A white Christmas tree and a pair of children’s pink-and-white bicycles lined the entryway of Latisha Hopewell’s apartment in Lower Manhattan, where her two daughters, Shaun, 11, and Shani, 6, were losing their battle against post-holiday malaise minute by minute.

Beneath heavy eyelids, the two girls rarely looked away from their mother during a nearly two-hour interview. Ms. Hopewell, 35, is acutely aware that those little eyes, especially those of her older daughter, are always watching her. It is largely what motivated her to go back to college a year and a half ago, despite all that she had to give up: time to herself, sleep and, most of all, hundreds of precious hours with her girls.

But of the many traits mothers can pass on to their daughters, determination seems to be the gene that dominates in Ms. Hopewell’s family.

“I come from a long line of strong women,” she said. Finding a way is “just something you have to do.”