THEY’RE MAJOR MOMS

Among the world’s great cities, Los Angeles is like a child--young, bright and hopeful but prone to occasional outbursts. Disasters, both natural and man-made, can make life challenging here.

Still, millions stay and many come.

Perhaps mothers understand this devotion best. Through motherhood, women reward themselves with the joys of building new lives, while committing themselves to inevitable but unpredictable struggles.

Senorina Rendon of South Gate helped rescue her son from gang life and is now learning English and teaching others about parenting. Muriel Bragg directs the Hyde Park Family Service Center while tending to her five “hearts”--four children and one stepdaughter. Sandra Villalobos, a single mother of two young children, uses her experience having children as a teen to counsel adolescents.

They and other mothers work on while help gets harder to find. A quarter of Los Angeles households with children are headed by single women, according to the 1990 U.S. Census. Funding for the Los Angeles Unified School District, an important partner to many inner-city mothers, has been flat for the last five years.

Here is a look at five women trying to build a better world, one household at a time.