Kaamilya Hobbs, eight months pregnant at the time, tried to stay out of her sweltering Kansas City apartment as much as possible during the record-setting heat wave in August.

But there was no escaping the stifling heat and thick humidity at night.

Hobbs, 31, and her partner were behind on their electric bill, and the company had turned their power off earlier in the month. Hobbs tossed and turned in bed for nearly three weeks, barely sleeping. Their 18-month-old baby screamed because it was so hot.

"There was no way to cool him off except for using paper fans," she said.

Hobbs has worked at Arby's for the past four years, where she makes minimum wage. Her schedule had been cut to 20 hours. Her partner lost his job several months ago; he now stays at home with their baby and sells his plasma twice a week.

It hasn't been enough to make ends meet.

"We're trying to make it work," Hobbs said. "But it's very difficult."

In America, twice as many women as men earn the minimum wage. In Missouri, the number of women living in poverty has increased despite more women earning bachelor's degrees. Working full-time at the $12-an-hour minimum wage would earn a Missouri worker just below $25,000 annually. That's assuming not a single day is taken off.

Missouri does not require companies to offer any paid maternity or family leave.

Hobbs said that after her first baby was born, her manager at Arby's asked her to come back to work a week later. She took additional unpaid time off then, but she's not sure what she will do this time.

She and her partner have fallen about $1,400 behind on the rent.

Her due date is Oct. 8.

Her family's eviction date is the next day. They don't have another place to stay yet.

"We have to figure that out," Hobbs said.

During the days when the temperature was over 100 degrees, she focused on staying hydrated, especially since her pregnancy is high-risk. One night, the temperature in their apartment got so high, she couldn't even keep water down. She was throwing up whenever she tried to drink.

She ended up in the emergency room with heat exhaustion.

The lack of power meant they couldn't keep the baby's milk cold in the fridge. They had to switch him back to formula, which doesn't have to be refrigerated. She used the DailyPay program at work, which allows hourly employees to get paid for the hours worked on the same day, just to keep up with diapers and some basic expenses.

"I hate us not being able to provide everything that he needs," she said.

Listening to her story, it's hard to imagine that in a country as wealthy as America, the most vulnerable people live in these conditions: A mother with a baby at home, in her third trimester of pregnancy, is working as many hours as she can get and is still barely hanging on to an apartment without air conditioning or electricity during the hottest days of the year.

It is shameful that it's so difficult to get assistance in these situations.

Hobbs said it was painful for her to share her family's story. She doesn't like asking for help. A social worker has given the family a list of resources to call. Hobbs, who has been exhausted these days, hopes to connect with an organization that might be able to help them find a place to move next month after she gives birth.

Recently, someone at her job heard through the grapevine that her family had been without power for a few weeks.

One of her Arby's co-workers paid off their $500 bill so their lights could be turned back on.

Hobbs found out during one of her shifts and started crying.

"It was really hard for me to hear that," she said. "But I was really grateful for it."

She said she couldn't thank her co-worker enough.

That night, she slept.

Kayla Breitbarth can't afford child care even though she works 50 to 60 hours a week at an Amazon fulfillment center in St. Peters, Missouri.

She relies on family members to watch the younger three children while she picks up enough hours to try to support her family.

"If I work less than that, I can't pay my bills. I already struggle to pay my bills or buy groceries," she said. Breitbarth began working at the Seattle-based tech and e-commerce giant four years ago. She moved to Swansea, Illinois, from Washington state two years ago to be closer to family who could help her with child care. Breitbarth commutes an hour each way because this location allows her to set her schedule each week, giving her some flexibility when her children are sick or have a doctor's appointment.

But despite the long hours, help from her family and monthly visits to a food pantry, her family is barely scraping by on the wage that Amazon pays her.

Meanwhile, Amazon reported $6.7 billion in profit for the three months ending in June. Jeff Bezos, the third-richest person in the world, who derives his wealth from ownership of Amazon stock, is worth an estimated $162 billion.

"They can afford to have some sort of in-house day care, but they don't," Breitbarth said. The company doesn't offer her any discount or credit for child care.

"They can afford to do things like that, but they choose not to," she said.

Kelli Kee, communications director of Progress MO, said Breitbarth's situation illustrates a growing disparity for Missouri women. More women in the state are becoming more educated and moving into better jobs, but more women are also living in poverty.

Kee cited these statistics:

In 2004, only 20.3% of Missouri women had earned a bachelor's degree or higher. By 2018, that figure had risen to 29.4%.

During those same years, Missouri women employed in managerial or professional positions increased from 35.1% to 40.1%.

But these achievements haven't translated into better economic outcomes for women.

In 2004, 11.1% of Missouri women lived in poverty; that figure has increased to 15.5% compared to 13.3% of men.

