Today, 35% of children live in single-parent households, most of them headed by women, many of them low income. Given large decreases in government benefits for those in the lowest income bracket of single-parent families over the past two decades, how do poor single mothers survive? Kristin Seefeldt says many of these families are disconnected – neither working in the formal labor market nor receiving welfare – and barely survive with pieced-together lives. They face huge barriers entering the workforce—dealing with childcare, transportation, and health insurance on low wages. And many mothers who do find work are only one crisis away from losing that job. “The mantra in Michigan was a job, a better job, a career: Through work you would experience upward mobility,” Seefeldt says. “There was never any evidence that was the case.”

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