Student Parents as a Vulnerable Population.
Until the ruling in Ordway v. Hargraves in 1971 and the passing of Title IX in 1972, pregnant girls – and their partners – were largely excluded from public education. Now, nearly 50 years since federal legislation changed the landscape for expectant and young mothers, student parents often remain disparaged at both the secondary and collegiate school levels.
Failure to support parenting students (namely, lack of affordable childcare) promotes racial and ethnic inequity, as a large number of nontraditional students are single, minority women. The CDC says that only half of teenage mothers will earn a high school diploma by age 22. And, according to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR), student parents are less likely than their childless peers to graduate within 6 years of enrollment. Furthermore, nontraditional students are more likely to have low incomes and incur higher debt than their traditional peers.
Beyond the impact of unequal access to public education on student parents themselves, children of teenage parents, in particular, also face economic and social consequences. Statistics reveal that, because they are more likely to be born to poor, uneducated, single-income families, they often are at risk for health, behavior and mental problems related to poverty. These problems include unplanned pregnancy, incarceration during adolescence, low academic achievement and unemployment in early adulthood.
Parents create the environments and the experiences in which learning happens, which makes them the first teachers their children will ever have.” – Dr. Rebecca Palacios, a Founding Director of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS)