UC Irvine

Over 30% of the undergraduate student population in the United States are parents. Yet social and education policy conversations often do not explicitly acknowledge this student subpopulation. This exclusion further marginalizes a vulnerable population of parents; students who are parenting are more likely to be low-income, women, from racially/ethnically minoritized communities, older students, working full-time, and first-generation college students compared to students who are not parents. Importantly, parent scholars who earn a college degree are less likely to live in poverty, have improved health and social capital, and their children are more likely to exhibit higher academic preparation and overall well-being. However, community colleges, where many parent scholars are enrolled, often do not have the resources to fully support students’ needs, which exacerbates poor academic outcomes (e.g., low degree attainment). It is thus important to understand the various barriers parent scholars face and the extent to which higher education institutions can address these obstacles. My dissertation studies take three different approaches and together meaningfully contribute to the steadily growing body of scholarly work on parent scholars. Study One offers a descriptive view of the parent scholar national landscape over 27 years by documenting the demographic and academic characteristics of mother scholars, father scholars, and non-parenting students. Study Two takes a mixed-methods approach to understand the navigational experiences of California community college mother scholars, the added hurdles and systems of support, and the multiple roles they held during a time of educational and professional upheaval in the COVID-19 pandemic. Study Three draws on a body of existing experiments and investigates the effects of higher education interventions for community college parent scholars. Together, these studies meaningfully add to our understanding of the challenges faced by, and potential interventions to support, a unique and policy-relevant population of students.