Celebrating Student Parents
Any day is a good day to honor the strength and ingenuity of parenting students — including every day in September, Student Parent Month.
“It’s challenging to make time when it comes to the housework, helping [the children] with their work, trying to learn while they’re learning, trying to keep a positive attitude,” a Jeremiah Program mom said about life as a student parent. She went on to say it’s hard “letting myself know that I can still do this even though it’s a challenge.”
She was responding to a question we asked our moms and alumni: “What are some of the unique challenges of being a student parent?”
At JP, all of our moms are single parents who are either about to start postsecondary degree programs for the first time or are returning to degree programs to finish. Like most of the 1 in 5 college students who are parents, the majority of JP moms are women of color and are parenting children under the age of 7.
The stakes are so much higher for these students; they have so many responsibilities, including the lives of the children who depend on them. On average, student parents have about twice as much student debt as their non-parenting peers. That’s probably why they work so hard at home, their places of employment, and at school: Student parents generally have higher GPAs than other students.
Parenting students, including our JP moms, are working hard to build better lives for themselves and their children — and their children’s children. They make miracles happen every day. That’s why we celebrate them every day, including the month of September, Student Parent Month.
More responses from JP moms to our question on the challenges of being parenting students illustrate just a few reasons why we make it a point to celebrate them.
“Your schedule, their schedule, everybody else’s schedule — you have to keep track of it,” one mom said, “along with still being a mother and do your homework and rest and eat and appointments and still make time for them when you are a mother. And sometimes you forget to have time for yourself, like, ‘I haven’t eaten today.’”
“One of the biggest challenges of being a student parent is going to a professor and saying, ‘My son was sick’ and having them understand that.”
JP Mom
Multiple JP moms noted the fact that policies and practices at higher ed institutions simply aren’t set up with parenting students in mind. “One of the biggest challenges of being a student parent is going to a professor and saying, ‘My son was sick’ and having them understand that.” Another said that professors “don’t want to hear about it.”
Still another pointed to the need for major change: “A unique struggle is school not understanding our status of being nontraditional students,” she asserted. “I think that’s something really important that needs to be changed in that system so that we actually can have equal opportunities as those traditional students.”
It is incredibly exhausting, to say the least. Yet, these moms and all student parents keep going. They keep studying and finishing course assignments in the wee hours — after working part- or full-time, cooking dinner, helping with homework, and doing bath time, story time, and bedtime with their kids. Just imagine the discipline and sacrifice it takes to pull off these juggling acts. Student parents do it all — so that they can create better lives for themselves and their families.
We hope you’ll join us in recognizing student parents this month and throughout each year. They deserve it.
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