Annette John-Hall: For single mothers needing college help, she wrote the book

Sherrill Mosee doesn't claim to be in the abstinence business. She'd rather make her mission restoring dreams.

See, Mosee is in the business of second chances. Family Care Solutions Inc., the Philadelphia nonprofit she founded in 1998, gives child-care scholarships to low-income single mothers who want to continue with their education.

This year, she's written Professor, May I Bring My Baby to Class? A student-mother's guide to college, it includes such practical information as which universities provide campus child care and the real-life success stories of single parents - many of whom she has helped.

The question that Mosee, whose single mom never got a chance to go to college, asks her potential scholarship winners is not "Why did you get yourself pregnant?" but "How are you going to support yourself and your child now that the baby's here?"

A petite powerhouse who has a master's degree in aeronautical engineering from Drexel, Mosee, 47, originally wanted to be the first African American female astronaut.

But her family history, flush with teen motherhood, dictated otherwise.

Mosee's grandmother Florine Wells, 85, got married at 13 to a man twice her age to escape her abusive family. She had her first child soon after.

Mosee's mom, Ella Tate, became pregnant with her first child, Mosee's older brother, when she was 16.

But motherhood didn't dash Tate's desire to go to college. "She worked hard to keep her grades up," Mosee says, "and got accepted at Penn State."

Predictably, when Tate told her mother she wanted to go to Happy Valley, "my grandmother told her, 'Your college education is sitting right over there in that high chair. You are going to work,' " Mosee says, relaying the story with a sigh. "That's the way it was 50 years ago."

As Mosee watched her mother struggle to raise four kids with no husband on a secretary's salary, she never forgot her grandmother's hurtful mandate.

"All it takes is one comment," Mosee says, "to pull you down and tear your dreams apart."

So just after her stepdaughter became pregnant in 1996, during her freshman year at Lincoln University, Mosee began researching funding for single mothers looking to finish college.

She discovered plenty of programs to help pay for classes. For child care? Not so much.

It's a major expense. A family with an infant in a child-care center typically is expected to pay $4,500 to $14,600 a year.

For young mothers, many of whom are already dealing with a pile of guilt and shame to go with financial debt, getting help with child care may be just the thing they need to get them over the hump.

Through grants and fund-raising, Mosee's foundation has supported about 500 single parents - moms along with a few dads - in 11 years.

She's hoping buzz from the book raises awareness about Family Care Solutions, because she has plans. Mosee already has laid the groundwork for a mentoring-enrichment program for teen moms at Harcum College in Bryn Mawr. But like many nonprofits, hers is in desperate need of funding.

Her recipients call her a fairy godmother.

"Before I got the FCS scholarship, I wasn't even sure if I could go to college, because I couldn't live at home," says Rasheedah Phillips, 25, who gave birth to her daughter when she was 14.

Phillips graduated from Temple in three years, and Mosee extended her scholarship through law school.

Today, Phillips works as a Community Legal Services lawyer specializing in child-care law and other issues affecting low-income women.

But more important, there's a good chance she has put an end to a generational cycle.

Thanks to the college education that her mother and grandmother, both single moms, never got.