How do Parents Balance Work or School with Full-Time Parenthood?

Students often have trouble balancing their social life, responsibilities and schoolwork, but when you add parenting into the mix it can seem nearly impossible.

Senior Katie Carrier had to figure out her own balance between being a student and a parent, particularly when she was a teaching assistant (TA) last semester. Carrier said she was lucky to have a professor who was an understanding mother herself, and let her bring her children to class when she had no other option. However, Carrier recognized that not all parents who are also trying to be students are as lucky as she is.

Without her family’s support and the G.I. Bill created to give benefits, including college tuition, to military persons, which she was able to use because her mother never did, she said “there’s no way” she’d be a student right now.

“It wouldn’t be possible,” Carrier said. “I would either have to go at night and work full-time, and that leaves very little time for schoolwork in general. I was very lucky in my situation that I do have support and other resources I was able to utilize.”

While the University of Rhode Island does have its Child Development Center on campus, Carrier never considered it much of an option for her. Beyond the expenses, there are other criteria for the Center that can exclude many parents. These include a maximum of 30 children that must be aged three to five, leaving out parents with younger or older kids. Also, there is an extended day only offered from 7:45 a.m. to 5 p.m. that doesn’t always match up with a parent’s workday or school day. There is also a waitlist with a non-refundable deposit. While the center is switching from a waitlist to a lottery in 2022, Carrier plans to have already graduated.

Dr. Helen Mederer, a professor and the department chair of sociology at URI, has been studying the subfield of family sociology since it first started to emerge over 35 years ago. She even teaches a course at the University dedicated to the topic, which is called SOC 350, “Work & Family Life.”

“I think I observed around me how much of an impact work has on family and I think I could see it in my own life,” said Mederer about her interest in the subfield.

She recalled a former dean yelling at her when she revealed that she was pregnant with her second child and having to present her dissertation less than two weeks after the birth of her first child.

Mederer found herself struck by the idea that a family is actually very important for work. As a society, she said that we are extremely aware of the role that work plays in family life but the idea that family plays a crucial role in work is swept away.

“Families bear and raise the next generation of workers and they do it free,” Mederer said. “If it weren’t for families, work couldn’t exist.”

She believes that society separates families from the rest of society despite the fact that families are, as she said, “basically the basis of society” for an economic reason.

“Once you recognize that something is valuable then you feel obligated to pay for it,” Mederer explained. “It would bankrupt the economy so I think our culture tries to keep [bearing and raising] unrecognized work.”

The United States remains one of the few countries that don’t provide any sort of paid family leave for working parents.

Mederer also said that in our society, we have an incompatible school calendar with parents work calendar. This leaves working parents struggling to juggle their own schedules with their children’s as well.

“We don’t have that understanding in our culture that work and family have to work hand-in-hand,” she added.

Having been a professor at URI for many years, Mederer has witnessed improvements in how the University helps its students, faculty and staff find a balance between work and parenthood through the university’s Work Life Committee and Advance Program. Policies created by the committee have included the Parental Leave, Lactation and Dual-Career policies.   

Through her class and through sociology, Mederer said she hopes anyone struggling with the balance of parenthood and work or education understands that it is not a problem they have to solve on their own.