The Shriver Report

Linking Key Elements of the American Dream—Educational Opportunities, Financial Stability, and Social Capital—to Improve Women’s Lives

Only 12 percent of young girls feel “very confident” when it comes to making financial decisions.

As a country, we recognize the value of empowering women around the world. We deliberately invest financial, political, and human capital in women and girls across the globe because we know that when women thrive, it creates a radiating and lasting impact across generations and communities.

It is time to apply that same focus here at home. With 42 million women and the 28 million children depending on them living on the economic brink in the United States, continuing business as usual is simply not an option.¹ We must break the intergenerational cycle of poverty and near poverty that plagues our own country. It is a lofty goal, but an essential one. As we have seen the world over, the secret is investing in women.

After all, we know what it takes for families to thrive. A high-quality education, a good job with opportunities for advancement, child care to make work possible, affordable health care, meaningful relationships, and social connections are all key ingredients to success. We also know what can throw any family off track: a lost job, an unintended and unprepared pregnancy, an interrupted education, a medical crisis, or even a broken-down car.

Many struggling, low-wage women workers deftly navigate a complex maze of challenges and confront systems that seem stacked against them. It is their own resilience, fused with optimism and a commitment to the people depending on them, which drives them forward to create a better life. In fact, research by Ascend, a policy program at the Aspen Institute, in 2011 and 2013, as well as by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research and TargetPoint Consulting for The Shriver Report, demonstrates that despite facing myriad challenges, women on the brink show remarkable resilience.

What if women were at the heart of our efforts to retool our economy and ensure everyone has a shot at the American Dream?

These qualities of resilience and optimism are invaluable and undervalued; recognizing and developing the abilities of low-wage women workers may be the best investment we can make for our economy—and the best investment women can make for their families and themselves.

So how do we get there? We start by listening to the experts—the women and girls struggling for solid financial footing. While a swirl of public debates call on women to pull themselves and their families up by their bootstraps or to juggle it all, the voices of low-income women are seldom included in these conversations. Ascend at the Aspen Institute was created to serve as a national hub for breakthrough ideas and collaborations that move women and children toward educational success and economic security. Listening to and lifting up the voices of parents—especially women—and their children has been an essential element of Ascend’s work from the start.

In 2011, Ascend commissioned an ongoing bipartisan focus group research project, Voices for Two-Generation Success. This series focuses on low-income parents and children across race and ethnicity, and it was designed to tap their ideas and include their voices in the public discussion about new policy approaches for women on the brink. The project, conducted in six cities around the country by leading national experts Celinda Lake of Lake Research Partners and Bob Carpenter of Chesapeake Beach Consulting, offers insights into the gaps between the data that describe women’s lives and their day-to-day realities.

In preparation for The Shriver Report, Ascend also conducted a series of focus groups with questions designed to offer guidance for the development of Life Education, a curriculum to arm young people, particularly girls, with the information they need to make smart financial and personal decisions. (see Appendix A for full methodology) Building upon previous public opinion research in conjunction with the focus groups, this chapter takes a closer look at the lives of mothers living on the brink, as well as middle and high school teens. Throughout this chapter, their voices and perspectives bring to life the challenges and opportunities raised in The Shriver Report.

Previous chapters describe the pervasive economic split over the past 50 years—between the increasing number of women who experience wealth and economic power, and the increasing number who have greater responsibility for their families’ well-being but lack the resources to achieve financial security. Why hasn’t the power of some translated into investment in the potential of all? Why does the pay gap persist? Why aren’t workers recognized as caregivers, with paid leave for illness and family responsibilities? Why do national policies woefully underinvest in adequate early care and education for our children? These issues affect all Americans, but for women on the lower rungs of the income ladder, they translate into more severe economic hardship and undercut our nation’s economic productivity.

Building from the proven success of investing in women and girls worldwide and directly addressing women living on the brink in this country is a generational game changer.

As women at the top of the ladder contemplate how to exert their own power, it is important that they also hold themselves accountable for creating concrete pathways and policies that tap into all women’s economic potential. “Lifting as we climb,” a motto adopted by African American women in the early 1900s in their quest for civil rights and women’s rights, still rings true today.

In today’s economy, there are no sidelines; to thrive, our nation will need to develop every worker’s potential. What if women were at the heart of our efforts to retool our economy and ensure everyone has a shot at the American Dream? What if our solutions focused on pathways for women and their children together, two generations at a time? How can we link key elements of the American Dream—educational opportunities, financial stability, and social capital—to improve women’s lives?

The answers to these questions could produce bold new approaches to adapting both public policies and our workplaces to the realities—and resilience—of low-wage working women. Most importantly, they could even change how women see themselves. If we build from the proven success of investing in women and girls worldwide and deal directly with the high number of women and children living on the brink in this country, this courageous and enterprising proposition presents a generational game changer for all.

We know from listening to the voices of women and girls living on the brink that they are on shaky financial footing; they can plummet, or they can soar. Last summer, Voices for Two-Generation Success engaged a diverse group of low-income mothers and teens in a series of frank conversations commissioned by Ascend at the Aspen Institute, in conjunction with The Shriver Report. We wanted to know what information and resources moms felt they were missing and how they managed the challenges of the recession. We wanted to know what students wished to learn in high school. We wanted to know what moms expected from themselves and their communities, what they wished they had known when they were in school, and what they would most like their kids to know. And we asked them all how they defined success—and what they thought it would take to achieve it.

