I wasn’t old enough to remember my mother carting me to campus at the University at Albany as an infant. When I asked her what it was like to be a young wife and mother in her senior year of college, she responded:
“That was so long ago. We were on our own! I never even told my professors that I had a baby.” 
Dr. Jasmine Haywood
While it was indeed a long time ago, sadly, not much has changed in terms of support for student parents on campus. My mom remembers relying on her village of friends and family off campus to help care for me while she went to class and that there weren’t many campus support programs aimed at student parents.
I was a doctoral student at Indiana University’s Indianapolis campus when my son was born in 2013. Though the doctoral experience is very different from the undergraduate experience, there was little to no formal support for student parents there either.
Often, the conversation around support for student parents begins and ends with a child care center on campus; if a campus can afford it, it can check the box. If not, officials point to lack of funding—a barrier we all universally understand.
But supporting student parents is so much more than a child care center.
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, nearly one in four undergraduate students in 2015-16 were parents. About 40 percent were single mothers, and roughly 30 percent were fathers. Students of color, particularly Black students, are more likely than any other group to be parents. And because more college students are in their 30s or older, the number of student parents is almost sure to grow. This means that supporting student parents is no longer a nice thing to do. It’s an imperative part of a campus’ student success and equity considerations.
