Fresh Take: Susan Sutton, The Ember Project

17:52Margaret Ables:So for somebody that can talk to them through that and let them know that that's not the best choice, it might fix it right now, but it's just going to make it worse down the line. Then that allows her to think of other solutions, other solutions that might be harder now, but that are going to be better long term. And that's one of the reasons that we depend so heavily on coaching and mentoring and teaching these young women about financial literacy and credit and how the choices that you make now are going to affect you for years to come. You might be getting a wonderful$4 ,000 tax refund. And yes, you've not bought yourself anything for so long.

18:30Margaret Ables:Maybe tax refund time is the only time you get to buy anything nice for yourself. But if you go and you buy that purse, it's$300 instead of putting that towards your electric bill that's behind. And again, I'm not picking on purses. I'm not picking on these young women. If you've ever not been able to do anything for yourself for so long and you finally have money, that feeling of I just want to feel good for a minute. I just want to feel like everybody else for a minute. All of my friends have this purse. I just want to have this purse too. And that seems so silly. But if you've been in that situation where you just want something nice for yourself for once.

19:12Susan Sutton:And also the rest of the picture is hopeless. So like the purse is not determining your economic future. You are exactly so behind on things that the$4 ,000 is actually not going to fix anything, right? I mean, you're not$4 ,000 away from solving this problem.

19:31Heidi Raykeil:Exactly. And adulting is hard. It's hard in your 20s and 30s. A lot of us had to learn like, oh, shoot, babies are expensive and I don't have as much money. And I thought we're going to go on vacation, but we need to, you know, the dishwasher broke. These are all the tough lessons of adulting that you learn at any age. These are not specifically the tough lessons learned by a 17-year-old, but they must be particularly tough when you are a 17-year-old without a parenting partner. Absolutely. Yeah. And I'm making the assumption even there that every teen mother doesn't have a parenting partner. Like I am sort of backsliding into like every teen mother, this is a mistake and you are doing it by yourself and your parents are mad at you.

20:08Heidi Raykeil:Like I'm sort of thinking that way. And it is not necessarily the case for all of these moms.

20:12Margaret Ables:Right. That's not everybody's reality, but it is a lot of the reality. And you also have to understand if they are co-parenting with their parent as opposed to a partner, that's a whole nother can of worms. because can they disagree with their mother if they're living under their mother's roof and their mother wants them to do it this way instead of that way? And they want to make decisions as a mother, make decisions as an adult. And the mother is going, well, you know, you obviously aren't equipped to make these decisions. Look at what you've done. That stigma and shame and the being beat over the head with, wow, you really screwed everything up is not helpful.

20:48Margaret Ables:That's not going to help her make better decisions. is.

20:51Susan Sutton:Let's talk about a term that you use that unfortunately I'm experiencing right now, very literally in my own life, which is duct tape budgeting. We have a boiler that is not working very well in a very cold New York winter. And my husband and I keep joking that we are duct tape solving the problem as opposed to solving the problem because a boiler would be such a huge expense right now. So we just keep kind of duct taping it back together. But duct Duct tape budgeting. What does it mean? Duct tape budgeting is one of those things.

21:23Margaret Ables:We tend to call it band-aid budgeting, but it's literally just solving the problem right now with the least possible amount of money, regardless of the fact that by putting a band-aid on it instead of actually fixing it is just going to make it more expensive three months, six months, 12 months down the road. It's also doing things like, oh my gosh, my electric's going to be shut off. I'm going to put it on a credit card. Those are short-term solutions to large problems that turn into long-term problems. Problems that last and are worse than they would have been in the first place had we just been able to handle them then.

21:57Heidi Raykeil:Let's talk about generational poverty because poverty is generational and we're hearing very clear reasons why the teen mother cannot complete her education, why she is going to be earning less 20 years from now. How does that affect the children of teen mothers?

22:13Margaret Ables:It's very hard for the children, honestly. Children of teen mothers are more likely to become teen parents themselves. The children of teen mothers are less likely to graduate from high school or attend any sort of higher education. And to talk about generational poverty, if you've grown up that way, generational poverty, or even just the generational cycle of being born to a teen mother, those habits and routines and ways of life are ingrained in you, and that's normal to you. For instance, myself, my daughter was the first girl in our family in four generations to not be a mother at 16. I was the first kid in our family ever that we know of to go on to college.

