Nicole Lynn Lewis, founder and CEO of Generation Hope as well as former student parent
Among student parents of color in particular, especially Black fathers, the pandemic has brought higher rates of basic needs insecurity, according to a new brief from The Hope Center for College, Community, and Justice.
“I think anyone who works directly with parenting college students will likely not be surprised by the findings,” said Nicole Lynn Lewis, founder and CEO of Generation Hope, a nonprofit focused on supporting teen parents in college. “It’s what we see every single day. At Generation Hope, about 90% of the students in our program are students of color. Every single day, we’re helping them juggle parenting, going to college, and all of the challenges with being students of color in a higher education system not designed for them.”
The Hope Center is an independent research center at Temple University that focuses on higher education equity and access issues. Titled “Parenting While In College: Racial Disparities in Basic Needs Insecurity During the Pandemic,” the Center’s brief draws on its nationwide survey of college students from fall 2020. About 32,560 student parents completed the survey, reporting their own lived experiences with basic needs insecurity (BNI). BNI in the brief includes students who endured food insecurity, housing insecurity, or homelessness within the last year.
The Center disaggregated students’ self-reported survey data by race and ethnicity, gender, and cohabitation status. Among the findings were that Asian, Black, and Latinx parenting students suffer “extremely high” rates of basic needs insecurity that lead to harmful effects on their young children (i.e. children who are less than six years old). The researchers also found that nearly all single Black and Latinx students with young children experience BNI.
“While the findings are not surprising, it’s great to see the data,” said Lewis, a former teen mother who put herself through college. “Because what we’re often faced with is, how do you convince people that there’s a real crisis here? A lot of the time, the data is what moves people. I wish it didn’t require the data, that students’ stories themselves would move people. But that’s not enough. So, I think it’s important to see the Hope Center put numbers behind the realities we see every day.”
Ali Caccavella, senior learning specialist for the Hope Center and one of the brief’s authors, stressed that when student parents are better supported, their children benefit as well, creating multigenerational change. But she added that policymakers and higher education leaders need to hear the voices of parenting students in addition to pay attention to data.