“I think my challenge is more just to be financially stable in the long run, be able for her to go to college. That’s kind of like my challenge now. Even though she is 6, it’s good to think about it now just because you never know what’s going to happen in the future.”

— Asian American mother, mixed income, Chicago (see Appendix A)

From Denver to Chicago to Richmond, low-income women—both single and married—told us in their own words about their aspirations, anxieties, relationships, regrets, goals, and expectations as they work every day to create better lives for their families and themselves. The young people, ages 12 to 18, told us about their hopes and challenges, as well as about their relationships with their parents, their friends, and their communities. They told us of their dreams and how they thought they would get there.

A central theme emerged from both sets of conversations—an overwhelming desire of the women and girls to be confident, self-reliant, and independent.

Women and girls living on the brink of financial instability can either plummet or soar. Investing in them could be the game changer that breaks the cycle of generational poverty. {BARBARA KINNEY}

A central theme emerged from both sets of conversations—an overwhelming desire of the women and girls to be confident, self-reliant, and independent. Mothers said they are driven to help their children to be happy and to pursue whatever career they want. They said they understand that education is essential, but so are connections and confidence. And while both women and girls highlighted time and money as challenges, the participants didn’t blame anyone for their financial situations; rather, they mostly cited themselves as the biggest barriers to their own success. As a woman in Denver said, “To take the steps and get help and … to choose to go in the right direction or not is up to me.”²

Building on these conversations, and Ascend’s years of prior research, we have developed three bold ideas that capitalize on women’s strength and leverage our collective ability to put women and their families firmly onto a path of financial stability:

This report describes in depth the changing demographics and new economic reality of 21st-century America. But one statistic bears repeating: In the United States today, approximately 70 percent of people in single-mother families are low-income.³

Clearly, developing the assets of low-income women is key to addressing our nation’s financial insecurity. Too often, fragmented programs and policies that are intended to help struggling women and their children instead address their needs separately. This leaves either the child or the mother behind, dimming each family member’s chance for success. We need a two-generation approach that builds economic security for children and their mothers together.

“I go through the daily rituals of life and I have a smile on my face all the time, and everything is great, but deep inside I am just like, ‘Oh my God, I need to find some balance.’ When I get home from work, I kid you not, I work myself into a darn panic attack because I know when I walk through that door, it is game on.”

– White mother, low income, Richmond

The core elements of two-generation strategies are education—both early childhood and postsecondary education—and economic supports combined with financial education. The return on investment of early childhood education for at-risk children is significant over a lifetime.⁴

At the same time, education that includes skill development linked to high-demand jobs with opportunities for advancement is critical for the parents who support those children.⁵

The mothers we talked to were unified in their belief that education—from early childhood on through college—is essential to their child’s success: “If our kids don’t go to college,” one Richmond mother said, “they really don’t have any hope.”⁶

The two-generation approach bolsters the education of both parent and child simultaneously. It fosters mutual motivation through quality early learning facilities and a safe and productive environment for children of time-strapped mothers, increasing the likelihood that the moms can further their own education.

In fact, research suggests that children serve as a motivating factor for adults, particularly mothers, and that parents will often do for their children what they won’t or can’t do for themselves.⁷ That’s where two-generation strategies are transforming lives.

Two-generation approaches build upon the international evidence of the power of investing in women as a strategy to improve the economic stability of a family.⁸ These approaches are dynamic, crossing sectors and aligning funding to improve results and build on that “mutual motivation moment,” when both mothers and their children are learning together. We heard about the power of mutual motivation from a Hispanic mom in Denver who told us, “As I am working towards my dream, it teaches [my children] something that leads them to a better future.”⁹

How does a mother view success for her children? “In school, great jobs, athletics, no debt, get a house, not too many struggles, scholarships so school is paid for, and just for them to be proud of, you know, me and what I have done for them, and for them to be proud of themselves and what they are achieving, and no kids too soon.”

— African American mother, moderate income, Chicago

Two-generation approaches are simple in theory, but require collaboration from public, nonprofit, and private sectors to become the norm. In a time-strapped and often stressful environment, the balancing act for mothers can be extremely challenging; they need both encouragement and supports to pursue their own education. “It can help them to see you doing something, working hard to do something,” a Chicago mother shared. “It could take time away from you doing things with them, but it always shows them that if you are putting your mind towards something, you can do it regardless of what it is.”¹⁰

From Los Angeles to Boston, Alaska Native villages to the Mississippi Delta, policymakers and program leaders are working to integrate services for mothers and their children, sparked both by the desire to achieve better results and to use resources efficiently.

Endicott College in Beverly, Massachusetts, is one institution putting two-generation approaches into practice. Their Keys to Degrees program for single parents—mostly mothers—and their children has connected more than a dozen four-year institutions around the nation to develop on-campus housing and educational support programs for single parents and their kids. The result at Endicott is a 100 percent graduation rate in the program.¹¹

Keys to Degrees was developed by Endicott College President Dr. Richard Wylie based on some key premises: If a child is in high-quality, early education, but a mother lacks the educational opportunities needed for a well-paying job, then the family will continue to struggle, and the child will not have access to the resources and stability to thrive. Similarly, if a mother has opportunities to build skills for high-demand jobs, but a child lacks access to high-quality child care and early education, both will struggle to advance.¹²

Other programs are also breaking down traditional “siloed” approaches and providing opportunities for and meeting the needs of mothers and their children together. Shandrell, a single mother in St. Paul, Minnesota, is completing her bachelor’s degree in design. At the same time, her young daughter goes to a high-quality early childhood education center just blocks from her mother’s college campus and in the same building where the family lives.

