The most common shared story in our country today is the financial insecurity of American families. Today, more than one in three Americans—more than 100 million people—live in poverty or on the edge of it. Half of all Americans will spend at least a few months churning into and out of poverty during their lifetimes. This economic immobility and inequality is a systemic and pervasive problem that President Barack Obama recently described as “the defining challenge of our time.”  → Read More

Lucia Herrera is a 30-year-old mother of three children, with a preschooler in a Head Start program and 2-year-old twins.14 She works four days a week from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. as a family support worker at a New York City charity. This requires her to make home visits to families in the South Bronx to help them with their problems. She lives with her fiancé, but with a salary of only $28,000 a year, making ends meet has been tough.  → Read More

So many of us have spent precious time reaching for the stars, or leaning in to our careers, that we’ve forgotten how to construct a firm ground to stand on. Sadly, we often don’t have that luxury. Working full time, feeding and educating our children, caring for our parents while acting as the primary provider has left us in a vulnerable position of floating too close to the edge. Ascending that ladder to success, and learning how to dress for it once we’re there, has sent us to a satellite far away from our base. So little time, relatively speaking, is spent finding solutions as to how we can solidify ourselves, financially, emotionally and spiritually so that we don’t feel one job, one paycheck, one relationship and one prayer away from a stratospheric disaster. Houston, we have a problem.  → Read More

When my neighbors in Oakland tried to set me up with their friend Ken in 2004, I declined. I found out later he’d declined too. We were both mid-thirties and focused on our careers, settled into the decision not to marry or have kids. Then we got to talking at a party hosted by my neighbors. We got engaged on our third date and had a daughter in the first year of being married. She’s now seven and, though she rolls her eyes at it, we call her by the nickname Bean.  → Read More

I am a 20-something college graduate with a bachelor’s of science in early childhood/childhood education (birth through grade 6). I am a nanny, with plans of some day opening my own home family daycare. For me caregiving is not just babysitting, it is a career – one that I take very seriously. However, my path as a caregiver has not been easy. It’s been a long, and frustrating road.  → Read More

Political leaders talk about “family values,” but too often real reforms are set aside when it comes time to draw up the federal budget or do the heavy legislative lifting to ensure that women and men can raise their children, care for their elders, and continue to earn the incomes they need to survive and thrive in today’s economy.  → Read More