequences of student debt and the ways that financing college has transformed family life. What emerges is a troubling portrait of an American middle class fettered by the labyrinth of college and university offices that collect financial information, assess needs, and decide who is eligible for aid. This volume breaks through the culture of silence surrounding the student debt crisis, revealing the unspoken costs of sending our kids to college.