Public Policy

April 2, 2025

Getting a Degree in a System not Built for Them: Few Student Parents get Help from their Parents when Paying for College

A briefing paper prepared for the Council on Contemporary Families by Renee Ryberg, Child Trends, and Arielle Kuperberg, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

April 2, 2025

One in five students at community and four-year colleges in the United States are raising children while trying to earn their degrees—and this number may grow as access to abortion becomes more limited. Many student parents find themselves in precarious economic positions, and are often on their own to pay for college. As we found in a new study of students at two public four-year universities, fewer than 1 in 10 (9%) student parents got financial help from their own parents to pay for college tuition or living expenses. By contrast, nearly two-thirds (64%) of childless students received financial help from their parents.

The higher education landscape continues to evolve, serving a more diverse student body. The average college student today is no longer the carefree, wealthy 18–22-year-old highlighted in American movies. Although higher education—and the economic benefits that come with it—are available to more people, there is a fundamental mismatch between how colleges were designed and the realities of many of today’s students. Higher education was designed for students to depend on their families, with students’ parents largely footing the bill.

But, as our new study in The Journal of Higher Education finds, that is often not the reality students with children face. Although student parents tend to be older than students without children, differences in age or background (race, parents’ education, region, gender, grew up in US) don’t explain all of the gap in help from their parents. When examining students of the same age and background, we found that the odds that a student parent received help from their parents to pay for college was one-third of that of a student without children.

This disparity puts barriers to graduation in front of the 3.1 million undergraduate student parents pursuing higher education to better the lives of themselves and their children. Instead of getting help from their parents, student parents must draw on a unique and complex set of resources to pay for tuition and living expenses while navigating a college system that was not designed for them.

Examining how Student Parents Pay for College

To examine how student parents pay for college, we analyzed unique survey data collected in 2017 from 2,830 students at two regional public universities. Of those who completed the survey, 338, or 12 percent, identified as parents—a rate comparable to the national rate of student parents at public four-year colleges and universities.

More than half of the student parents that we surveyed used student loans, Pell grants, or money earned from a job to pay for college—the same resources that many of their fellow students without children rely on. But, parents and nonparents rely on these resources to different degrees. And, student parents can’t count on their families to pay for higher education in the same way that childless students do—and the way the system was designed.

Why don’t students with children get support from their parents when paying for college? After all, they have additional expenses and responsibilities compared to students without children.

One reason is that students who have children are more likely to be considered “adults,” so their families may believe that they should be more financially independent. Or, their families may want to support them through college – but may not be able to do so. Student parents tend to come from families with fewer resources, so their parents may not have extra cash on hand to help them with rent or tuition.

So how do student parents pay for college, if they aren’t getting help from their parents?

Instead of Relying on Support from their Parents, Student Parents Rely on Support from Romantic Partners and the Government

Many student parents rely on support from romantic partners, including spouses: in our survey we found that 43 percent of student parents used a partner’s money to pay for educational and living expenses, compared with less than 10 percent of students without children.

The support that student parents received from their partners didn’t necessarily make up for not getting financial support from their parents, though. The proportion of student parents who received support from either their parents or partnerswas less than the percent of students without children who received support from their parents.

Student parents also turn to Pell Grants—a federal grant program for students with low incomes or who have parents with low incomes. Two-thirds (66%) of student parents in our study used Pell Grants to pay for college. Once background characteristics are taken into account, the odds that a student parent used Pell Grants was more than three times that of students without children.

Policy Pitfalls for Student Parents

As student parents pursue higher education, they navigate a funding environment at odds with the realities of their lives.

Pell grants do not typically cover the full cost of tuition, much less living expenses. Perhaps because of the relatively low value of Pell grants, and because students with children could not rely on their parents’ financial support, we found student parents took out higher amounts of student loans. They were also more likely to work while in college.

Juggling a job, child care, and college while also navigating a complex financial situation makes it harder to complete a degree. Indeed, research shows that although student parents have GPAs as high as students without children, they are more likely to leave college without a degree.

But completing a college degree can really pay off for student parents—and their children. One study focused on single mothers found that those who completed a four-year degree were one-third as likely as those who had a high school degree to live below the poverty line, and earned an additional $625,000 across their lifetime. Single mothers who completed a college degree were also less likely to use public assistance programs and contributed more tax revenue.

So what can we do to facilitate success for student parents?

Within the financial aid system, it is critical that financial aid officers are trained to best support students with children. Child care expenses can be factored into loan and grant packages, but many financial aid officers do not communicate this information to students. Pell grants can also be expanded to cover a larger share of tuition and living expenses.

Beyond the financial aid system, many student parents are eligible for federal anti-poverty programs aimed at families with children, such as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Child Care Development Fund (CCDF), Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and tax credits including the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), the Child Tax Credit (CTC), and the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit (CDCTC). Navigation services on campus can help student parents access this disparate patchwork of supports.

