Category: Family

Stephanie Land reviews SMILF from the perspective of a single mom who’s been there

Putting Families First: The Movement for Child Care and Early Learning

Cristina Rayas

Let’s put families first – with the voices of parents, child care givers, and organizers, we will strengthen the power of our communities, and give the most vulnerable members of our society a chance to thrive.

Black and Brown Families United in the Era of Political Dysfunction

Paige DeLoach

This article originally appeared in the Huffington Post. By Paige DeLoach When I visited home for the first time after the 2016 election, my mother spoke to me in a […]

I Went from Being Homeless to a Full-Time Writer. Trump Wants to End the Programs That Got Me Here.

Six years ago, I lived with my then 3-year-old daughter, Mia, in a studio apartment. During the day I worked full-time as a maid, cleaning the houses of wealthy people. […]

Little Girls Are Busting Gender Norms in a Year That Hasn’t Been Super Kind to Women

Fred McKissack Jr.

Photo credit: Aberdeen Proving Ground via Flickr Creative Commons Originally published on The Huffington Post. In our Fort Wayne neighborhood, Halloween is a serious candy free-for-all. We bought 12 […]

Stop Using Children as Props in the War on Opiods

Angela Pupino

Originally published on the Huffington Post. Photo credit: DJWess via Flickr Creative Commons. It is no secret that the opioid epidemic is ravaging communities across the United States. In my […]

Home Alone: A Single Mother Tries to Navigate Missoula’s Child Care Crisis

Photo Credits to Brian Hart. Originally published by the Missoula Independent. My life as a single mother has often meant looking up, helpless, waving goodbye like Wile E. Coyote, after […]

My Multiracial Son Embraces His Black Identity

Fred McKissack Jr.

Originally published by the Indianapolis Star. The wispy-haired 4-month-old Mark is held timeless in a frame in front of me. The 12-year-old, shaggy-haired Mark is fast asleep in the room […]

Announcing, my forthcoming memoir: MAID: A Single Mother’s Journey from Cleaning House to Finding Home

On June 16th, I celebrated my youngest daughter Coraline’s second birthday. While she opened presents, I relished the memory of her entering my life. She was born a month after […]

Surburbia Isn’t Just Soccer Moms and Perfect Lawns Anymore

Angela Pupino

Photo credits to Cameron Parkins. Originally published on TalkPoverty and The Nation. When my father, aunt, and uncle decided to pool their money to buy my grandmother a house closer […]

Free-Range Parenting Is A Privilege For The White And Affluent

Photo credits to Ryan Dickey. Originally published in The Establishment. At first glance, my 9-year-old daughter doesn’t look “poor.” She meticulously chooses her outfits for school, often sleeping in them—even […]

Yes, Food Can Be Entertainment for Low-Income People

Photo source: FreeImages.com Originally published on Talk Poverty. I woke up yesterday hungry. Since my last shopping trip four days before, I’d not eaten much, saving most of the food […]

What Happens When You Can’t Afford Self-care

Darryl Lorenzo Wellington

Originally published on Talk Poverty. For the last year, I have been keenly aware of my dire need for two things: therapy and exercise. But for those who struggle to […]

The Answer is Muhammad Ali: Who else?

Originally published in the Huffington Post. For most of my life, I haven’t idolized sports heroes. I may be the exception to the great American male rule-of-thumb. There have been […]

With $55,000 Debt, You Learn to Appreciate the Little Things

Originally posted on The Guardian as a kick-off to their series on debt. I expected college to feel like a major accomplishment. I walked across the stage, eight months pregnant with […]

Sheryl Sandberg Thinks She Finally Gets Single Moms, But She Doesn’t Get Me

Originally posted in SheKnows. I read Sheryl Sandberg’s recent Facebook post from the trenches of a horrible Mother’s Day weekend. The youngest had thrown up on Friday night, and we […]

Saying Your House is Messy Because You Play With Your Kids is a Privilege

Originally published in the Washington Post. I grew up in what some would call an immaculately clean home. I hated my mom a little for it. I wasn’t allowed to […]

Domestic Violence is Trapping Women in More Than Just Bad Relationships

Originally published on SheKnows. There are moments in my life that I can return to easily. I don’t have to close my eyes or envision the surroundings or what it […]

Out of Homelessness, A Mom Turns Advocate

Fred McKissack Jr.

Originally published on Rooflines, a Shelterforce blog. Jenean F. and her husband worked hard to achieve the increasingly elusive American Dream. She was a stay at home mom and he […]

Here’s How Many People it Takes to Replace a Single Mom

Originally published on SheKnows. In the weeks building up to a business trip, I created a schedule for the five people who’d replace me, a single mom with two kids, […]

It Is Easier to Have a ‘Spirited’ Child When You Are a White Parent

Originally published on The Guardian. I have what’s known as a “spirited” child. Mia has run me ragged since she knew how to walk. She’d run across soccer fields as […]

The Art of Balancing the Ledger While in Poverty

Originally published on Talk Poverty and CommonDreams. When you live at or under the federal poverty level, you’d better be good at crunching numbers. Every cent coming in or going […]

I Lived On $6 A Day With A 6-year-old And A Baby On The Way. It Was Extreme Poverty.

