Many of the parents have short-term employment in low-skill dead-end jobs at the bottom of the pay scale. They know that their jobs are not secure and they offer little hope for a better future for them. Beth had previously worked "a couple of places as a chambermaid and as a waitress." Doug had worked limited hours for low wages and no benefits at the newspaper stuffing the flyers in the papers. When one parent making minimum wage in her job learned that she would have to contribute to Employment Insurance, she expressed her great dissatisfaction, "so I told them all to go to H - E double hockey stick [L - L]!" and she quit.

Although at one time Lynne had a better job than her present part-time position as a chambermaid, her old position was no longer practical. She explains, "Like I was workin' at this job before this job here - I was workin' at [grocery store]. But the thing is, I quit there because they switched to nights. They called me at 1 o'clock in the morning. I've got a kid. It's kind of awkward to find a babysitter."

Lynne is also aware that she lacks skills and education that could lead her to a position providing economic self-sufficiency to succeed in today's knowledge-based society. She and her partner both have part-time low paying jobs and are struggling to make a living wage. They believe that a household computer would best support their daughter's learning and they are willing to make sacrifices to save for its purchase. They intentionally try to work opposite shifts wherever possible to reduce babysitter costs.

Lynne states that Thursday is her day with her daughter because her partner "Like he won't be home now 'til probably before 4 o'clock or 5 o'clock in the morning." Their time together is limited and Lynne remarks that, "the only thing we do together, is we go down to granny and grampy's." In the interim, until they save enough for the computer, they purchased a small toy one, the Quiz Biz computer. However, they did not buy the cards for it because Lynne assumes that "if we were to buy the games, she wouldn't want to like learn how to spell and do math…'cause it's got math and spelling and spelling bee and words that - it will say a word and you gotta spell it." Instead, Lynne has her daughter use the toy to practise her keyboarding.