De(fining) Family-Friendly: Student-Mothers of Color's Experiences in Community College

• In Event: Histories of Erasure: Making the Invisible Visible in Parenting Scholar Research in Education

Abstract

I argue that racialized and gendered institutional policies and practices place Student-Mothers of Color in a dialectical tension of living with the positionality of “student vs. mother/parent,” “school vs. family,” “working vs. home,” and “achievement vs. self.” These differences are created and shaped in public discourse, enforced in institutional policies, and lived by my participants and myself. Yet, I also assert a change in discourse is possible by normalizing the rhetoric about “children” and “family life” as part of student life, rather than symbols of a problem survived by women in higher education. My research question: What do the narratives of Student-Mothers of Color reveal about the climate and treatment of mothering students in a community college context?
The theoretical framework used is Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Intersectionality. As Critical Race Theory informs Intersectionality (Crenshaw, 2008), this theoretical approach highlights the counterstories of student Mothers of Color in higher education. Intersectionality is a critical lens to bring voice, acknowledgment, and awareness to internalized and institutionalized sexism, racism, and classism for student-mothers in higher education. The argument is that intersectionality provides a holistic perspective to include the experiences of historically marginalized groups, strive for social justice and inclusion, and bring awareness to the complexities of identities and how these factors exist and function together (Crenshaw, 2008; hooks, 1984). Together, CRT and Intersectionality help reveal issues of inequity by showing how race and racism impact the structures, practices, and discourses within higher education for this population (Solorzano & Yosso, 2009; Delgado & Stefancic, 2001; Winkle-Wagner, Lee-Johnson, & Gaskew, 2019).
I employ Critical Race Ethnography as a means to triangulate interviews, observations, and artifacts to reveal how race, gender, and other subjectivities are constructed and shape the experiences of Student-Mothers of Color in community colleges. The data collected through 5-10 in-depth semi-structured interviews with self-identified Student-Mothers of Csolor attending or have attended community college for at least one semester. These 60-minute interviews are transcribed and coded. The preliminary findings with regards to student-parents in higher education, current institutions of higher education across the nation are not able to meet the needs of parenting students. And as a consequence, degree attainment goes unmet (Eckerson, Talbourget, Cruse, & Sykes, 2016). There are currently 4.8 million parenting students in higher education (Kruvelis, Cruse, & Gault, 2017). Of this number, 43 percent are single mothers, 89 percent come from low-income backgrounds, and most are Women of Color. The largest single mother-student population—44 percent—are enrolled at community colleges, 30 percent attend for-profit institutions, and 19 percent attend public or private four-year universities (Kruvelis et al., 2017). Even though there is a large Student-Mother of Color population in the United States, there is limited research on this population, especially within a community college context.

Author

• Cindy Nhung Phu, Pasadena City College