Although many student parents turn to these programs to make ends meet, they are often penalized for being in school. Many of these programs are structured in ways that prevent student parents from receiving full benefits. Work requirements in some states do not fully count going to school. And, other programs, such as the Earned Income Tax Credit, provide lower benefits to workers who earn the least money.

Schools can also help lower costs for student parents by expanding affordable child care offerings to their students, and building affordable family housing on campus, as most colleges do not allow students with children to move into campus housing or have on-campus child care for students.

Training financial aid officers on the needs of student parents, expanding Pell funding, reforming anti-poverty programs to value the long-term investment of pursuing higher education, and building infrastructure on campus that supports parents could help support student parents to complete their degrees—increasing their long-term economic stability and self-sufficiency—which will benefit their children as well.

Acknowledgements

The study discussed in this briefing paper is published in The Journal of Higher Education. We would like to thank JR Moller and Stephanie Pruitt for their research assistance. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under grant no. 1947603, and a University of North Carolina at Greensboro Advancing Research Summer Award Grant and Faculty Research Grant, as administered by the Office of Sponsored Programs.

Links

Brief report: https://sites.utexas.edu/contemporaryfamilies/2025/04/02/student-parents-brief-report/
Full study: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00221546.2025.2480024/

For more information, please contact:

Renee Ryberg, Senior Research Scientist, Child Trends
rryberg@chidltrends.org

Website: https://www.childtrends.org/staff/renee-ryberg
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/renee-ryberg-8b2a1a2b/

ABOUT CCF

The Council on Contemporary Families, based at the University of Texas-Austin, is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization of family researchers and practitioners that seeks to further a national understanding of how America’s families are changing and what is known about the strengths and weaknesses of different family forms and various family interventions.

The Council helps keep journalists informed of new and forthcoming research on gender and family-related issues via the CCF Network. To locate researchers or request copies of previous research briefs, please contact Stephanie Coontz, Director of Research and Public Education, at coontzs@msn.com, cell 360-556-9223.

Read our blog CCF @ The Society Pages – https://thesocietypages.org/ccf/

March 13, 2025

Policies Affecting Families: What we know, and what to expect in the second Trump term

Executive Summary: Policies Affecting Families: What we know, and what to expect in the second Trump term
Arielle Kuperberg

Can Raising the Child Tax Credit Halt Falling U.S. Fertility?
Daniel L. Carlson, Vivekananda Das, and Cole Grevelink

Lessons from the Loan Pause: More Evidence that Student Debt is Reducing Marriage and Childbearing
Arielle Kuperberg, Daniel Collier, Joan Maya Mazelis, and Fenaba Addo

Abortion After the Fall of Roe v. Wade
Alicia M. Walker

Abortion and Immigration are at the forefront of Trump’s plans for his second term: What does this mean for immigrants’ reproductive access?
Sameera Nayak

On Immigration under a Second Trump Presidency
Bethany L. Letiecq

From Legalizing Same-Sex Marriage to Executive Bans on ‘Gender Ideology’: Progress and Setbacks in LGBTQIA+ Laws in the Past Decade
Gina May and Barbara J. Risman

March 5, 2025

Increases in Community Income Improve Birth Outcomes

A briefing paper prepared for the Council on Contemporary Families by Molly A. Martin, PhD, Department of Sociology and Criminology, The Pennsylvania State University

Birth outcomes are strongly linked to income but proving a direct cause-and-effect relationship has been challenging. Our new study, published in Demography, uses the economic boom from Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale natural gas development as a “natural experiment” to examine how community-level income gains affect pregnancy behaviors and birth outcomes.

In our research examining birth outcomes before and after the Marcellus Shale boom (2007-2012), we found that a $1,000 increase in average community income led to a 1.5 percentage point decrease in low birthweight births and a 1.8 percentage point increase in expectant parents receiving adequate prenatal care. These benefits accrued across the study site and were also significant in high-poverty areas, suggesting economic development may help reduce adverse birth outcomes among high-risk, disadvantaged communities.

Our study analyzed over 78,000 births in Pennsylvania school districts above the Marcellus Shale geological formation, comparing births in areas that industry experts predicted – before the first well was drilled – to be the best for natural gas extraction with births in areas predicted to be less productive. This geological data allowed us to predict where the economic boom would be greater based on the characteristics of the underlying rock formed 39 million years ago – long before residents made choices about their health behaviors, health care and family goals.

We focus on the economic impacts of natural gas development in Pennsylvania because they were large: gains of over $14 billion between 2008 and 2010 in corporate spending, job growth, and local tax revenue. These gains were important because Pennsylvania was still recovering from the Great Recession. Yet the environmental hazards of Marcellus Shale development, like water contamination, air pollution, and forest disruption, are also important. More research is needed to examine the environmental and health risks of hydraulic fracturing and other oil and gas industry practices.

We used the geological variation of the shale to identify cause-and-effect relationships. With a pre-drilling map of the Marcellus Shale geological formation created by the oil and gas industry, we classified school districts into “treatment” and “comparison” groups based on the predicted economic value of the shale for gas production.