Shandrell and her daughter are enrolled in the Jeremiah Program, which began in the Twin Cities in 1998 and is designed to provide housing for single mothers to support their pursuit of postsecondary education while ensuring their children are successfully prepared for kindergarten.¹³

But the Jeremiah Program does so much more: It prepares young moms with the skills they will need to navigate their roles as both caregivers and breadwinners for their family.

Jeremiah moms are assigned Life Skills coaches to help them set and meet goals related to physical and emotional health, respectful relationships, and career development. At the same time, the program’s enterprising “Jeremiah Works!” initiative connects mothers and community volunteers to develop employment contacts and job-training opportunities.

In addition to developing two new sites in North Dakota and Texas over the past year, the Jeremiah Program has spurred other sites, such as the Glen at St. Joseph, an Ohio-based housing and education program for single mothers and their children.¹⁴

These two-generation approaches are anchored in research that demonstrates the strong connection between a mother’s education and her child’s success in school. The national mean reading and math scores for children entering kindergarten for the first time in the 2010-11 school year increased according to the parents’ level of educational attainment.¹⁵

The return on investment goes beyond family stability: For every 100 graduates of the Jeremiah Program, society received net benefits of about $16 million.

The potential for lasting change for families in each of these models is increasingly evident. In fact, 53 percent of Jeremiah women graduate with an associate’s degree and 47 percent graduate with a bachelor’s degree. The average wage of a 2012 graduate was $19.35 per hour, and 95 percent of Jeremiah children pass their kindergarten readiness test. A recent study showed that the return on investment goes beyond family stability: For every 100 graduates of the Jeremiah Program, society received net benefits of about $16 million.¹⁶

In Tulsa, Oklahoma, mothers have jump-started careers in health information technology and nursing through the Community Action Project of Tulsa County, or CAP Tulsa, a trusted community organization that runs a network of high-performing Head Start and Early Head Start sites throughout the city.¹⁷

CAP Tulsa realized early on that if their children were to succeed, working with their parents was essential, and as a result CareerAdvance^® was created: Parents, most of them mothers, whose children are enrolled in early learning programs, are eligible for training at the local technology and community colleges.¹⁸ Through CareerAdvance^®, they attend classes as a group, with other parents, and with guidance from career coaches, who counsel the parents as they juggle work, parenting responsibilities, and school. With key supports such as transportation funding, and uniforms provided by the program, the parents are poised for living-wage jobs in the growing health sector of Tulsa.

Sisters Madie and Aubrey Winans pretend they are superheroes after swimming in a river near Missoula, Montana. {AMI VITALE}

Mothers in CareerAdvance^® say they are more involved with their children’s learning as a result of their own participation in postsecondary education. This mutual motivation suggests that the benefits of two-generation programs may be greater than the sum of their separate programmatic parts.¹⁹

A two-generation lens is increasingly being applied to improve the lives of women and their children beyond individual programs. Federal and state governments are beginning to recognize the approach as both effective and cost efficient; programs like these offer a double-bottom-line win—better long-term return on the money as well as better results for moms and their children.

Several Promise Neighborhood sites, for example, funded by the U.S. Department of Education to develop a cradle-to-career education pipeline, have adopted Ascend’s two-generation approach, including Washington, D.C.; Buffalo, New York; and Langley Park in Maryland. The Washington, D.C., Promise Neighborhood Initiative, or DCPNI, built on Ascend’s two-generation framework to develop their “5 Promises for 2 Generations” approach and successful implementation proposal. Within the DCPNI program is the “Parent Pathways” plan, whose goal is to connect mothers with education and economic supports, such as financial counseling.²⁰

The state of Colorado is embedding this two-generation vision throughout its Department of Human Services, linking opportunities for Colorado children to the services their parents receive. As part of its two-generation lens, the state is piloting children’s savings accounts, or CSAs, which allow kids to start saving for college and simultaneously build the financial capability of their parents, with matched investment from the state and private institutions. For children enrolled in Colorado child care sites, the state is building a new pipeline of stability for families: At age 18, the savings in CSAs can be used to finance higher education, start a small business, or buy a home.²¹

Moving forward, there are ways to apply this lens to longstanding policies and programs such as Head Start, which is a ripe and ready springboard for both young children and their mothers, as well as to new initiatives such as the Department of Education’s Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge, a competition for states to raise the quality of early learning programs.

To spur more of these innovations in the nonprofit, public, and private sectors, Ascend at the Aspen Institute launched the $1 million Aspen Institute Ascend Fund, which will provide financial support and expand a national learning network to fuel a new movement of leaders and initiatives creating opportunity for low-income children and their parents together.

Opportunity becomes a family tradition when we design programs and policies with the whole family’s educational and economic future in mind and help them access the social networks needed to make it in life.

Trusted relationships—between friends, families, institutions, companies, and services—are the networks that form the connective tissue of our lives. This is the “social capital” that helps us maintain stability and achieve success. From caring for a sick child to getting a ride to an appointment, we often rely on others for help.

