UIC symposium highlights the challenges and triumphs of parenting students
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In the United States, over 5.4 million college students–almost a quarter of undergraduate students and nearly a third of all graduate students–are also parents. Despite their considerable presence, parenting students are one of the most misunderstood and underrepresented groups in higher education. The recent symposium “From Surviving to Thriving: Cultivating Possibilities for Parenting Students in Illinois”, hosted by the UIC Women’s Leadership and Resource Center (WLRC) and their campus partners, was put together to demystify these issues.
Held on March 20 at the UIC Student Services Building (SSB), the symposium featured students, faculty, researchers and community advocates coming together to talk about the real-life experiences of students who are parents, pinpoint institutional obstacles and offer workable solutions for more welcoming learning environments. The panel presentations were supported by posters and a slideshow which highlighted the experiences of eleven UIC parenting students from colleges across the university. This visual element ensured that the voices of the students remained essential to and integrated with all of the discussions that occurred throughout the morning.
The seminar sparked conversations about how difficult and exhausting it is for parenting students to juggle their caregiving and academic obligations, along with the financial strain and hard choices surrounding cost of tuition, childcare and housing. Attendees also brought attention to a shortage of institutional assistance by recounting instances of administrative and academic disinterest.
One attendee recalled: “I’m listening to y’all, and I’m remembering things I didn’t even get to feel because I just had to keep going.”
When seeking help, many parenting students experience stigma, which makes them feel extremely ashamed of their need for support. Racial and gendered biases frequently make these difficulties worse, especially for Black women and women of color who are subjected to more scrutiny over their reproductive decisions.
“I thought my Black female mentor would understand, but even she warned me against having kids while pursuing my PhD,” keynote speaker Sekile Nzinga, PhD, vice president of diversity, equity and inclusion at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, recalled.
The symposium’s panelists included parenting students from UIC and other institutions of higher education. The students offered multiple accounts of the ways that they turned to peer networks and mutual aid when they did not have strong institutional support. These unofficial systems, however, cannot take the place of the fundamental adjustments that higher education requires. Parental leave policies are frequently created exclusively for mothers, reinforcing traditional gender stereotypes by expecting that they should shoulder all caregiving duties.
Based on her extensive research on how universities can better support parenting students, Theresa Anderson, PhD, senior fellow at the Urban Institute, noted that one path towards transforming these ineffective systems could be studying tribal colleges and universities, which already incorporate family-friendly policies. Panelists shared that state-level initiatives like New York’s child care block grants for college students demonstrate the viability of systemic fixes. Student-centered advocacy groups such as SPARK (Student Parent Action through Research Knowledge Collaborative) also exemplify the effectiveness of organizing for systemic change.
Establishing accessible lactation areas, creating inclusive and extended parental leave policies, offering flexible academic policies and specialized counseling services, educating faculty and staff on the challenges of parenting students, advocating for local and federal policies that support student parents, providing financial and childcare support and gathering comprehensive data on student parents are all necessary to create a truly inclusive campus for parenting students.
This symposium was a healing space and an inspiration for institutions to acknowledge and support parenting students as important contributors to their academic communities. Through the implementation of concrete policy modifications, educational institutions can guarantee that student parents not only endure, but flourish in higher education.