Ms. Emers spent the next few months at Rikers. In a court hearing, she requested treatment for her drug addiction. She sought help from the Dreitzer House for Women and Children in East Harlem, which offers drug treatment and affordable housing.

Ms. Emers moved into a shelter, where she was pregnant with Jabari and lived for the next year and a half, she said.

But she struggled to disconnect from the toxic yet accepting community that had taken her in after an unhappy childhood. After kicking her drug habit, Ms. Emers said, she spent years “in limbo.”

“Not doing what I’d been doing before,” she said, “but not doing anything else instead.”

She cloistered herself in her Bronx apartment to avoid the temptations outside, but was depressed that her criminal record limited her job prospects. And when Jabari started school, his homework became another stressor for her, prompting verbal abuse. “He bore the brunt of that,” she said.

Ms. Emers said she realized she needed to end the abuse, so she turned to Community School 61, an elementary school in the Bronx that partners with the Children’s Aid Society, one of eight organizations supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund. There she volunteered and joined the parent-teacher association. She also signed up for parenting classes at the Children’s Aid Society’s East Harlem Center and became more engaged at home.

School administrators suggested she enroll in college, but Ms. Emers dismissed the idea until shortly after Jabari’s fifth grade graduation, when the mother and son were discussing his future. Jabari asked her, “When are you graduating?”