Make Lemonade is dedicated by Wolff to “young mothers,” and the obstacles faced by teenagers who must raise children, while they are still children themselves, is one of the novel’s themes. As the novel recounts the experience of 17-year-old Jolly, who, with her two children, is a “mom that was too young to be one” (21), readers come to understand how hard these young mothers struggle, and how, by accepting help, they can begin to forge a better life for themselves and their children.

When Make Lemonade begins, Jolly, who has not earned her high school degree, works full-time while raising a 2-year-old  and a baby in a dangerous, dirty, inner-city neighborhood. From one perspective, Jolly seems to be avoiding “fac[ing] reality” (20) and taking responsibility for her situation: she doesn’t try to clean her run-down apartment where the “rooms smell like last week’s garbage” and “you can’t imagine the things that live/down the plugged drain” (23). She can’t pay her rent, the electricity is in danger of being cut off, and she doesn’t take her children to the doctor. However, while it may appear that Jolly accepts an untenable situation without attempting to change it, she is sure of one thing: “‘Reality is my babies only got one thing in the whole world/and that’s me and that’s the reality” (20).