Institutional Invisibility and Parenting Students

At 22, in my first year of graduate school and pregnant, I felt completely alone, unsure where to turn for help orguidance. I often used my tuition money for medical care while attending classes, sick and exhausted. Facultyquestioned my commitment to my PhD, and I began to wonder whether I could continue. I hid my pregnancy from my peers until the very end, carrying the weight of judgment and stigma in silence. After giving birth right after finals, I returned to campus, pumping in bathroom stalls and paying for childcare with loans. I rushedhome after every class, slept little, worked part-time, and cared for my colicky baby who cried endlessly, trying to meet academic deadlines while feeling profoundly isolated.

Giselle’s story is not an exception—it is a structural pattern that higher education has yet to fully name or measure. An estimated 3.1 to 4.8 million college students nationwide—nearly one in five—are raising childrenwhile enrolled (Institute for Women’s Policy Research [IWPR], 2023; Urban Institute, 2020). In California, approximately 300,000 undergraduate students are parents, representing up to 17% of the student population (California Student Parent Alliance, 2022; California Competes, 2023). Within the California State University (CSU) system, recent data collection efforts have identified roughly 9,600 student parents, though this figure is widely understood to be an undercount due to historically limited and inconsistent tracking practices (CaliforniaState University, 2024). Thus, institutionalized funding and support for parenting and caregiving populations remain scarce and insufficiently prioritized.

In contrast, Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) have more visibility within federal policy and higher education discourse. Across the United States, HSIs enroll over 5 million students, including more than 60% of all Latinx undergraduates (Excelencia in Education, 2023; Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities [HACU], 2024). California alone is home to approximately 170 HSIs, enrolling over 1.5 million students, while the CSU system—where 21 of 23 campuses are designated HSIs—serves more than 460,000 students annually(Excelencia in Education, 2023; California State University, 2024)

While the scale and recognition of HSIs show how institutional attention, data collection, and funding can shape priorities and outcomes, this reality also highlights a striking contrast: parenting students continue to be overlooked, despite national data showing that they represent a significant portion of matriculated students.This juxtaposition presents a critical opportunity to examine Garcia et al.’s (2019) conceptualization of “servingness.” Garcia et al. argue that servingness is not simply a function of enrollment or access, but a multidimensional construct encompassing student outcomes, lived experiences, organizational culture, and institutional practices. Importantly, they emphasize that servingness must be understood at the organizational level, requiring institutions to intentionally align structures, policies, and practices with the needs of the students they enroll.

Applying this framework to parenting students requires a shift in institutional practice.

First, institutions must accurately capture data on caregiving status through admissions and enrollmentprocesses. Because students may become parents during their educational trajectories, data collection must also occur regularly across academic terms to reflect changing realities.

Once parenting student populations are visible, institutions must develop intentional, culturally responsive practices that address their holistic needs. The following section highlights how one institution—Cal Poly Pomona—begins to cultivate a culture of inclusion and support for parenting students, even amid limited datainfrastructure and funding.

Cultivating Servingness for Parenting Students at Cal Poly Pomona

For many years, the experiences of parenting students remained largely obscured, present within the campuscommunity yet insufficiently recognized. Building on their empirical analyses of student-parent childcare decision-making (Navarro-Cruz, Davila, Amaya, & Orozco-Barajas, 2022) and the institutional conditions necessary for family-responsive campus cultures (Davila, Navarro-Cruz, Barajas-Orozco, Liu, & Carillo, 2021), Dr. Brainne Davila and Dr. Giselle Navarro-Cruz illuminate the profound resilience of parenting students while exposing persistent structural gaps in higher education’s support systems. Their work helped shift parentingstudents from an invisible population to one increasingly recognized within institutional conversations about equity, belonging, and student success.

At California State Polytechnic University, Pomona (CPP), this growing awareness has contributed to evolving efforts to align campus spaces, programming, and policies with the realities of caregiving students. While many initiatives remain under-resourced and continue to evolve, they represent meaningful institutional shiftstoward recognizing parenting students as an integral part of the university community.

One longstanding example is the CPP Child Care Center, a staple within the campus community funded and operated through Associated Students Incorporated (ASI). Like many institutions of higher education, CPP recognizes that access to childcare is essential for student persistence and degree completion. The centerprioritizes parenting students and provides critical support that enables many students to attend classes and remain enrolled. At the same time, demand for affordable and accessible childcare continues to exceed available capacity, highlighting the ongoing need for institutions to expand investments in childcare infrastructure and access for parenting students.

Beyond childcare, CPP has also reimagined campus spaces to foster belonging for parenting students. Through Student Success funding, organizers transformed a section of the university library into the BroncoFamily Space—a child-centered environment where parenting students can study, connect, and seek support while accompanied by their children. Equipped with books, toys, and play-based learning materials, the spacechallenges traditional assumptions about who belongs in academic environments by normalizing the presence of children on campus.

The Bronco Family Space also became home to Connect and Play, a community initiative initially sustained through volunteer labor and financial contributions from faculty and staff committed to supporting parenting students. These gatherings create opportunities for families to build relationships, exchange knowledge, and discuss topics such as balancing school and family life, child development, and emotional wellness. More recently, additional funding expanded programming to include wellness-centered workshops such as yoga, meditation, music therapy, and play therapy for families with children from birth to age five.

CPP has also expanded institutional programming intended to strengthen campus-wide support systems for parenting students. The Parenting Student Support Network brings together stakeholders across campus to improve coordination of services and institutional knowledge regarding student-parent needs. Faculty and staffalso developed Allyship Training to inform employees about parenting student experiences, relevant policies, and available resources. Central to the training are student-parent panels where students share  the barriers they encounter, and the forms of support that contribute to their persistence and sense of belonging.

Many of these efforts emerged alongside recent California legislation, including Assembly Bill 2882, whichrequires public colleges and universities to improve student-parent data collection, adjust cost-of-attendance estimates, and expand parenting student resource information. At CPP, these policy shifts directed attention and resources to strengthening the Parenting Student website and implementing priority registration for parenting students.

Importantly, however, many of these initiatives were underway prior to legislative mandates, showing that institutional advocates were already working to create more inclusive and responsive campus environments for caregiving students.

Moving Onward

At California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, efforts to support parenting students have evolved from informal advocacy into coordinated programs, institutional practices, and emerging statewide legislation. While these shifts mark important progress, the work remains incomplete. Institutions must continue expanding data collection, funding, childcare access, and culturally responsive supports that recognize caregiving alongside academic life. Importantly, higher education must move beyond narrow definitions of parenting students to consider the broader experiences of student caregivers. Giselle’s story reminds us that caregiving has long existed within higher education—not as an exception, but as an enduring reality that institutions have too often failed to recognize. The task ahead is not simply to acknowledge caregiving students, but to transform institutional cultures, policies, and practices so students like Giselle no longer navigate higher education invisibly, but are understood as foundational to the future of higher education itself.

About the authors

Dr. Michelle Soto-Peña Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. Herwork focuses on teacher preparation, education policy, pedagogy, and program design related to bilingualeducation from birth through higher education. Her areas of expertise include culturally and linguistically sustaining pedagogies within bilingual and multilingual educational contexts.

Dr. Giselle Navarro-Cruz Ph.D. is a Professor of Early Childhood Studies at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. Her research, teaching, and advocacy center on supporting student parents, strengthening multilingual education, and advancing infant-parent mental health.

References

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