Although the pandemic has been devastating for everyone, it’s been especially hard for college student mothers. Many were forced by school and day care closures to prioritize care and remote learning for their children over their own education and careers.

“Between cooking meals to feed my children throughout the entire day, keeping up on household duties, ‘mommying,’ doing my own college courses, and teaching … there was never enough time,” says Memoree Skinner, an elementary special education teacher, graduate student, and mother of three.

As the primary caregivers in many families, mothers also found themselves responsible during the health crisis for tending to sick loved ones.

“One of my children did become COVID-positive. This created a challenge as I was forced to monitor the remainder of the household members around the clock,” Skinner says. “This quarantine time lasted for what seemed like a lifetime and forever. I never prayed so much in my life.”

Indeed, the past year was so challenging for women that the leader of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research renamed the recession a “shecession.”

But as a higher education researcher, I know that when it comes to the difficulties facing student mothers, the pandemic prompted changes of degree, not of kind. As I learned while researching my dissertation on success strategies for mothers in online programs, although college recruiting materials make it look easy for women to “do it all”—work, go to online classes, and parent—the realities are much different.

And yet, women who pursue college while raising children often have a lot of hope. That’s what I heard recently while interviewing student mothers who shared their lived experiences during the pandemic.

Yet new research and new programs focused on student mothers point toward strategies that can help these women succeed:

  • The Community College Women Succeed Initiative at Achieving the Dream is working to improve adult women’s retention in community colleges by elevating their voices and experiences.
  • The monthly webinar Helping STEM Students Thrive brings together national thought leaders who share ideas for broadening the participation of women and underrepresented minorities in STEM education.
  •  The Pregnant and Parenting Students Initiative at California State University at Long Beach provides advocacy and Title IX assistance as well as child-friendly study spaces and lactation rooms.
  •  United Tribes Technical College, a Tribal College where more than 60 percent of the students are women, has a K-6 school and day care on campus.

Read the full article about student mothers by Tanya Spilovoy at EdSurge.