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. Some of their stories follow and more will be printed in future editions of the Record-Bee.
New mom sends emails to professors from hospital bed
Berenice Santillan spent the first day of the fall 2020 semester in a hospital bed giving birth to her first child and frantically sending off emails to professors to keep them updated about her situation and ensure she kept her spot in class.
“I do not want to be dropped from this course,” Santillan’s email read. “But I am currently in labor and won’t be able to join today’s Zoom session.” She asked if the professor would arrange a one-on-one session.
Three of four professors were sympathetic. The 25-year-old senior studying advertising and public relations at California State University, Dominguez Hills said it was like a slap in the face when a communications professor told her that he was OK with her missing the first day but made it clear that he expected Santillan to attend the Zoom meeting scheduled for the second day of class.
Santillan, a first-generation college student, said that she felt like her professor did not care about her newborn child or understand what she was dealing with in her transition to motherhood. But Santillan made the bet that her child would be born on a Sunday and she would be ready for the first day of her senior year on Monday.
“It’s fine,” she told herself at the time. “My class doesn’t start until noon.”
The incident would be the first of many that would test Santillan’s ability to balance her pursuit of a degree and dream of starting a family.
“The first week of school during the fall 2020 semester was my worst time as a student-parent,” Santillan said. “Everything was brand new to me: having a new baby, being a first-time mom and handling school at the same time. It was a lot.”
Postpartum complications added to her struggle to finish the course. With a newborn and the most challenging communications classes for her degree program scheduled in the first 16 weeks of the academic year, she began to question her ability to complete her undergraduate education.
“I wasn’t sleeping, and both of my legs swelled up to three times their normal size because I was retaining fluid for a week and a half,” Santillan said. ”I couldn’t walk, and I needed assistance bathing.”
When she failed to turn in an assignment in her Culture, Gender and Communication class, the professor reached out to make sure Santillan and her newborn were OK. The professor encouraged Santillan to bring her daughter to the one-on-one meeting and did not mind if she nursed the infant while they talked.
“That was one of the best feelings, knowing someone was actually looking out for me mentally and emotionally,” Santillan said. “It makes a big difference as a student-parent when a professor is aware of your situation and is willing to take steps to reach out and see if you need any additional support. ”
Santillan’s difficulties juggling her pregnancy and her coursework started weeks after she learned she was pregnant in December 2019.
Due to abdominal cramping and light bleeding during her first trimester, her pregnancy was considered high-risk. Some days, she would go home early and skip her afternoon classes because walking up and down the stairs on campus was too painful and possibly dangerous for her unborn child. Professors assumed she had the flu when she told them she wasn’t feeling well, and she never told them she was pregnant.
After having her child in August 2020, Santillan was relieved that classes were all online, knowing it would be easier to care for her child than to deal with the hassles of finding childcare. Now, Santillan wishes she were back on campus because she misses interacting with people her own age.
“Mentally, that messes me up sometimes,” Santillan said. “I just crave talking to someone my own age. I want to see people and talk to people.”
After being furloughed from her job as a purchasing assistant at Knotts Berry Farm, Santillan was grateful to get a student assistant position with the university’s Women’s Resource Center, dedicated to the needs of women.
Through the center, Santillan created a student-parent support group series titled “Once Upon A Student Parent. Like many other CSU campuses, CSU Dominguez Hills lacks an office to support the unique needs of students caring for children.
Now that her daughter is a little older, Santillan has learned how to better balance student life with home life.
Santillan’s daily schedule is built around her child’s needs. Next comes school work, her internship and her student assistant job. Her crowning achievement was graduating in May.
In the weeks leading up to graduation, Santillan said, she found herself crying on many nights, tired and overworked. She found solace when people told her she is an inspiration.
“I had my daughter during a pandemic,” Santillan said. “That was hard. The lack of resources to make graduation possible was way harder. The mental toll this pandemic had on me and having a newborn during my senior year, I tell myself I am much stronger mentally because I never gave up.”
—Melanie Gerner
Geneva Canellas budgets time and money as a working mom and student
For 20-year-old Geneva Casellas, the sounds of a screaming toddler added to the stress of final exams, homework and endless Zoom classes.
“It was just so chaotic, and I was so stressed out,” Casellas said of taking her statistics final exam last May at California State University, Long Beach. “I’m on a time limit; there are so many math problems. I have my kid screaming in another room. It was just really overwhelming.”
Casellas is no stranger to frenzied exam periods and taxing days. A rising senior and business finance major and mother to a 2-year-old son, her college experience has been defined by having to juggle between reading bedtime stories to her child and reading textbooks for her economics classes.
“Being at home with a toddler and trying to take classes is not easy. I’m still struggling,” Casellas said. “When I went to school before the pandemic, I would have a selected time for me to go into class. “Day care was already handled. Everything was handled. Now that I don’t have that space at school, that separation anymore. Everything is all mixed into one, so it’s hard.”
Attending online classes two days a week, Casellas says the distractions at home paired with various technological difficulties made it hard for her to focus. Though Casellas’ family helps her around the house, her son often craves her attention, and she still hasn’t “quite gotten the grip of Zoom.”
Still, Casellas says she is grateful for her family’s support. After the temporary closure of local day care centers, her sister offered to take care of Casellas’ son while she’s in class. Her son’s father has also been a great help, Casellas says, co-parenting with her and splitting equal custody.
“He’s very involved,” Casellas said of her son’s father. “Every other week, we switch off having our son for four days of the week. Every semester since I started school, we’ve always just sat down with, ‘Here’s my work schedule, here’s my school schedule.’ And then we just make a schedule and stick to it for the whole semester.”
Casellas survives financially on her salary as a part-time lifeguard but says her budget is often tight. As a low-income student-parent, she qualifies for financial aid that covers most of her university costs. In addition, CalFresh benefits keep food on the table.
From March to June 2020, Covid-related facility closures prevented her from working, and she relied heavily on unemployment compensation. Still, tactical management of weekly paychecks and Cal Grant allotments helped her get by.
In the past, Casellas also benefited from free day care services through Cal State Long Beach. Her son has attended the university’s Isabel Patterson Child Development Center since he was 6 months old, but the university’s closure last year halted in-person services.
While she likes the social interaction her son would get with other children, Casellas said she has cherished the time she now gets to spend with her son and feeling like a “stay-at-home mom” since the beginning of the pandemic.
“Before the pandemic, my son was in day care Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. I’d get in late, and he would fall asleep in a few hours. I’d get him on the weekends, but I work on the weekends, so I felt like I wasn’t getting the quality time to spend with him,” Casellas said.
On top of her other responsibilities, Casellas makes it a priority to support the student-parent community at Cal State Long Beach. She is president of the Parenting Student Club and hosts meetings in which student-parents can share their struggles and encourage each other.
“Being a parent is hard. Being a student is hard. And being a student-parent is even harder,” Casellas said. “We all have that common issue, and we all just need to find ways to cope.”
Once she graduates in 2022, Casellas hopes to open her own business in the realm of reiki healing, a Japanese form of alternative medicine. Her goal is to be the best role model possible for her son.
“I look at my son, and I’m like, ‘I can’t just stop. You can’t stop,’” Casellas said. “Days are always going to be hard, but just like anything else, things will get better. I’m doing this for my future, so I am more stable for the both of us. My son is always the biggest motivation.”
—Emily Chung
