Parenting During the Pandemic: Gender Penalties Experienced by Student-Mothers

• In Event: Exploring the Nuanced Impacts of COVID-19 on Stakeholders in Higher Education: Faculty, Staff, and Students

Abstract

The second set of presenters include an associate professor whose research centers on work/family issues in the academy, focusing on how faculty, staff, and students navigate their competing professional, academic, and personal responsibilities and a PhD candidate whose research focuses on the impact of gender on students and professionals in the U.S. higher education system.

Overview: One in four U.S. undergraduates has a child under the age of 18 in the home (Gault et al., 2014; Gault et al., 2020). Of these, 71% are women and 43% are single mothers (Gault et al., 2014). Many student-parents contend with a host of responsibilities, including balancing caregiving with their academics, sometimes in the face of institutions and professors who ignore these responsibilities (Brown & Nichols, 2013; Duquaine-Watson, 2007; Lynch, 2008). COVID-19 did not just impact student-mothers in their roles as students as most institutions pivoted to online environments. Instead, many student-mothers also had to contend with providing full-time childcare and, for some, home schooling as they suddenly found their children home with them. We argue student-mothers were particularly penalized due to the intersection of individual and organizational norms related to gender.

We draw upon data collected during a yearlong study of 23 low-income student-mothers in New York and Georgia, which focused on understanding how they navigated their competing responsibilities amid food insecurity during the pandemic. Using Acker’s (1990) theory of gendered organizations and Hays’s (1996) theory of intensive mothering as theoretical guides, we explore the ways in which student-mothers received minimal support from their institutions in the transition to online schooling for both parents and children. In particular, many participants struggled with a lack of access to institutional services and reported that taking courses in an online setting was both more isolating and more difficult. Many parents found their challenges compounded by helping their children navigate remote schooling as well. We offer recommendations for programs and practices that institutions might implement to respond to the needs of this significant student population.

Authors

• Margaret W. Sallee, University at Buffalo - SUNY

• Alyssa Stefanese Yates, Michigan State University