But these networks of trusted relationships can do much more than just help out in a pinch. They are critical accelerators to upward economic mobility. Increasingly, researchers are finding links that point to social capital as a core element of an intergenerational cycle of opportunity.

A recent study of income mobility in the United States conducted by researchers at Harvard University and the University of California, Berkeley, found a strong correlation between a region’s level of social capital and the intergenerational mobility of its residents. In areas with more useful or robust community connections—in low-income neighborhoods that also included a mix of middle-income residents, or where higher numbers of residents were active in a faith community—children were significantly more likely to join the middle class as adults.²²

Rutgers management professor Nancy DiTomaso has also captured how vital these connections and networks are for people seeking jobs. In recent research interviews, DiTomaso found that “all but a handful [of interviewees] used the help of family and friends to find 70 percent of the jobs they held over their lifetimes; they all used personal networks and insider information if it was available to them.”²³

Social capital is crucial, yet largely taken for granted by those who have it. Many of us use social capital every day and do not even realize it, such as when we carpool our kids to soccer practice or recommend a colleague for a new job. The relationships and networks each of us have can make a major difference in our lives, helping to determine what school to attend, what jobs to apply for, or even how to access a high-quality child care center. Social capital can mean the difference between, among other things, a well-paying and lower-wage job.

Social capital has existed for centuries in communities across race, ethnicity, and class—manifesting in barn raises, church socials, and block parties. In recent years, social media has radically opened new channels to grow and tap new communities, and innovative tools are rapidly developing that are critical to building relationships and sharing key information that will amplify women and girls’ access to fast-moving information and opportunities. Platforms such as Facebook and LinkedIn are helping to amplify growing networks, but even more exciting are some of the new social networks such as Girls Who Code and the global Girl Effect’s Girl Hub, which lift up the voice and potential of the next generation of women.

Geographically, we live in a time of ever-increasing distance from our closest networks, our families: An estimated 73 percent of Americans don’t live in the community where they were born. Time and trust have replaced geography as new determinants of a sense of community.

Participants in our recent focus groups told us that when they needed help, they turned to their family—including moms, grandmothers, husbands, boyfriends, their child’s father, partners, daughters, aunts, and cousins—and to their friends, including colleagues from work. If these support networks—or “lifelines,” as some moms called them—were augmented, it was more likely to be from their faith community or a familiar community organization. Women said they turned to these networks for guidance, resources, and “to vent.”

When asked to explain her desire for more professional networking, a Denver woman said, “My friends are from the hood. It would be different if I met people who knew higher people, who knew higher people, to help you get into a different lifestyle.”

— Latina mother, low income, Denver

We also saw the range of ways that these support networks—both formal and informal—help families get through their daily lives. There is the need for informal support, like when, as the mom in Denver told us, “I am having a bad day and need help with the kids.” And there is the need for day-to-day logistical support, particularly around transportation and children, like the Asian American mom in Chicago who said, “They will help me pick up and drop off.”²⁴

Some mothers spoke of very distinct and organized networks. “I have my family, my friends, my church, my neighbors, my sorority, my social club, and my religious club. And I [said] it in that order because that’s how I would [reach out],” says one mother.²⁵

But many women rely on a narrow yet deep set of relationships based on trust. “One of my support systems is the YMCA,” says a woman from Chicago. “They pick my daughter up from school and take her until 6 o’clock, and then my neighbor [who] works there and lives next door to me, she will take my daughter and keep her until I get off work.”²⁶

No matter what the configuration of the network, however, most low-income women told us they feel as if they are on their own, while wishing for a better set of contacts to find good jobs and manage school.

For low-income women and their children, the untapped potential of social capital is enormous. Dr. Mario Small, dean of the Division of Social Sciences at the University of Chicago, has highlighted the value of bonding social capital (connections within the peer group) and bridging social capital (connections outside the peer group) for single mothers in urban areas.

“If I’m a low-income parent and I’m trying to figure out how to get my kid into college, finding those networks that have that information is a valuable kind of social capital,” says Dr. Small. “It’s very different from the support found in social networks or the desire to attain the goals that you have set for yourself in light of the norms of those around you with similar desires.”²⁷

How do we build and strengthen trusted networks into moving women toward educational success and economic security? Where we live and who we know is fast becoming an increasingly influential predictor of economic mobility.

The path to making healthy and smart decisions starts with gaining self-confidence. Here, Amira Siegal teaches a class about self-esteem in Tacoma, Washington. {BARBARA KINNEY}

Organizations such as the Family Independence Initiative, or FII, are revolutionizing what it means to build social capital for the purpose of financial stability and generational upward mobility. In cities such as Oakland, Boston, and New Orleans, FII focuses on the assets of families, putting them “in the driver’s seat of their own change” by developing tools that empower families to improve their social and financial well-being.²⁸ FII sites develop credit-building lending circles, through which people who may not have access to bank credit or prefer to borrow from people they know and trust can get together to form a group loan.²⁹ Families work among themselves and within their communities to help build economic stepping stones for each other.

At the Boston-based Crittenton Women’s Union Mobility Mentoring™ Centers, women are guided through individualized plans for financial stability and provided community resource connections. Staff members with special expertise in career management, financial literacy, higher education, and other skills help low-income families set and attain individualized goals that will help them achieve economic independence. At Mobility Mentoring™ Centers, individuals receive free assessments, one-on-one counseling, and referrals to community resources such as housing placements that will help them and their families get ahead.³⁰

In South Florida, a region that reflects our country’s demographic profile of the future, an innovation is emerging at Miami Dade College, where nearly 70 percent of students are low income.³¹

Under the leadership of Dr. Eduardo Padrón, the college—the largest four-year institution in the United States—has developed an innovative partnership with the county human services agency, which is placing a staff member at Miami Dade College to help students determine their eligibility for benefits such as the earned income tax credit or child care assistance. This unique community college-human services partnership is a cutting-edge model for communities and institutions across the nation and allows students, many of them low-income and first-generation postsecondary students, to focus on what matters most—finishing school.

These enterprising community-focused programs show how social capital can build trust, strengthen networks, and inform women, men, and families to create their own community of success.

Emerging from our work on two-generation strategies and social capital development is our third bold idea: 21st-century Life Education—a core set of new skills every girl should have as she goes out into the world and builds her future. These solutions provide clear insights into the skills and lessons our daughters will need to prepare for their multifaceted roles in life. In fact, both our daughters and sons share a future where roles, responsibilities, and opportunities are being swiftly redefined, from the ways we raise our families to how we grow a strong economy for all.

Decades ago, girls were taught home economics in school; cooking, sewing, and managing the grocery shopping were activities for which women were expected to be prepared. Today’s Life Education is a 21st-century twist on this idea, and ensures that girls—across race, ethnicity, geography, and class—are equipped to meet the challenges they will confront as they navigate their roles as both breadwinners and caregivers for their families. These are the must-have skills that will give young women the tools to be their own power source in life.

The world has changed dramatically and quickly, from generation to generation. Girls today need different tools—and guidance that reflects rapidly changing technology—to get on a successful path to modern womanhood. With an eye toward developing this “Life Skills” class for the 21st century, Ascend looked at opportunities for two-generation approaches and social capital to create a core set of lessons that can guide young women. Just as importantly, we asked diverse, mixed-income teens to design a class that would teach them what they thought they needed to know and what they wanted to learn. We also asked them to imagine the one application, or app, they wish they had on their smartphones or tablets to give them the information or knowledge they needed to be successful in their day-to-day lives.

Both our daughters and sons share a future where roles, responsibilities, and opportunities are being swiftly redefined, from the ways we raise our families to how we grow a strong economy for all.

What emerged was an emphasis on financial literacy—how to buy a car, secure a mortgage, save for college, or budget for basic expenses—combined with concerns about emotional well-being, self-confidence, and healthy relationships. Postsecondary education was universally recognized as a critical goal, yet they were anxious about how they would pay for it. With the Great Recession of 2008’s effect upon their parents’ finances still fresh in their memories, the young people we spoke to wondered whether the burden of student debt would similarly weigh them down.

Their voices, together with a growing field of two-generation research and a panoply of inspiring national and community-based programs, give us the blueprint for a new Life Education course. Whether formalized into a curriculum or embraced as a framework, our educators, parents, school systems, community programs, and even governments can learn from these conversations. To prepare the next generation for fulfilling and successful lives, we must listen to what our teens tell us they need to know and develop up-to-date tools and programs that answer their call—and inform our own ways of thinking.

Women’s social, political, and financial opportunities have improved dramatically over the past 50 years. In 1967, only 27 percent of mothers were breadwinners or co-breadwinners, but recent data show that in 2010, women were co- or primary breadwinners in two-thirds of American families.

And yet young women coming of age in the new millennium face many complex choices for which there is no clear game plan. So what does a 21st-century road map for stability and opportunity look like? To help girls accelerate the gains they are making in the classroom, financial literacy and emotional development support are key. They have emerged as critical components of a modern girl’s education alongside leadership training, and science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, or STEM, courses. Today’s Life Education is what girls need to confidently navigate a social terrain where they will constantly assess trade-offs about school, jobs, finances, career, family, marriage, and children.

Many programs and policies have already embraced teaching girls these Life Education lessons. Some focus on financial literacy skills such as Girls Inc., which provides courses on saving and budgeting for girls in high school and middle school. Others, such as Girls on the Run, help teenagers develop self-esteem and healthy habits through group activities and mentoring. Programs that integrate two-generation approaches and social capital development—such as the Jeremiah Program and the Glen at St. Joseph—are also integrating behavioral classes, such as the habits of healthy relationships and ways to self-regulate and maintain calm in a crisis. Momentum for these kinds of courses is building partly because girls understand that their world will be different from their mothers’ and that they will need to augment their mothers’ advice with these skills.

We asked adolescent girls and boys from low-income families what their dreams for the future look like:

“I would be unstoppable. I would just keep going on with what I want to do and how I am going to do it and when I am going to do it.”

“I hope to be the person that gets written down for like records. I want to be a great person.”

The adolescents Ascend spoke to were acutely aware that they needed to be equipped to meet the demands of a world where college is mandatory but marriage is not. Their professional ambitions are limitless; their relationship goals focus on finding a partner who will respect them.

