Like many families, we talk about college a lot in our home.

In a recent conversation, my seventh-grader made an offhand remark about how she needed to find a way to earn some money for college. It wasn't the first time I'd heard her say something along those lines.

It hit me that she had internalized my own incessant worry: How would we save enough to send two children, close in age, to great colleges?

The soaring cost of college is the top financial concern for American parents.

In its 2001-2015 Economy and Personal Finance survey, Gallup found that 73 percent of U.S. parents worry about paying for their children's college education. That's a higher percentage than any other subgroup worries about any other common financial concern. The second-highest percentage goes to lower-income Americans, 70 percent of whom worry about paying for medical costs in the event of a serious illness or accident.

The fear of saddling children with years of staggering debt is not confined to lower-income parents: Sixty-one percent of parents making $100,000 or more per year still worry about it. Families who earn "too much" to qualify for need-based aid bear the brunt of massive loans that can mortgage a child's future and eat into parents' retirement hopes.

By some measures, college tuition has increased in cost more than any other good or service in the U.S. economy since 1978, according to a recent NPR report. Student debt has nearly tripled in the past decade to $1.2 trillion, taking a huge toll on young people trying to start their adult lives.

Crippling debt is a loss of freedom. It keeps future generations from entering the middle class, which has long been the engine of America's economy.

The debate between the Democratic presidential candidates over tuition-free vs. debt-free college highlights what a centerpiece issue this has become to the middle class.

Bernie Sanders' overwhelming support from millennials -- exit polls in Iowa and New Hampshire, and entrance polls in Nevada, found more than 80 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds supported Sanders -- shows that he's speaking to their concerns. The Vermont senator has proposed that the federal government cover about two-thirds of the cost for states to eliminate tuition at their public colleges and universities through a new tax on Wall Street financial transactions. States would have to agree to cover the remaining third.

Hillary Clinton's "debt-free" plan would have the federal government send large grants to states, to ensure students can pay tuition without loans. States would be required to increase their allocations, while schools would face new constraints on spending. There's a component for family and student contributions, as well.

Both ideas have faced scrutiny for the associated costs and likelihood of getting state legislatures to comply. Republican candidates have criticized both plans as creating too large a tax burden on corporations.

At a time when we've indoctrinated students about the need for a college degree for future success, we've placed it further out of reach. That feels like a cruel joke.

I've told our children about how I worked throughout college and found two or three jobs each summer to help offset my living expenses. My parents kicked in what they could (not much, considering they had five other children to provide for), and I borrowed the rest. My husband worked his way through college, which he entirely self-funded.

We were part of generations that could do that.

We want our children to have the same sweat-equity investment in their future degrees. But we are aware of how much has changed.

Today's average college student, without support from financial aid and family resources, would need to complete 48 hours of minimum-wage work a week to pay for his or her courses, according to an analysis of credit-hour costs and the minimum wage by analyst Dr. Randy Olson.

That's just tuition -- not textbooks, rent, food and other living expenses.

Those who say that this generation's desire for affordable access to college reflects an entitled mentality could not be more wrong. If you were able to attend college when it was affordable yet want to deny the same opportunities to young people today, you are the entitled one.

Their future is also our future. It's selfish and obtuse to shortchange it.

Sheila Johnson-Glover knew something was wrong when her doctor asked her to sit down after a routine mammogram in December 2009.

"Uh-oh," she thought. That had never happened before. She was instructed get an ultrasound and an MRI. When Johnson-Glover, then 43, met with the doctor again, he showed her the scans.

"You see this white stuff?" he said. "That's breast cancer that has metastasized to your liver and ribs." He told her she had stage 4 breast cancer.

Johnson-Glover didn't know what to think. Her mother had died of breast cancer about a dozen years earlier.  

"How many stages are there?" she asked.

"Well, you're at it," the doctor said.

Johnson-Glover, now 49, worked at Scott Air Force Base as a records manager. Her best friend's husband was dying of prostate cancer. When he died a few months after her diagnosis, she called her friend bawling.

"I'm scared I'm going to die. I'm scared I'm going to leave my daughter," she cried.

"Sheila, stop it," her friend said. "And stay off the internet." There are women living with stage 4 breast cancer beyond the five-year survival rate, she said.

Johnson-Glover took her words to heart. In addition to an 11-hour surgery to remove her right breast and 13 lymph nodes, she underwent nine months of chemotherapy. She took a medical retirement after 25 years in the Air Force.

The aim was to stop the spread of the disease. After a year and a half of no growth, the cancer started progressing again. She went back on chemo. The doctors declared her disease stable in August 2013.

Two years later, she embarked on an adventure that would change the way she saw her battle with cancer. It started when she noticed a Facebook post from a friend who also had stage 4 cancer. She was raising money for a trip to South Africa. Johnson-Glover, who had always wanted to take a missionary trip, decided to apply for the same program, even though it wasn't a religious trip.

Terri Wingham, a breast cancer survivor, founded the nonprofit A Fresh Chapter that runs the program. She has taken 60 participants since 2011 to volunteer at various international destinations to heal the emotional scars that cancer leaves.

"When you get sick, you feel really unlucky," she explained. "We create an opportunity for people to feel lucky again." She wants survivors to see themselves as empowered rather than a victim of a disease. The program costs $5,000, and about half the participants receive some subsidy or scholarship.

