In this sentence "scrape" means to struggle and work very hard to be able to provide for your family. Sometimes, people who are struggling with money in their life will say: I am just "scraping by." Sometimes, "scrape" doesn't mean you don't have enough money. You can say, I "scrape out" a good living as a chef, for example. But generally, scrape will be used to talk about one's difficulty to provide and earn.