Originally published on The Guardian. It didn’t take me long to go from financial stability to fearing homelessness. In January 2014 I was 35-years-old, raising a six-year-old nearly full-time and […]

The Fight for Quality, Accessible Child Care is a Fight for Women’s Equality

Wendi C. Thomas

This piece was originally posted in the Montgomery Advertiser. Women’s History Month is about more than celebrating phenomenal women in history; it’s also about honoring the women who have dedicated […]

Retail work and the instability of the New Year

Mark Ortiz

The New Year tends to be a time for new beginnings, but for Americans who work in seasonal jobs in the retail industry, the New Year can be a very […]

Social Security expansion: Something we can all agree on

Yesterday, Nancy J. Altman and Eric R. Kingson, authors of the new book “Social Security Works! Why Social Security Isn’t Going Broke and How Expanding It Will Help Us All,” […]

President Obama, Think Big in 2015

Robin Curran

It’s a new year, which means new resolutions, new inaugurations and the beginning of holding politicians accountable for their campaign promises. Last week I attended the Washington Interfaith Network’s (WIN) […]

Working Families’ Lives Matter

Tamika Middleton

For the past several weeks, cities across the country have seen a multitude of protests and acts of civil disobedience following announcements that police officers would not be indicted in […]

The Luxury of Being Grateful

Amanda Sands

I spent the better part of one morning last week telling dozens of low-income people of color that they had to CHOOSE ONE: cranberry sauce, stuffing in a box, or […]

Another House Political Smoke and Mirrors Trick—The KIDS Act

Erin Brock

As the House Judiciary Committee begins its review of the KIDS act, proposed by Representative Eric Cantor, its inadequacy is already becoming clear. The act is part of the House […]

House Republicans: Our Deadline is August 2nd

As House Republicans debate whether or not they will act on immigration reform, they should remember the deadline of Aug. 2nd that the Fair Immigration Reform Movement (FIRM) has set […]

Voice of a (New) American

One of America’s treasures is the freedom we enjoy, the absence of restraints on our ability to think and to act. We the people, who live in this country, live […]

The Fight Continues

Last Thursday, the Senate voted to pass the bill 68-32, and focus shifted to the House of Representatives as they work on their version of the bill. It has been […]

Reminding Congress That the Fight is About Families

Now that the long-awaited immigration reform bill has been introduced, the real work begins. Amendments to the bill are now available online for public review. Tomorrow, the process known as […]

America Needs to Put its Families First

By: Jennifer Martinez A little over a year, my family was ripped apart when my husband of 16 years was suddenly taken away and forced to leave the country. My […]

The Immigration Bill: An Historic First Step

The 844-page immigration reform bill released early this morning is a victory on many fronts. Spokesperson for the Fair Immigration Reform Movement (FIRM) Kica Matos called it a “monumental achievement […]

Congress must move quickly on immigration

Kica Matos

What does it take to get Congress to listen? On April 10, more than 100,000 people from 31 states descended on the nation’s Capitol to send a strong message that […]

Is the RNC Ready for an Immigration Makeover?

By Alesia Lucas & Sarah English The Republican National Committee (RNC) has wrapped up their meeting and may be ready for a party makeover. Instead of playing the blame game, […]

Building the Economic Strength of Women

March 8th is International Women’s Day, and although it’s 2013, American women still lag behind men in paycheck fairness. Women still make a mere 64 cents for every dollar their […]

A Great Day as VAWA is Reauthorized

Today, President Obama reauthorized the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), expanding protection to immigrants, LGBT individuals and Native Americans. At the bill signing, President Obama spoke of when the bill […]

A Bus Tour, Full of Stories and Strength

Emily Gelbaum

Last week, the National Keeping Families Together Bus Tour launched from Chicago, IL carrying families and individuals directly impacted by the current immigration system. The bus riders are calling on […]

The Immigrant Community Comes Together

Leaders of the Asian Pacific American community are supporting the Keeping Families Together mission. Comprehensive immigration reform is essential because families should never be separated. When mentioning the “undocumented immigrants”, […]

Immigrants to Yale, “We aren’t Guinea pigs!”

Yale recently suspended plans to create a center in conjunction with the Department of Defense that would train U.S. soldiers in the art of interrogation by using immigrants as their […]

Melissa’s Story

Under our current immigration system, families are destroyed every day. Take what happened to Melissa McGuire-Maniau, for instance. Melissa is a wife, a mother of three, a full-time college student, […]

Alone on Valentine’s Day Because Of Deportation

In December the Fair Immigration Reform Movement launched the Keeping Families Together campaign, the campaign collects the countless stories of families split because of our broken immigration system. Yesterday was […]

Making Minimum Wage a Living Wage

Overall, 77% of those who watched The State of the Union Address were pleased with what the President had to say. It was a passionate plea and directive to the […]

Immigration and LGBT Advocates

When two Portland women renewed their vows in Oregon, living as a mixed-status couple, the moment was impactful for more than one reason. The couple renewed their vows to illustrate […]

Dishonesty is Not the Best Policy

When police ask for your help, most people are inclined to help them. Amber’s husband falls into that category. But Amber and her family were shocked at what happened after […]

The OFA Takes a Page from Keeping Families Together

With President Obama’s second term in full swing his former campaign organization has decided to take on immigration reform. Taking a page from the Keeping Families Together Campaign, The Obama […]

An Eye-Opener of a Week for Me

I’ve been volunteering at the Latino Student Fund (LSF), a local nonprofit in Washington, DC, that provides “academic support to at-risk and underprivileged Latino youth,” for nearly two years. And […]

The Poverty Predicament

The word ‘poor’ is treated like a four-letter word by politicians. But with the downturn of our economy and slow job market, the issue of poverty has become more serious […]

Sharing the Stories of Immigrant Families

The Fair Immigration Reform Movement recently launched the Keeping Families Together Campaign. The campaign was created to advocate for immigration reform that keeps families together and to collect the stories […]

Immigration Is Still On the List

President Obama’s second term has no shortage of key issues. While some feared that the important issue of gun control and the debt ceiling would overshadow the need for comprehensive […]

A Holiday Without Your Parents

Many US children will spend this holiday season without a parent. Why? Because they have a parent who isn’t a US citizen and has been deported. From 2010-2012 about 23% […]

Keeping Families Together in our Fight for Immigration Reform