Johnson-Glover started fundraising online. She emailed friends and sent letters. She was still far from the goal and discouraged until an anonymous donor offered to match $1,500 if she could raise it. Then, she won a grant from the Silver Linings Foundation for $1,800.

She made it. She flew out from Chicago to New Delhi in March, where she met 13 other men and women who are cancer survivors. She and three others would be working at a school in the slums for 3- to 7-year-olds. She would be teaching English and other basic lessons.

They volunteered every morning until noon during the two-week trip, and then took part in group activities, such as learning how to breathe using yoga techniques. A deep bond developed between the entire group.

"I was able to share my story with people who knew how I felt," Johnson-Glover said.  

On their last day in New Delhi, with all the children clamored around her to say goodbye, one of the teachers handed her note.

"Thank you for all you have done," it said. "Though thank you is not enough." Johnson-Glover started to cry.

"I realized it wasn't what we could give them. What mattered to them was our presence."

She and her co-travelers visited the Taj Mahal. Johnson-Glover was struck with the realization that she was not her cancer. She was not her treatment. She felt inspired to do more.

Each of the cancer survivors attended a burning ceremony before they left India. They wrote down what they wanted to leave behind. She wrote 'negativity' and threw it in the fire pit. "I have no space for it my life right now."

She came back to Swansea, Illinois, and continues to volunteer as an advocate for breast cancer survivors. She is graduating next month with a Master in Business Administration from McKendree University. She has inspired her daughter to want to go on a missionary trip.

She said her experience has shown her daughter that no matter what you go through in life, you can still make it. Johnson-Glover admits that there is always a fear with which she lives.

"I don't let it consume me," she said. "If fear consumes me, I'm letting cancer win. And I refuse to let cancer win." She was devastated when she lost her mother, who had been her best friend. So, when she was diagnosed, she realized she needed to fight to help find a cure.

"I need to fight hard. I don't want this to happen to my daughter," she said. "That's why I advocate so much -- for her. It's not about me anymore. It's about my daughter."

I am embarrassed about my number.

I don't like what it suggests about me. But I'm willing to confess it publicly, in hopes that I will make better choices moving forward.

Here it is: The details are blurry now, but I'm fairly certain I read fewer than 10 books last year.

This puts me below the average for women, who read 14 books in the previous 12 months, according to a 2014 Pew Research Center study. It also puts me below the average for college-educated people, who read 17. The median number of books read annually by American adults is far lower: about five, meaning half of us are reading fewer than five books in a year. But for someone who grew up a bookworm -- consuming at least 50 books a year for most of my youth -- this under-10 realization is shameful.

Oddly, I'm reading all the time: blog posts, pithy tweets, essays on my phone while I wait in lines. But it's byte-sized reading. It's qualitatively different from the immersive, sustained experience of reading a novel or a long work of nonfiction.

I'm not the only book lover who has strayed.

Nicole Thompson of O'Fallon, Missouri, started a book club about six years ago. When the club started, most people would read the selected book, she said, but that gradually changed.

"Over the years, only a couple of people would read the book," Thompson said. One month, not one person finished it.

Like her, the other members are time-starved working mothers. So about six months ago, she allowed the group to pick articles or blog posts instead of full-length novels. This option made it easier to get together during the hectic months of November and December.

"We're not opposed to doing books" in the club, she said. "It's just that people have less time."

Parents consistently say they want to raise readers. Trends show that young boys and older teens are reading less today than they did before smartphones and digital distractions monopolized leisure time, and that's cause for worry. The number of American children who say they love reading books for fun has dropped by nearly 10 percent in the last four years, according to Scholastic's 2015 Kids and Family Reading Report.

It's not that young people don't enjoy reading. It's that the other stuff they enjoy creates incredibly tough competition. Children have near-constant access to media that's either more fun or easier to mindlessly, intermittently consume. The percent of children who play games or apps on an electronic device at least five days a week has risen from a third in 2010 to half of respondents in 2014, according to the Scholastic report.

Even as a middle-aged adult, I can relate.

When I look at posts on Medium, the online publishing platform, I glance at the "reading time" metric posted right above the headline. I've bookmarked long-form essays that end up in the TL;DR (too long; didn't read) digital wastebasket. And I have large stacks of unread books next to my bed, on my desk and in our study room. It's the paradox of this Information Age that I am reading 10 to 12 hours a day and still finishing far fewer books than I did a decade ago.

Would I be happy if my children read as few books as I do currently? Of course not.

I want them to be the voracious book reader I was years ago. I want them to get lost for days in a story, to inhabit richly drawn worlds in their imaginations, to take a journey with a writer and discover new ideas along the way.

There's a socio-economic and educational link between those who read books frequently and those who don't. Those with college and graduate degrees, and those in higher income brackets, report reading the greatest number of books per year. But if our attention spans have shortened or our interests have shifted, our love of books won't translate to future generations.

"We are all capable of reading good books," Thompson said. She doesn't think her book club's evolution to blogs and articles speaks to a change in attention span.

I want to prove her correct by reviving my own book habit.

At this point, it's not even about setting an example for my children.

It's about reconnecting with a part of myself that I miss.