When “Time Is Not Your Own”: Experiences of Mothering Students During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

As COVID-19 reached pandemic levels in March 2020, schools shifted to remote learning. Student parents in higher education had to adapt to their own remote learning and assume responsibility for childcare and their children’s education. Few studies have explored the impact of COVID-19 on mothers who are also full-time students. This study utilized a phenomenological approach to understand the lived experiences of mothering students during the COVID-19 pandemic. Student mothers were recruited from a large, public, Hispanic-serving university in a Southern state. We conducted interviews with 15 student mothers who had at least one child under the age of 18 during the first six months of the pandemic. Three main themes emerged from the analyses: (1) successfully meeting educational requirements; (2) dealing with the mental health impact of the pandemic; and (3) changing the institutional structure. The first theme captured strategies mothering students implemented to ensure their own or their children’s educational goals were met. The second theme encompassed how mothers handled the stress caused by the pandemic. The third theme explored ways that mothers resisted gendered expectations and norms around care. Implications for policy and social work practice include changing institutional structures to enhance support for mothering students.

Caught in the Neoliberal Churn: Pushing Back Against “Productivity” as a Measure of Impact

“…Heightened vulnerabilities and an eroding capacity to withstand unrelenting changes and acceleration have occupied many pages of journals, including ours (Kim et al, 2021). Critical feminist research showed us how the pandemic disproportionately threatened the lives and well-being of Latinx immigrants (Cross & Gonzalez Benson, 2021), Latina immigrants (Cleaveland & Waslin, 2021), sex workers (Bromfield et al, 2021), intimate partner violence survivors (Heward-Belle et al, 2022), student mothers (LaBrenz et al, 2023), trafficking survivors (Namy et al, 2023), and anti-violence workers (Welch & Schwarz, 2023). Social work scholars like Stephanie Lechuga-Peña (2022) showed us how pandemic conditions disproportionately impacted the “productivity” of pre-tenure BIPOC junior women faculty.…”

Reimagining Academia: Lessons from Black M(other)Scholars during our duel with the dual pandemics

“…As highlighted by hooks (1984), White womxn's experience as mothers has set the standard for motherhood and continues to do so. Even amidst research related to the COVID-19 pandemic and mothering (Batram-Zantvoort, et al, 2022;LaBrenz et al, 2022;Porter, 2021), the politics of "power, position and protection" of mothering is rarely centered unless by womxn of color (McClain, 2019, p. 3). This is also reflected in scholarship around MotherScholars and the COVID-19 pandemic (LeBlanc et al, 2022;Spradley et al, 2022), which posits that MotherScholars had similar experiences regardless of race or class.…”