Here, Gerringer establishes the background for her family. Growing up with a single mother, Gerringer explains that her parents were divorced when she was very young and her mother was left to rear her children on her own. In order to raise her three children, Gerringer's mother worked as a weaver in the Glen Raven Mill in Burlington, North Carolina, during the early twentieth century. Gerringer also recalls that she and her siblings lived with their mother at her grandparents' house. Because of her family's economic situation, Gerringer went to work at the mill at the age of fourteen in order to help bolster the family's income. Her comments offer a lens for understanding the family economy of single-parent households in working communities.