A study by the Center for American Progress found that mothers who were unable to find a child care program were significantly less likely to be employed than those who found child care, whereas there was no impact on fathers' employment.

"Mothers said that if they had access to more affordable and reliable child care, they would increase their earnings and progress in their careers by finding a higher-paying job, applying for a promotion, seeking more hours at work, or finding a job in the first place," the report stated.

Kee questioned why Missouri lawmakers have not addressed the child care deserts, where there are no affordable child care options for working parents. Additionally, the burden of child care in school districts that have dropped to four-day school weeks falls disproportionately on women, she said. Nearly a third of the school districts in the state operate on a shortened schedule for the cost savings and to help retain and recruit teachers.

Breitbarth isn't sure how much longer she can keep working at Amazon since the company has capped her hourly wages. Her pay hasn't kept up with the inflationary increases in the cost of living.

It's not possible for her to increase her wages unless she becomes a manager. But without any backup child care or flexibility in her schedule, she doesn't know how she will manage if one of her children gets sick or has a day off from school. Given the two hours she spends commuting daily, plus the long hours she works, she hardly gets to see her children much as it is.

She is working on efforts to unionize workers like herself at Amazon.

"We are coming together as a team in hopes that things will get better," she said.

It may be difficult to get Bezos to pay much attention to the trials of single mothers working at the company he founded. He's been busy touring Europe with his new fiancee on a 417-foot super-yacht.

On the third day of school, Cecily King decided she needed to upgrade her middle-schooler's bulletproof backpack liner with one that could shield her from the rapid-fire rounds of an assault rifle.

This is what back-to-school shopping in America looks like.

The $300 insert is advertised as providing "military-trusted" protection for the "vital torso area" of a young child in the line of fire in a classroom. The upgrade was prompted by the events of Aug. 23, when King, a St. Louis-area dance instructor and mother of four, received emails and texts from her daughter's middle school about a "yellow-level threat." The threat led to a two-hour lockdown.

"It was a very long two hours," King said.

For many in the area, the memories are still vivid from a shooting last year at Central Visual and Performing Arts High School (CVPA) and Collegiate School of Medicine and Bioscience, with which CVPA shares a building. On Oct. 24, 2022, a 19-year-old armed with a Palmetto State Armory PA-15 rifle killed a teacher and a student there.

Five of King's dance students attended CVPA.

"They were jumping over bullets on the floor, running past a body," she said.

That's when she and her husband decided to purchase the initial bulletproof backpack protection for their daughter, along with a cellphone with a GPS tracking app. After the Aug. 23 threat at the school, King's mother offered to split the cost of a new backpack liner that can protect against automatic rifle bullets.

"It's maddening. It's sickening. It makes my stomach turn that in order to keep my kid safe in school, this is what we have to do," King said.

Shooters have used AR-15s or similar semi-automatic rifles to massacre people in a grocery store in Boulder, Colorado; a nightclub in Orlando, Florida; a high school in Parkland, Florida; a music festival in Las Vegas; a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado; an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut; a Waffle House in Nashville, Tennessee; an office party in San Bernardino, California; on the streets of Midland and Odessa, Texas; in synagogues near San Diego and in Pittsburgh; a church service in Sutherland Springs, Texas; an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas; and a dollar store in Jacksonville, Florida. There were more school shootings in 2022 -- 46 -- than in any year since at least 1999, according to a tracker maintained by the Washington Post. The paper has counted 386 school shootings since Columbine.

No other country in the world comes close to murdering its schoolchildren the way America does.

Sales for bulletproof backpacks soared last year after a gunman opened fire at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde. He killed 19 children and two teachers.

The gear doesn't stop with bulletproof backpacks: In December, a New Jersey school district equipped its schools with armored shields: Ostensibly, teachers are supposed to hide students behind the shields while herding them to a safe corner of a classroom or ushering them outdoors. The shields were mounted next to fire extinguishers.

In the wake of the horror in Uvalde, Republicans pivoted to talking about ways to "harden" or fortify schools. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz talked about changing schools' doors. Anything to avoid mentioning the elephant in the room: the hundreds of millions of guns flooding America.

When St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones talked recently about her efforts to rein in the AR-15s on the city's streets, gun lovers had the usual meltdowns about their "rights" -- to conceal carry; to open carry; to buy, on a whim, whenever and however they want, the very weapons used to terrorize and massacre our children.

Any nation that makes guns more precious than its own children has lost its way.

A recent post in a moms' Facebook group asked about the best ways to track the location of elementary school-aged children. Moms swapped tips about the best surveillance and tracking devices. A few mothers said they attach Apple AirTags to their kids' shoes and backpacks.

Our Republican lawmakers would rather see a kindergartner covered in body armor, lugging a bulletproof backpack with GPS trackers planted in their sneakers, than pass gun safety laws.

The GOP wants to harden schools.

They've already hardened their hearts.