Housing holds back moms in college
To live independently, single mothers need an education. But to get one, they also need a place to live and child care – needs that colleges are waking up to.
Every newly minted college grad clutching a diploma feels victorious. When Yissy Perez dons a cap and gown at Tufts University in May, she will have particular reason to celebrate. She earned her degree in civil engineering the hard way, living a double life as student and single mother to a daughter, now 22 months.
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Her living arrangements made that academic journey even more difficult. Like most universities, Tufts (in Medford, Mass., a Boston suburb) offers no on-campus housing for mothers. Home for Ms. Perez has been a dorm. Her baby, Alleyh, lives with Perez's mother and grandmother in Lawrence, Mass., a two-hour commute by bus, subway, and train.
"I only get to see her on weekends," Perez says. "It's very hard for me."
Women now outnumber men in colleges and universities. But for those with young children, the path to a degree – and self-sufficiency – is often blocked by two obstacles: housing and child care.
Now those obstacles are propelling mothers at Tufts and elsewhere to speak up. "We want to start a movement to provide equal housing to everyone," says Griselmarie Alemar, a married Tufts student who is the mother of a 6-month-old son.
As a first step, the Tufts Community Union Senate has just passed a resolution calling for equal access to on-campus housing for undergraduate mothers. The group also gathered signatures from 600 students in support of the measure.
Bruce Reitman, dean of students, notes that the school has worked individually with mothers to meet their needs. That includes legal help, financial support, and counseling. Calling the request to provide housing for undergraduate parents "a new discussion for us," he says, "We can't tell you if it's possible to do that or not. If it's possible, we'll do it. But we've got to have the conversation about what it is they're looking for." He adds that providing a day-care center is particularly difficult.
Beyond housing and child care, these women sometimes face another challenge: stereotypes about young mothers. "Right now in our society it's deemed that if you're a young parent, you're doing it wrong, and you've ruined your life," Ms. Alemar says. "Twenty years ago, if you had a kid at 30, it was [considered] odd. Now if you have a baby before 30, it's odd."
Last fall, Anne Stevenson, a 2006 graduate of Tufts, formed the Tufts Alliance for the Advancement of Mothers to advocate for housing. Explaining that dozens of mothers drop out of school each year because they lack housing, she says, "Without an education, they cannot make a better life for their families."
As she studied for a degree in political science, Ms. Stevenson held two jobs, carried a full course load, and cared for her young son. Because she could not live on campus with him, she paid $1,500 a month for an apartment in a high-crime neighborhood of Somerville, Mass. Even with a full academic scholarship, she accumulated $35,000 in loans and debts.
At Endicott College in Peabody, Mass., seven mothers and their children live in apartments designed specifically for parents. The dormitory features a playroom inside and a play yard outside. Next year a custodial father and his child will join the program.
"Two of the mothers are honor students, and two freshmen made the dean's list," says Jill Sullivan, director of the Keys to Degrees program. "They have quite a stressful schedule and workload, and they get it done."
Richard Wylie, Endicott's president and creator of the program, notes another advantage. "It's important that other students see these single mothers as not just the beneficiaries of federal aid and state aid," he says. "They want to be independent."