Growing up in a deep recession has colored their perspectives; they acknowledge the vitality of trusted relationships and networks. “For a year, my dad and I were homeless,” one girl shared in Denver, “and our family friends from a really long time ago, they let us use their basement as our house for an entire year and endless thanks goes to them. I can’t even begin to describe how lucky we were.”³²

Their responses generally underscored a sophistication mixed with deep anxiety: They know college is essential for a better life, but the costs are daunting. As one girl in Denver lamented, “I am going out of state to college and it’s just going to be a struggle. I got a decent scholarship, but I don’t know, because my sister is going next year and then [our] parents are divorced. Money is just a struggle.”³³

Girls also expressed a real drive for self-reliance, but a worrying conviction that they are their own greatest liabilities. “I am positive about my future, but you know, there is always still that fear in the back of my mind that I am just going to fail,” one girl shared. “You know everybody has that. Especially once you graduate.”³⁴

Mothers thought self-reliance and independence would equip their daughters for success in the world and even inoculate them from future struggles. As a Chicago mother put it, “Be smart, strong, independent, and not naïve.”³⁵ Both mothers and girls valued respect in their relationships. The sentiment from a Richmond mom was underscored in our conversations with teen girls: “If it’s not healthy, if it’s hindering, it doesn’t need to be a relationship.”³⁶

The daunting challenges of growing up can be faced more easily if we equip girls with the skills necessary to thrive. {BARBARA KINNEY}

From their advice, responses, and thoughts, four powerful ways emerged to prepare young girls and boys to create a life of stability and security.

What if your anxieties about the future disappeared? “I would be unstoppable.”³⁷

Voices for Two-Generation Success found that girls identify confidence and self-reliance as core values. Being independent is important; surviving on one’s own is an aspirational goal. Respect in relationships is also a clear, if sometimes elusive, goal of our focus group participants. Both boys and girls cite respect, honesty, trust, and communication as elements that must be present in a healthy relationship.

The mothers we talked to are actively teaching their sons to respect women and advising their daughters to respect themselves. As one Richmond mom said, “If people don’t respect you, you are going to get walked all over.”³⁸

Girls believe that they are in control of their own futures, and that they are the key to their own success. The best advice they say they have received is variations on a similar theme: Believe in yourself, never give up, and be true to yourself.

“A mirror so that the person using it would have to type in positive things about themselves either physically or mentally each day, something they like about themselves. You set it to tell you something positive about yourself in timed intervals or when you feel bad about yourself. It would make the person using it provide a self-esteem boost coming from themselves.”³⁹

Confidence is clearly a skill girls told us they want and need to persist against daunting challenges. Innovative programs are integrating confidence-boosting activities into their approaches. As mentioned earlier, through Girls on the Run, a nonprofit program with chapters across the country, girls in elementary and middle school participate in afterschool running groups that integrate team-building and life coaching.⁴⁰ The mission of the organization, which started in 1996, is to “inspire girls to be joyful, healthy, and confident using a fun, experience-based curriculum which creatively integrates running.”

Conversations to better understand how to have healthy relationships—with oneself and with others—are also at the heart of Start Strong, a partnership between Futures Without Violence and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.⁴¹ The program operates in 11 communities across the country, teaching girls and boys in middle school about healthy relationships in order to stop dating violence and abuse before it starts.

Elsewhere, two-generation programs that include lessons on confidence building, such as Eveline’s Sunshine Cottage in Amarillo, Texas—where young mothers live together with their children and participate in parenting groups and self-esteem workshops—have seen their moms flourish.⁴² In Oregon, The National Crittenton Foundation spearheads a national empowerment program for young women who have experienced significant trauma and abuse to “thrive, build skills, break destructive cycles, and become powerful agents of personal and social change.”⁴³ Within the support of the foundation, many of these women have testified everywhere from the halls of Congress to their local city council meeting to push for better mental health and economic policies.

“Because nowadays you need really a college education to have a steady job that could support you.”⁴⁴

Young people believe education is essential for success. The more you have, the better your chances are of succeeding. College is a key goal. While they are aware of family members who have jobs or careers without having gone to college, they also know that not having a college degree is a barrier to achieving their dreams.

Girls and boys are optimistic about their futures, yet they all share a common worry: successfully managing the academic and financial demands of college. They are acutely aware of how expensive a college education is and how student loans can lead to high debt. As policymakers debate the necessity of liberal arts education versus more skill- and industry-specific education, teens shared their observations about classmates who are tracked for college and those who clearly are not. Anxious about the need to watch their wallets and balance their time, teens wanted tools to help them manage both. They know that to get into college, they will have to do well in high school—and to finish college, they need a plan to pay for it.

“A timekeeper based on activities, services, and projects that is also an electronic logbook based on income and expenses. It could help with keeping track of finances and making sure you’re on task time-wise. It would give you key information about your financial strengths and weaknesses and how you can improve spending money and time.”⁴⁵

Making sure girls understand what it takes to go beyond high school and the impact that postsecondary education will have on their earnings potential is central to Life Ed. We can learn from the success of organizations such as the American Association of University Women, or AAUW, a 130-year-old national grassroots organization that has been empowering young women to succeed through a range of programs, including campus leadership trainings and STEM initiatives. AAUW has developed courses that encourage more girls to pursue science and technology careers, such as Tech Trek and Tech Savvy. These courses aim to break down stereotypes surrounding these traditionally male-dominated fields and teach girls that intellectual skills grow over time, regardless of gender.⁴⁶

Other programs use technology to connect directly to girls’ aspirations, such as Career Girls, an organization dedicated to providing young girls of all income levels and ethnic backgrounds with the academic tools and support they need to achieve their professional aspirations. The program does this by providing “real-world” context for a teenager’s academic studies, specifically through videotaped interviews with positive female role models and a comprehensive collection of easy-to-follow educational resources, all available on the organization’s website.

