Clayburn plans to name him Christopher, after a close friend who died in high school. Though Clayburn still wants to finish high school, he says he first needs to pass his driver’s test and find a job – before the baby arrives in April. Now 20, he dropped out of school two years ago and will soon be a father. Her oldest son, Tyler Clayburn, was 13 when the film aired. “I’ve worked hard ever since, knowing that people help you when you have nothing,” Barbara Hegwood said. When the film first aired, viewers from as far away as Canada sent cash donations and care packages full of food and toiletries, helping her family to stabilize. “It’s like at your fingertips, so you feel like you’re grasping the end of that rope, you know what I mean? It’s frustrating.” “Things are getting better – and you know they’re going to get better – but they’re not better yet,” she said. In the meantime, the single mother is working shifts at a fast-food restaurant. She’s now re-training for less strenuous work as a medical assistant. When her mother, Barbara Hegwood, sees the old footage, she simply wonders “What happened to my baby?”Īfter Poor Kids debuted, Barbara Hegwood became a certified nursing assistant, but had to leave her job due to health problems. “I feel like I’ve grown a lot more and matured,” she said, laughing at her 11-year-old self. Hegwood has re-watched Poor Kids several times over the years, most recently after FRONTLINE aired an updated version of the film in 2017. Kaylie Hegwood, 18, and Tyler Clayburn, 20, first appeared in FRONTLINE’s Poor Kids in 2012. “You can’t really depend on anybody to make your future.” “My future is up to me, it’s not up to anybody else,” Hegwood said, echoing her childhood convictions. Her long-term goal is to become a veterinarian. Next year, she plans to apply for colleges and universities in Iowa and Alabama. She’s a junior in high school, balancing a 3.4 GPA with two part-time retail jobs. Now 18, Hegwood still lives in Iowa with her mom, in a rent-to-own home. But then “we just kind of went on,” she told FRONTLINE in a recent interview. I don’t want to steal stuff.”Īs the credits rolled, Hegwood recalls her family talked briefly about what it meant to be in a documentary about growing up poor.

The alternative, she declared, would be “living in a box, not eating … and then stealing stuff from stores. “People can’t stop you from believing in your own dreams.” The hour-long documentary concludes with Hegwood defiantly describing her future: “I believe that I’m going to get a perfect job that I like and that I want to do,” she said. FRONTLINE first aired the film in 2012, earning both an Emmy nomination and a Robert F. Poor Kids portrays poverty in America through the eyes of children in three struggling families, including Kaylie and Tyler. She remembers laughing about a dramatic on-screen fight with her brother, Tyler, then crying when the story turned to the beloved dog her family couldn’t afford to keep. Hegwood, then 11, said she simply felt excited to be on TV. When Kaylie Hegwood first watched Poor Kids seven years ago, huddled with her family around a screen in their trailer, she didn’t realize the film would become “such a big deal.”

Growing up poor in america summary