Maya became pregnant as a teen and gave birth to her daughter, Meena, on Oct. 20, 1984. Because she was only 17 at the time, Maya relied on her older sister and their mother, Shyamala Gopalan Harris, to help raise her daughter while she pursued her bachelor's degree at the University of California-Berkeley and put herself through Stanford Law School.
In January 2014, Maya opened up about the struggle of going through college and law school as a single mom during an appearance on MSNBC. "I was a single teenage parent," she said, "and I could not have done what I've been able to do had I not had access to child care and had I not had mechanisms for me to pay for both my college tuition and my law school tuition."