22:58Margaret Ables:I'm one of 10 kids. None of my brothers or sisters went to college. I did because there was something in me that said I have to do better for my daughter than this. I have to do better. I brought this child into the world. I already screwed her up by, you know, having her at 16. I'm going to do better. And by saying that, again, the shame. If you can just imagine, not trying to go off the subject, but if you could just imagine what it is like, you're a teenager, you're in class, and a teacher says something to the effect of, I don't know why, you know, she should really give that baby up for adoption because that child would be so much better off if she would just give it up for adoption.

23:38Margaret Ables:Do you have any idea how that can stew and fester and give you this feeling that goes on for years and years that, wow, my child would be better off with any mother than me? That doesn't help you make good decisions. That doesn't help you break those cycles of children being born to teen mothers and becoming a teen parent, and those children don't finish high school and things like that. The generational cycles are there because that is normal. It's not that anybody is intentionally saying, oh, I want my kids to have kids when they're teenagers. Nobody's saying that, but if you're not setting a better example of wanting more or believing that you can do better and have more, then there's no reason to try.

24:23Margaret Ables:If nobody expects you to go to college, you don't go to college. There has to be something in you that says, I'm going to bust my butt and change things because I want better for myself and my child. Not everybody has that fire in them. And so if it's not instilled in them, of course, it's going to be a cycle that goes on and on.

24:41Heidi Raykeil:And then like you said, it's not even a fire. It's like, I don't know anybody who does that. Nobody in my circle, in my community does that. And what is the long-term payoff of going to community college for the next five years? Like, what does that even mean? As opposed to, I can get this job now and it pays pretty well. The problem is it's going to be paying you the same five years from now. Those are really long-term decisions that, first of all, you don't have a ton of choice, right? Like, I need the money now. I don't have the money to go to college. So it's not just you need to want more and then get it.

25:09Heidi Raykeil:Even when you're like, I really do want to go to college, it's not as easy as deciding you're going to make something out of your life. That's step one of 10 ,000.

25:18Margaret Ables:And again, that takes us back to the mentoring and coaching that we do. Let's say the young woman wants to be a nurse. We set her up with a mentor who was a nurse that was also a teen mother so that she can say, hey, I've literally been in your shoes and I did it. I made it. And so can you.

25:34Susan Sutton:One of the things we talk a lot about on the podcast, which really applies here, is that people finding themselves at the tip of a giant system that is saying, you know, there's no help for elder care. There's no help for daycare. But you, lady at 42 Main Street, are failing because you're not taking good care of your mother and your child at the same time while working a job. So those are systemic problems that are all pointing towards the lady at 42 Main Street, who is then telling herself the story, I just am a failure because I can't do this. But in fact, the system is so stacked against you that your individual choices, which everyone kind of focuses on, there's so much more to the story than that.

26:26Susan Sutton:Exactly. That leads me to wonder about spousal support or if there's a divorce, parental support. I know many people in my family and other situations who had children very young, as young as 14. And so now the mom is 14. She's living at home with her parents, but the dad is also 14 or 15. He's just keeping going to school, right? His life isn't changing. His finances are not affected. And I feel like there's a feeling that, well, you can't ask the 15-year-old boy to come up with support for the child. But then the 15 or 14-year-old mother is just expected to figure it out. What role does financial support from the father of the child play?

27:17Margaret Ables:Again, when they're young enough that they cannot even work a part-time job doing fast food, yeah, there's really no child support that's going to happen. Once that young man starts to work, they can collect child support from them. But what's important to remember is things like, okay, fine, you're not in a situation where you, and I'm talking from the boy's point of view now, they're not in a situation where they can quote unquote pay child support. but could they watch the child that evening so that she can do her homework? Could they take the child for the weekend so that she can catch up on whatever it is?

