The Single Mom Story Indiana Is Missing - Take the Quiz

More than one in three households with children in Indiana is headed by a single parent.

In Anderson, Muncie, and Marion, the communities Heartland Scholar House serves, that number passes 40%.

Behind those numbers is someone you probably already know.

She's the woman in your 8 a.m. lecture who always sits in the back. The mom at the school drop-off who looks like she hasn't slept. The employee who never misses a shift but turned down the promotion because the hours didn't work with daycare pickup.

She's a single mom. And in parts of Indiana, up to 72% of single mothers don't earn enough to cover their family's basic needs, food, housing, child care, transportation. Working full time isn't enough. A second job isn't enough. The math just doesn't add up.

She knows that. It's why she enrolled in college in the first place. A degree is the one thing that can change her family's trajectory for her and her kids. She's not guessing. The data backs her up.

But what the data actually shows about single mothers in college might surprise you. How hard they're working. How well they're doing. How close they are to the finish line. And what's standing between them and the degree that changes everything.

We built a quiz to make that visible. Six questions, two minutes, each followed by a fact that will probably stop you in your tracks. Almost nobody gets every answer right; not because the questions are hard, but because most of us have never had a reason to look closely at these women.

When a single mom can't finish her degree, the ripple reaches the workforce that needs her skills, the schools her children attend, the economy her neighborhood depends on. Her story isn't just hers. It's ours.

Heartland Scholar House gives single-parent families stable housing, academic coaching, childcare, and the wraparound support it takes to stay in school long enough to graduate. When a mom earns her degree, her children's trajectory changes too. That's the two-generation model. And it's working.

But it works better when more people see what we see. Take the quiz. Share it with someone who's never thought about this before. That's where it starts.

Take the Quiz

Six questions. Two minutes. See for yourself.