One of the biggest challenges for parents with young children who are looking to finish or continue their education is finding care for their child while classes are in session. This hurdle can be daunting for new parents who wish to improve their economic and career opportunities to provide a better future for their children. Balancing a schedule as a full-time student and parent is an incredible feat, and is nearly impossible without support from their community. Last year, an estimated 5,000 CUNY graduates completed their degrees while raising children. This amazing accomplishment was made possible with the help of family, friends, and center-based and family child care programs, including the 17 child care centers operating on CUNY campuses across New York City.
One of these centers has been the subject of an award-winning short film titled We Both Went to School: Experiences of Student-parents. The Early Childhood Center at Bronx Community College (BCC), a NYAEYC-Accredited, 3-Star QUALITYstarsNY participant since 2020, offers child care services to student-parents with classrooms for children aged 6 weeks to 2 years, 2 to 5 years, and 5 to 12 years. Their mission is to “provide a nurturing and inclusive environment where infants, toddlers, and preschoolers can thrive … Our commitment extends to educating, advocating for, and offering support and expertise that empower and enhance the lives of students, parents, children, our college community, and the broader early childhood community. By supporting the needs of student-parents, we contribute to their successful retention and graduation at Bronx Community College”.
Katherine Reyes
Katherine Reyes, a subject in the film, describes how a difficult childbirth process led her to want to do better for her child:
…My friend told me, it’s okay, you’re trying your best and you know, you just had surgery, but it was just so hard. You know, you just, you feel so defeated. Like he’s just a couple of days old and you’re already failing as a mom. So that’s how I felt. I need to do better for Liam. Like I need to provide for him financially, and I need him to have stability. Like I want him to have a house. I want him to have that picket fence. I want him to have a dog or a cat or whatever it is that he wants to have. And in order for me to do that, I need to make sure I concentrate on my career.
Shortly after, Katherine applied and was accepted to the BCC Radiology program. However, that first year was a challenge, balancing taking care of an infant and going to school full-time:
I would wake up at seven in the morning, depending the time that Liam would wanna wake up because you just never know with him. I’ll make him breakfast, make myself some breakfast, then come here on campus, he’ll stay with my grandma. I’ll come here on campus, I’ll do my classes and then I’ll come home, I’ll make him lunch, make myself some lunch, try to take a nap. If I didn’t take a nap, I would just play with Liam or I would take him outside or, you know, depending on if he had any appointments or anything that would happen throughout the day. But it was very rare where I would have like a good uninterrupted nap for five hours. And when you’re doing an overnight job, you have to recharge during the day. And that was technically impossible with a toddler. I would pretty much get to work exhausted And then I would have to take the train and then I would’ve take the bus. I would get home right on time for Liam to be waiting for me awake. So after a long eight hour shift, I would not go back home to sleep and rest. I would just go back home and stay awake until 11 o’clock in the morning. […] I could leave him with my grandma or I could leave him with my father. But that mom guilt where I’m like, okay, well she stayed with him the entire night. Why would I burden her with staying with him even more?
Madeline Miranda
Madeline Miranda, another subject of the film in a similar situation with her own child, learned that BCC Early Childhood Center had opened their infant-toddler classroom for student-parents. Even though she was initially wary of bringing her daughter to a day care center, she discovered that the center may be beneficial not only for her own educational goals, but for her daughter’s development:
I had to sit there and tell my husband like, what we’re doing is not working. And as much as we are against daycare, this is not that. This is not daycare. This is a center for children who are just so happen to be young, but they are getting an education. They’re taught things and she’s around kids her own age. We have to address the child to meet their needs, and she needs to be around other kids […] And so that was a conversation that I had to have with my husband. And although he was against it at first and we’ve had a very big argument about it, but eventually he sat there and said, I’m gonna go based off of your best judgment. He’s like, if this is what you feel is best, let’s test it out. Let’s try it out. And I promise you, the first day we dropped her off that they told her that we could keep her all day. You know what we did? We slept.
During my time at graduate school, I spent a significant amount of time researching activism, the history of public education, and stories of students changing their lives while also reshaping what a university can and should be. However, I had a hard time finding any stories of parents. Other than a 2015 article from Sujatha Fernandes about the City College Childcare shutdown, I couldn’t find stories from student-parents sharing their experiences of attending college or stories of their activist work in finding safe, quality care for their children. This project for me was about creating a public archive of three student-parents’ experiences that make their emotional, physical, and intellectual work visible for all of us to learn from.– Dhipinder Walia, Director, We Both Went to School: Experiences of Student-Parents