27:54Margaret Ables:Sleep, you know, a little bit of self-care, a little bit of something, you know, and so many times the only thing that anybody thinks about when it comes to kids is money. Got to pay for this, got to pay for that, got to pay for the other. Well, if you can't pay, how can you help? Can you keep the child while she works. Maybe she's a little bit older. Maybe she's able to, who knows, do some. When I was 14, 15 years old, I was babysitting. I was doing whatever. Now I know kids that are doing Facebook marketing and well, Facebook's for old people, TikTok marketing and so on. You know, they are doing all of these things.

28:33Margaret Ables:Maybe he can't pay her child support, but maybe she has a talent that she could use to earn some money if he would just watch the baby for her for a little bit. So again, yes, the father should absolutely be held accountable. But in cases where they literally don't have a job and maybe their parent, his parent, isn't pushing him to get a job. Maybe it's, well, we want you to go to college and we don't want you to work part time. We want you to escape this as fully as possible so you can go on with your life.

29:01Susan Sutton:Right. Yeah. That I find is something that we need to double click on that, like the shame and the financial support, like, well, he can't, he's a high schooler. She is somehow going to figure out how to feed that baby, right? And so what I've seen, and then with a teen pregnancy, you cannot pay financial support, supposedly the male. And then it's been three or four years, five or six years, they go off and get a job. They don't maybe have a relationship with the kid. It's sort of like, oh, we're not doing that. I think we do have to figure out better ways to say two people make a baby, they both are now financially on the hook.

29:42Susan Sutton:And like you may say as the guy or the guy's parents, like, well, we don't want this to. It's a reality that someone needs to be providing for this child.

29:52Margaret Ables:Right. And I could go on for an hour about how absolutely repugnant I believe the parents of the boys tend to be because it's like somehow he's more human and he's more entitled and he deserves to not have his life taken away, even though he helped make that baby.

30:12Heidi Raykeil:The sociologist Kate Mann calls that empathy. Empathy. Yeah, absolutely. That it attends to that. Well, don't you really feel sorry for the man in that situation? Why? Why does that accrue to that? Look at her trying to ruin his future. What's wrong with her?

30:26Susan Sutton:Yeah. And I think just even anecdotally, the pressure and the shame that attacks the woman, it just does not touch the man at all. And it just feels absolutely outrageous and insane that, yes, it's going to be probably a huge, if you're a 14-year-old male parent, you don't have a job and your bartending job can barely pay your rent. But I think the child support needs to be a huge piece of saying, this is not just one person's problem.

30:58Heidi Raykeil:Exactly. We're talking to Susan Sutton, who's the founder of the Ember Project, and we will be right back.

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33:50Margaret Ables:As I mentioned earlier, we have a four-phase mentoring program. We set the young woman up with a mentor. If we don't have a mentor in her exact field that she wants to go into, we try to match it as closely as possible. Those mentors meet with the young woman no less than twice a month. In addition to that, she is required to do things like take financial literacy classes, whether they're the classes that we provide or classes that are online or classes that she finds in the community. To work your way through the four phases, you have to build on setting goals, breaking those goals into action steps.

34:29Margaret Ables:How do you take those action steps? If something is not going the way that you planned it, how can you step back, regroup, set new goals? new action steps. We are teaching these young women to do that in addition to teaching them to budget and how to save money and grocery hacks and things like that. Those are all things that we're offering to her because, again, if you grew up in poverty, nobody's telling you how to manage your money. If you grew up living paycheck to paycheck, nobody's teaching you about an emergency fund. So, you know, those are all things that we do. So not only do we mentor, we provide education and different subjects that we feel are going to be helpful to her.

35:09Margaret Ables:Right now on our social media, we're doing Food February and we're doing all grocery hacks, things you can do to save money on your groceries. And we talk about things like assigning a job to your money. So maybe you were able to save$10 this week on your groceries. Don't let that$10 not have a job. That$10 that you did not spend on grocery now needs to have a job somewhere else. Is that$10 going to go into an envelope in your underwear drawer for Christmas? Is that$10 going to go towards paying a little bit extra on your electric bill and help you to catch it up because it was behind? Money needs to have a job.