Young single mothers will need even more support, and we have seen in the two-generation programs we have studied that this type of educational support yields benefits for mother and child. For young single mothers in their teens and early 20s, the Higher Education Alliance of Advocates for Students with Children—which grew out of Endicott College’s Keys to Degrees program—is a two-generation organization that helps young parents stay in school by promoting supportive housing and early childhood education on college campuses around the country.⁴⁷ These kinds of advocacy organizations are vital to helping young people manage the complexity of college, whether they are struggling to support a family and earn a degree, or simply trying to pay for each semester as they progress through school.

“My field hockey coach is amazing; I don’t know what I would do without her. I definitely look up to my coach 24/7.”⁴⁸

The younger and older girls and boys describe narrow support networks consisting of friends, parents, or siblings, and an occasional friend’s parent. Teachers and guidance counselors are essential anchors for young people, and some return to former teachers for advice and support as they get older. As girls increase their participation in sports, coaches also emerge as a critical source of motivation and encouragement. Girls and boys recognize that cultivating trusted relationships—with teachers, coaches, and even community leaders—means having an ear to listen and a shoulder to lean on.

“An app where you could tell it your problems; it can be anonymous. People can comment on it and not sugarcoat anything but just give you the best advice for that situation. You would use it whenever you have an issue where you can’t really talk to anyone about it. It could help you get through issues and problems whenever you get stuck.”⁴⁹

Research has shown the powerful impact that mentors can have on young people, particularly when those mentors help their mentee to effectively cope with difficulties and express optimism and confidence about their lives.⁵⁰

The nonprofit Urban Alliance applies this lesson, providing urban young adults with mentors and resources to build their potential through professional careers and higher education. Since 1996, Urban Alliance has served more than 1,200 youth in a year-round internship program, partnering with more than 100 local businesses, and it has developed a curriculum that has been shared with more than 15,000 youth through workshops in the community. The curriculum covers business etiquette and issues, including résumé writing, phone skills, and conflict resolution.⁵¹

Programs that introduce young women to leaders can provide teenage girls with needed mentors for their educational success and emotional well-being—and jump-start their networks and budding social capital.

The Links, Incorporated, is a women’s volunteer service organization committed to enriching, sustaining, and ensuring the cultural and economic survival of African Americans. With more than 270 chapters, it sponsors a range of programs that systemically provide support for economic mobility.⁵² One program encourages members to work with community college students to provide them with mentoring, academic coaching, and other services needed so that they can transfer to one of the historically black colleges and universities to earn a bachelor’s degree.

The founders of Girls Write Now, or GWN, developed a creative writing tutorial program featuring prominent journalists and professionals as volunteers for at-risk high school girls in public schools throughout New York City.⁵³ With academic support, mentoring, and writing lessons, “100% of GWN’s seniors graduate and move on to college—bringing with them portfolios, awards, scholarships, new skills, and a sense of confidence.”⁵⁴

“Saving up. Every time you say you want to go to the movies, you can take that money that you were going to spend and put it in the bank.”⁵⁵

Teenagers have spent their adolescence watching their parents—single, married, or in the midst of divorce—struggling with the impact and fallout of the Great Recession. They know how easy it is to find oneself on the precipice of financial instability, and they are determined to build security for themselves and their families.

But those paths lack clear maps: Teenage girls say they are anxious about their ability to make smart financial decisions and need better guidance on how to save, borrow, and negotiate more strategically. They are afraid of mistakes and ending up in debt. While meeting the financial challenge of college without going into debt is one reason why financial literacy and a deeper understanding of money management surfaced loud and clear, girls also voiced a desire to learn how to handle money so that they can be on their own, pay for groceries, buy a car, and be able to budget as an adult. Girls also noted the need to choose and prepare for careers that offered good pay and advancement opportunities.

“This app would let you decide on a job and tell you what that job would pay you so you can then determine how much you would need for bills, like monthly rent and groceries. It would help you understand how much money you would need to live and the cost of things you need for living. It would teach you what you needed for your future.”⁵⁶

Better understanding of how to save and manage debt is essential knowledge for girls, but so too is the confidence to control one’s own money and, someday, others’ money as corporate leaders or small business owners.

The Girl Scout Research Institute conducted a nationwide survey of girls ages 8 to 17 in 2012 and found that only 12 percent of young girls feel “very confident” when it comes to making financial decisions. The Girl Scouts has strategies, including a Financial Literacy Badge and curriculum, to help girls develop money management skills for themselves and others. Its decades-old Girl Scout Cookie Program, the largest girl-led business in the world, now includes business ethics lessons, goal setting, and people skills courses.⁵⁷ Encouraging girls to develop entrepreneurial drive, the Girl Scouts also teaches “group money-earning” strategies, including developing car wash and pet-sitting businesses, and has an online video series for girls called “It’s Your Business—Run It!”

