Celebrating National Student Parent Month

When we think of the words “college student,” what often comes to mind is fresh-out-of-high-school learners with their backpacks, dorm rooms, and meal plans. While that’s true for some, about 1 in 5 undergraduates are in a different situation.

September is National Student Parent Month, and we’d like to take a moment to recognize the millions of students who are often overlooked: those who are pursuing postsecondary education while raising children. These students’ lives are different than the traditional image of college life. They balance caregiving and other family responsibilities alongside work and still make the time to further their postsecondary education.

Parenting students are motivated by more than just degree attainment; they are driven by a vision of family prosperity, economic security, and more opportunities for future generations. Their educational journeys reflect a commitment to advancing both individual success and lasting intergenerational impact.

The most recent national survey data (2020) show that there are 3.14 million parenting students that amount to about 18 percent of all undergraduates. Over half attend community colleges.

Three quarters of parenting students are mothers, and 60 percent of those mothers are single mothers. They are more likely than non-parenting students to be students of color, come from low-income backgrounds, be first-generation college students, and be over the age of 24.

Trellis Strategies found that 72 percent of parenting students who participated in their 2023 survey were employed. Ninety one percent of those employed students reported working more than 20 hours per week, and 66 percent reported working at least 40 hours compared to 45 percent of non-parenting students. Despite these work demands, parenting students have comparable GPAs to their non-parenting peers.

National data show that of the parenting students who entered college in 2012, 17 percent earned an associate or bachelor’s degree within six years; the credential completion rate rises to around 35 percent when certificates are included. The benefits of completion are substantial. An Urban Institute analysis found that mothers who reenrolled and earned a degree had 28 percent higher earnings than those who did not reenroll. Their children were also more likely to finish high school, enroll in college, and earn a degree.

Research by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, Ascend at the Aspen Institute, SPARK Collaborative, and others has increased what we know about the lives and experiences of parenting students. Nonprofit organizations and colleges, to varying degrees, have begun to use this information to strengthen supports for parenting students. However, more needs to be done. For the last decade, ECMC Foundation has invested in research, programs, practices, and policies that support parenting students, most recently through our Parenting Student Success Initiative (PSSI). Under the PSSI, we work with partners to learn from parenting students and help them reach their education, employment, and family goals.

Education Northwest, the PSSI evaluator, surveyed parenting students enrolled at institutions that participate in programs ECMC Foundation funded from 2022-2025 to better understand their motivations and experiences. Figure 1 presents common challenges reported by parenting students.

The most common obstacles are not academic. Rather, the survey results suggest limited resources, competing demands, and emotional and physical toll make it hard for parenting students to persist and complete college.

The basic needs movement and the everyday realities acutely revealed by the COVID pandemic brought more attention to college students’ nonacademic needs. Colleges and systems that once viewed these obstacles as outside their purview are increasingly creating programs and building partnerships explicitly designed to help parenting students. The Foundation’s PSSI has sought to accelerate this momentum. For example, College Attainment for Parent Students (CAPS) was developed by the Virginia Foundation for Community College Education to help parenting students offset the cost of childcare and unexpected expenses and create more family-friendly campuses. National nonprofit organization Jeremiah Program uses a two-generation approach to help single mothers who are low-income succeed in college. It pairs postsecondary attainment and career advancement supports with high-quality early childhood education, stable housing, and leadership development opportunities that strengthen the well-being and long-term success of the entire family.

Survey responses by participants in these and other programs for parenting students indicate these programs are helping them access academic and basic needs resources and improve their academic performance, among other outcomes (Figure 2).

We are optimistic about the progress we are seeing and recognize there is still much to do. Among survey respondents, 44 percent of parenting students were not aware of any family-friendly resources on their campus, and just 32 percent felt connected to other parenting students.

Institutions, reassuringly, are stepping up. Findings from the evaluation indicate colleges are clarifying policies about children on campus, adding lactation rooms, expanding evening and weekend course options, and building spaces where parenting students can find each other. Data is informing these changes. In the words of one grantee, 

“We thought we were like most other community colleges, and so we were looking at about 25 percent of our population. In fact, as we’ve started formalizing that data, we are over 40 percent of our population that identify as student parents.”

This work is early: 44 percent of grantee partners report using data to better understand their parenting students, but only 22 percent use it to test whether their programs are working.

We have seen favorable developments in policy too. Education Northwest tracked 137 bills related to parenting students introduced nationwide between 2023 and 2025. 2025 was the most active year with 55 bills introduced and 16 passed. Childcare bills led the list every year with allocations and considerations for parenting students specifically. The California Student Parent Alliance, led by California Competes and EdTrust-West, helped pass the GAINS Act, which requires colleges to clearly communicate available supports, including child care, on their websites and in financial aid materials. The Alliance also just launched the Student Parent Resource Hub, a statewide online tool that helps current and prospective student parents in California find, compare, and access supports across public colleges and universities.

When ECMC Foundation began this work, there were few resources to help parenting students navigate available services and no states collecting data on parenting students. Now there are six: California, Illinois, Texas, Maryland, Oregon, and Minnesota; and positive momentum in other states.

Now that we have a better sense of who parenting students are, their needs and promising practices to support their postsecondary success, what needs to happen for more states, systems, and institutions to adopt and implement the supports parenting students need? What conditions on the ground help those practices succeed and endure?

National Student Parent Month is the right time to raise these questions. We don’t have all the answers yet. What we do have is practitioners, policymakers, researchers, advocates, nonprofit leaders, and parenting students working tirelessly for a better future. When these groups are able to work together, progress is made. Our North Star goal of closing gaps in postsecondary completion so that underserved learners have greater opportunity for social and economic mobility will not be achieved without collaboration and partnership. This month, we honor parenting students and advance the economic security and well-being that college completion can bring to them and their families.