35:48Margaret Ables:So those are all things that we teach. In addition to stress reduction, self-care, parenting, support. Support needs to really be whatever she needs. So obviously, that's why we do key performance indicators. A young woman that comes to us at 14 is not going to have the same goals as a young woman that comes to us at 20. Because of that, we can't have cookie cutter goals and cookie cutter stages to our mentoring program. It has to be very personalized. Because again, if somebody else is setting your goals, what do you care about, though? Who cares about a goal that somebody else set? It needs to be your goal.

36:25Margaret Ables:It needs to be something that you care about and that you want and that you're willing to put in the time, energy and effort to make those things happen. So we try to surround them with whatever support we can absolutely possibly offer. And then in addition to that, we have small financial grants. And when I say small, we're talking$500 per girl per year. So if she needs a$400 textbook, which is one of the things that we have provided, that pretty much uses up your money for the whole year. But again, if that textbook is what's standing between you and the next semester of nursing school, that's a very important$400.

37:06Margaret Ables:It can be as simple as, oh my gosh, my laptop just died and three of my classes are online. Okay, we'll get you a laptop. But the thing is, you have to actively be in the mentoring program. You have to be being monitored by one of the mentors so that we know you're not just wanting a new laptop because you want to make TikTok videos. Although very profitable these days. Never know.

37:29Susan Sutton:Yes. But that's not a career choice that we're going to encourage on a regular basis. Right. It's interesting because in so many poverty studies, they talk about the amount of money that is the gap between accessing education, getting an apartment, starting to own a first home. And for many people, that gap is incredibly small. Like, it's always surprising that that's maybe$500 or$1 ,000 that, you know, people who come from families that have savings accounts and maybe they've inherited some, you know, I'm not talking about billionaires. I'm talking about someone who's inherited a couple thousand dollars when a parent dies, that they have a cushion of money and the idea that it's that missing cushion that like week to week, if the dishwasher breaks, you're going under like you're so close.

38:25Susan Sutton:You could keep everything together. Even the dishwasher could live without the dishwasher. But the boiler breaks or whatever it is that the amount of money is quite small, but it is very inaccessible. accessible. Absolutely.

38:38Margaret Ables:They've said for years that, I mean, how much of society is literally one paycheck away from being homeless?

38:44Susan Sutton:Right.

38:44Margaret Ables:Now, consider that when you're a teenager and you don't know how to do this, you don't have the resources to call on, you don't have a credit card you can put it on or whatever the case may be. So again, yeah, sometimes it's literally a matter of a few hundred dollars that can be the barrier between the next step in their education or the next step in stability. And people always think big, oh, so you do scholarships. No, we can't do scholarships, but we can help them get an insurance license so that while they're in college, they can sell insurance, which is actually one of the best career fields because it gives you a lot of flexibility.

39:26Margaret Ables:Anyway, what I'm trying to say is we can't fund an entire college education, but we can help them find the resources. We have a volunteer and her whole volunteer thing that she does is she will spend hours finding scholarships online that are buried so deep. You know, I've six, seven Google screens and here's the scholarship that perfectly suits one of our participants. That might be a thousand dollars, two thousand dollars, three thousand dollars and can be the difference between making it to the next semester and not.

39:59Heidi Raykeil:I'm encouraged listening to this because a lot of our listeners, I mean, there might be teen moms listening and there might be people whose daughters are teen moms or whose friends' daughters are teen moms, that the way that you can help, that this isn't a like, oh, it's generational and it's just huge and there's nothing you can do about that and it just sets you up for failure. But you can help by saying, I can babysit every Wednesday night. I can give you$100 so you can buy this textbook that you need, that there are ways that we can profoundly support a mother on this journey that make it all seem a little more impossible.

40:31Heidi Raykeil:I don't know. Like, as you said, the amount of money between I'm going to make it and I'm not is smaller than we think sometimes.

40:37Margaret Ables:It really is. Again, when you are literally paycheck to paycheck and the paycheck is only a few hundred dollars in the first place, anything going wrong, a flat tire can be enough to just absolutely shake your foundation and be what stops you from making it to work the next day, which then your paycheck is smaller, which then what are you going to do now? It doesn't have to be huge.