There are other innovations to build on for financial lessons in a Life Ed curriculum: For instance, at Girls Inc., the “Economic Literacy” curriculum includes dynamic workshops such as “She’s on the Money!” and “Equal Earners, Savvy Spenders,” which arm young girls with vital financial skills early, such as saving, market investing, and entrepreneurship.⁵⁸ And Jump$tart, a national advocacy organization that trains teachers how to teach smart money habits to students from kindergarten through high school, hosts conferences on such important issues as identity theft and debt management.⁵⁹

As we have seen in programs that focus on the whole family—such as FUEL Education,⁶⁰ which promotes savings circles and accounts to help high school students and their families to prepare for college and emergencies—a better understanding of finances, budgets, and how to use existing economic supports to meet their family’s needs is essential if a young person is going to push back from the brink.

Life Ed can be the link to building a stronger future. As we listen to young women, we also understand more clearly the possibilities and the potential pitfalls of positioning the next generation to thrive. The app ideas that teenagers brainstormed are not simply smart tools for smartphones—they represent the needs of a generation of young people who are not being equipped with the tools, ideas, and practical information to help them navigate the challenges and choices presented to them in the modern world.

Women are poised to set a course for the next 50 years where women and men are truly equal and both are thriving. As women’s financial and educational stability for themselves and their families increases, we will move the nation toward greater success and security. Many women have made extraordinary progress over the past 50 years and have attained power their grandmothers, or even some mothers, could hardly have imagined. Men, too, increasingly recognize that women’s progress has had a positive impact on their lives as well.

Yet to truly make equality and security a reality in all women’s lives, we must be bold. Two-generation approaches and social capital building offer a new mindset and tools for our educational institutions, nonprofits, and government agencies to ensure the next generation has a strong shot at the American Dream—and that their mothers do well, too. At the same time, practical Life Ed skills and advice—integrated in our schools, our faith communities, even our homes—can help teenage girls and boys become the emotionally and financially stable contributors our country needs.

Yet we also need the public and political will to push for these changes and investments, be they public or private. We cannot underestimate the power of both individual and collective action to bring these ideas to life in our own communities. As we move from words to action, let us be energized by Shirley Chisholm’s words: “You don’t make progress by standing on the sidelines, whimpering and complaining. You make progress by implementing ideas.”

We have the ideas, and now is the time to get to work, to ensure all women and their families have a fair shot at the American Dream.

Graduation day for the REACH Plus class at Washington Women’s Employment and Education, or WWEE, in Tacoma, Washington. {BARBARA KINNEY}

Moving toward economic stability and beyond

We asked women in Voices for Two-Generation Success, “What does a society that fully supports equality and success for all women look like?” They envisioned a “better future and outlook;” “happy community, less violence, more support to one another;” “women would be more united and successful in life;” and “unity, growth, stability.”⁶¹

To realize that vision, women and men must step up, but more importantly, push back—with all their resources—to enable all women to tap their potential power.

How to push back

Take a look at our five suggestions for steps any individual can take to help move the nation toward greater equality and economic security for all. Collectively, we have the power to transform women’s lives.

1 Claim your political power
Women make up the majority of American voters. Their political participation has defined the outcomes of many elections from mayor to president. Women will have two major electoral opportunities to leverage their political power in the next two years. In 2014, 36 states will choose their governors, and 33 Senate seats will be up for election as well as thousands of additional openings from the state legislature to the school board. And in 2016, the nation will choose a new president.

All of these elections create an opportunity for women voters to gain commitments from our political leaders to finish the undone work, including: expanding family and medical leave; ensuring high-quality early care and education for all children; and eliminating the wage gap so that these policies become an everyday reality for all women and their families. Voting is one of the simplest yet most powerful ways to create local as well as national impact.

2 Leverage your economic contributions
Women are dominant players in the workforce and as consumers. They have the collective ability to send powerful messages to the private sector on issues ranging from workforce policies to advancement opportunities. Women can learn from examples such as the group of girls in Pennsylvania who organized a challenge—dubbed a “girlcott,” to Abercrombie & Fitch in the mid-2000s to take shirts with derogatory language off the shelves—and won.⁶²

Leveraging pocketbook power can be just as effective as voting power in improving women’s economic lives. Remember, women make 73 percent of consumer purchasing decisions.⁶³

3Tap women at the top
Women at the top of the economic ladder have an opportunity to invest their talent, voice, and money in the potential of low-income women. Women Moving Millions, an innovative women’s philanthropic movement, is changing the landscape of possibilities for women through their powerful multimillion-dollar collective gifts, just as women’s foundations across the country continue to grow women donors from all backgrounds to give back and make a difference with their treasure, talent, and time.⁶⁴

Business leaders and employers have the ability to build cultures and policies that support low-income families’ employment and family success. In doing so, they are creating ladders of opportunity for women and girls.

4 Engage men as allies
Men are our partners and are traversing the same shifting landscape when it comes to work, money, parenting, and relationships. Their participation and perspective in these discussions will help us to map a path toward opportunity and security. These issues aren’t just women’s issues—they are everyone’s issues.

5 Share your mistakes and wisdom with the next generation
Girls have told us what they need. You can give it to them by actively mentoring the girls in your family, community, Sunday school classroom, or office. Women can share their challenges and what they would do differently. Both girls and boys want to learn about college, finances, healthy relationships, and self-respect, so share your lessons learned from life and work and help ensure that both knowledge and economic security pass from one generation to the next.

We need a two-generation approach that builds economic security for children and their mothers together.