If you’ve raised kids or gone to college, you can imagine how difficult it is to do both simultaneously. College students who are parents must find myriad ways to get their children fed and ready for their day, whether it means being dropped off at day care or school, and then prepare for their own day of classes, homework and test preparation. And for many student-parents, there is the added responsibility and pressure of having to earn a living.
HOW CALIFORNIA COLLEGE STUDENTS WITH CHILDREN ARE COPING
The pandemic pushed the student-parent balancing act to a new level, compounded by the chaos, stress and forced isolation brought upon by the unfolding health crisis and shelter-in-place restrictions.
As a new school year is set to begin amid the pandemic, parents in college continue to struggle with how to juggle their classwork and their children’s schooling as the Covid-19 delta variant raises new questions about health and safety, as well as remote learning.
In March, researchers from UC Davis’ Wheelhouse Center for Community College Leadership and Research released a comprehensive study that offered rare insights into the lives of students who are also parents. By examining financial aid applications in 2018, the authors of the research found that out of 1.5 million applicants in California, about 202,000 of them were parents. The study also found that 3 out of 4 student-parents are women, with an average age of 34. EdSource interviewed seven student-parents about how they’re balancing their own academic responsibilities and that of their children’s as the pandemic grinds on.
Nicole Moreno,25, has maneuvered between lab reports and her children’s report cards as she finishes her psychology degree at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona while taking care of her 9-year-old stepson and her 3-year-old son.
‘You’re my why’
By Jasmine Nguyen
Nicole Moreno’s days are filled with Zoom calls, homework and lab work. However, the 25-year-old junior studying psychology at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona has the added responsibility and pressure of having to help her 9-year-old stepson with his fourth grade classes and her 3-year-old son with his autism therapy sessions.
Virtual schooling is nothing new to Moreno. She took all of her courses online while earning her associate degrees in psychology and sociology at Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut, located in East Los Angeles. Moreno says her online experience in community college made her forced transition to online learning at Cal Poly Pomona easier, which is why she was able to maintain her A’s and B’s during the pandemic.
But in addition to her own GPA, Moreno is focused on making sure her 9-year-old stepson’s grades don’t drop either. Moreno has become a teacher for her kids, filling many of the roles an in-person instructor would have pre-pandemic.
“I check up on him weekly, just to see how he’s doing in class,” Moreno said shortly before the end of the school year. “Sometimes I’ll rush through my homework, or I don’t do homework, just so I can help him in the evening time.”
Moreno said she had to adjust her parenting style last year after her 3-year-old son was diagnosed with autism. Now, she finds herself researching subjects like speech therapy and behavior therapy, as well as attending therapy sessions with her son. Also, she attends meetings with school officials to ensure that her son’s specific academic needs will be addressed when he begins public school.
Moreno says these virtual sessions were hard on her 3-year-old son because he found it difficult to relate to or listen to someone on a computer screen. She eventually stopped forcing him to attend the meetings.
“Even though occupational therapy is vital in his developmental stages,” Moreno said, “it just wasn’t working out because his attention span is so short right now that he won’t sit for an hour on the computer straight.”
He now participates in virtual sessions twice a week and in-person therapy three times a week. The effort is still difficult for him, given that each session lasts three hours.
Moreno said she receives aid from the Pell Grant and the Cal Grant. In addition, she receives $600 annually from the CSU’s Educational Opportunity Program, which is spread out over two semesters.
Moreno’s life partner, the father of both of her children, works full-time to pay the family bills, leaving Moreno to focus on raising the children and completing her own education.
“I have to really budget because everything, the cost of living, the cost of driving, the cost of eating, it’s gone up,” Moreno said.
In an attempt to better balance her life and schedule, Moreno takes advantage of a campus program for parenting students, which during the school year hosts a weekly Zoom meeting for members.
“If I’m feeling a little overwhelmed, that’s mainly what the Zoom meeting every Tuesday is for,” she said. “To air out and vent about some stuff and what tips and advice we could use the rest of the semester.”
Moreno says she sometimes believes her role as a student-parent is ignored by academic advisers, as they often unwittingly pressure her into taking more classes than she can handle.
“Sometimes they forget that you’re not just a student, but you’re also a parent,” she said. “And depending on that person you’re going to put school first, or you’re going to put your child first.”
Moreno understands that furthering her education as a parent can be challenging, but at the end of the day she’s doing it for her children.
“Why am I coming to school? I could be at home 24/7 with my son,” Moreno says she asks herself on the hard days. “But then I wake up on a different day and I just stare at him and think ‘You’re the reason why I want to go back to college. You’re my why.’”
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