41:01Susan Sutton:One of the things you talk about, which I thought was really interesting, because when I was first learning about the Ember Project, I'm picturing, you know, very young girls with little babies, but that some of the people who are coming to you are older and they have experienced teen motherhood. they may have a 12, 13, 14 year old. And they are putting together that the fact that they were a teen mother has led them kind of far from their financial or original goals. And they're coming in later in life to say, I want to change the course that I'm on. I'm realizing that I'm just duct tape budgeting.

41:40Susan Sutton:I'm just getting through the day ever since I had this baby. So talk a little about those women, because I think that's a really interesting facet of the work. It is.

41:49Margaret Ables:And believe it or not, we didn't realize it at first. We thought our best course of action was to get a hold of them pregnant or, you know, get a hold of them when their babies are still very small. But again, you guys are on a parenting podcast. How many 18-year-olds want a mentor to tell them how they should spend their paycheck? How many 18-year-olds want anybody to tell them anything about anything. So by the time they're, you know, maybe 28, 29, 30, 32 years old, they've figured out, oh, crap, this is my life and it's going to continue to be my life unless I make changes. So that's actually the group that we found that we can actually make a more profound difference in their life trajectory because they're ready to listen.

42:33Margaret Ables:They're ready to go, okay, I don't know everything. Help me.

42:37Susan Sutton:Right. They've made some of the mistakes. They've run up against the walls. They're kind of in that phase, as Amy referenced earlier, of adulting, where, believe me, I didn't know when I was 20, I think, that I had to stop writing checks when I ran out of money. I mean, this is an oldie locks alert because people don't write checks anymore. Back in my day, that I had to stop writing checks when I ran out of money. I thought it was like a credit card. Like it would just go to the negative and then I would pay it back. And basically, I got approached by police from my local market who were like, you are writing what's called a hot check.

43:12Susan Sutton:And that's illegal. I truly had no idea. I just thought checks were like, you keep writing them. And then it's like an IOU, like, I'll definitely pay this money. And so I think that it is it may be even more beneficial to meet people who are a little bit down the road and saying, because I think kids do have an idea of like, we're going to make it work. We're going to do it. I mean, the baby against the world. And it's like there's a song that I love that says the boy kicked out at the world. The world kicked back a lot harder. And it's like, you know, that feeling of I'm going to make it against this cruel world.

43:49Susan Sutton:And then 10 years in, you're like, whoa, this world is really cruel. I didn't quite get it. Right, right. Cruelder than maybe. You can't take on the whole system with you and your maybe.

44:02Margaret Ables:And God forbid you try because the person that's going to suffer in that scenario is your baby.

44:08Heidi Raykeil:Yeah. Susan Sutton is the founder of The Ember Project, a nonprofit that supports teen and early mothers with mentorship, education, financial literacy, and real community. Susan, tell our listeners where they can find The Ember Project and how they can support your work.

44:22Margaret Ables:Absolutely. You can find us at www.theemberproject.org. That is our website. At the top of the website, there are volunteer links. There's also a link that says start your journey if you think that maybe the Ember Project can help you. We also have a podcast available on all of the podcast platforms other than YouTube called the Ember Project Podcast. And again, we talk about stories of young women who were teen mothers that are clawing their way out of survival mode and going on to have fantastic lives. So that's more for encouragement than it is to find out what we do. But again, if you find us online, you could always drop a line there, email us, contact us, fill out one of the contact sheets for volunteering or to be a part of the project.

45:08Margaret Ables:And there's also, of course, the donate. When we talk about donations, it can be$10. It can be$20. It can be, I'm going to give you$10 every month. That helps. You don't think that it does, but it helps because you have to remember that sometimes the wall between now and the next step for these young women is literally$100,$200. So anything helps. Don't ever not donate because you think it's not going to help. That's wrong. And plus, there's so many other people out there that are also going, I can only give$5. Does that even matter? Yes, it does if you and 20 others do it.

45:44Susan Sutton:Well, thank you for your work. And thanks so much for talking to us today. This is a great conversation. You are so welcome.

45:50Margaret Ables:Thank you again for having me. Thanks, Susan.

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