Among the 282 Pennsylvania school districts above the Marcellus Shale, 184 are in the treatment group and 98 are in the comparison group. Relative to the comparison districts, community income in the treatment districts increased by $1,825 per household per year. New York treatment districts did not experience these community income gains because “fracking” is banned there.

We made our causal estimates more accurate with additional steps. First, we accounted for a host of other differences between the treatment and comparison groups and changes that both groups experienced over time. Finally, we examined siblings born before and after the economic boom to control for family characteristics, like the parent’s genetic predispositions, childhood experiences, personality traits and preferences. Together, these approaches allowed us to isolate the effects of community income gains on birth outcomes.

Our findings show that community-wide income gains can improve infant birth outcomes even in the presence of potential environmental risks from natural gas development. Our research design controlled for area-wide hazardous exposures, which prior research demonstrates are harmful for infant health. Notably, we did not find greater water pollution, air pollution, or other environmental hazards in treatment districts relative to comparison districts.

This means our quasi-experimental groups based on pre-drilling information really captured potential income, not drilling itself or its repercussions. Treatment districts did receive more income, but they were just as likely as comparison districts to experience the environmental hazards associated with drilling and gas production. By design, our study was able to isolate the effect of community income gains.

Our study provides strong causal evidence that raising community-level income can lead to reduced rates of low birthweight births. This is notable because low birthweight is an important early life indicator that strongly predicts infant mortality, inhibited cognitive development, and numerous physical health challenges and diseases. In fact, low birthweight and its subsequent childhood risks have long-term consequences like lowered educational attainment, lower lifetime earnings, and shorter lifespans, which has led some scholars to speculate that low birth weight is a key mechanism in the transmission of poverty across generations.

We found that income appears to affect birth outcomes through multiple pathways beyond maternal health behaviors like smoking, gestational weight gain, and prenatal care use. Thus, our work suggests that economic development and other policies that increase community income could reduce the incidence of low birth weight and, thereby, improve population health beyond infancy.

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For More Information, Please Contact:

Molly A. Martin, PhD
Department of Sociology and Criminology
The Pennsylvania State University
mam68@psu.edu

Citation: Martin, M. A., Green, T. L., & Chapman, A. (2024). The Causal Effect of Increasing Area-Level Income on Birth Outcomes and Pregnancy-Related Health: Estimates from the Marcellus Shale Boom Economy. Demography 11691517. https://doi.org/10.1215/00703370-11691517

Link: https://sites.utexas.edu/contemporaryfamilies/2025/03/05/community-income-brief-report/

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About CCF

Read our blog CCF @ The Society Pages – https://thesocietypages.org/ccf/

February 25, 2025

Why the U.S. Should Have (and Why Men Should Take) Paternity Leave

A briefing paper prepared for the Council on Contemporary Families by Richard J. Petts, Professor, Department of Sociology, Ball State University, together with Sarah Schoppe-Sullivan and Reed Donithen, Department of Psychology, The Ohio State University

February 25, 2025

Amidst all the talk of increased political polarization and divisiveness within the United States, it can be easy to lose sight of the ways in which Americans are united. Yet, U.S. adults overwhelmingly believe that spending time with family is very important, with 89% of democrats and 92% of republicans supporting this belief. Americans also appear to be reaching consensus on one key policy that can promote family time: paid parental leave. The vast majority of Americans favor paid parental leave policies, even across political lines and within contentious “battleground” states. This support corresponds to growth in access to paid family leave policies. In the past 5 years, five states have adopted paid family and medical leave policies – bringing the U.S. total to 13 states (plus Washington, DC) with these policies in place. Although this progress pales in comparison to the more robust paid parental leave policies in European and other countries, it demonstrates the growing awareness of the need for paid leave policies for families.

Scholars and policymakers have learned a lot about what makes a good parental leave policy. In particular, paid parental leave policies should provide an adequate period of time off work (at least 18 weeks), should be well-paid, should provide job protection, and should be available to fathers. In many ways, U.S. state paid family leave policies are “good” policies as they are often well-paid (particularly for low-income workers), provide job protection, and are equally available to mothers and fathers (although they do not adhere to International Labour Organization guidelines recommending 18 weeks of leave).

However, the reliance on state- and company-level policies in the U.S. (as opposed to federal policies) results in just over ¼ of American workers having access to paid parental leave. Furthermore, while Americans are generally supportive of paid parental leave policies, there are clear concerns that taking parental leave is harmful for one’s career even if one’s job is protected. Whereas taking leave is seen as necessary for mothers to recover physically and emotionally from childbirth, some remain skeptical about paternity leave – viewing this leave as unnecessary and believing that fathers instead should focus on work.

The view that parental leave should primarily be used by mothers and that fathers instead should prioritize work fuels gender inequality in both paid work and home life. As fatherhood scholars, we have engaged in extensive research demonstrating the general benefits of father involvement in childcare and domestic work, as well as the specific benefits of paternity leave for families.

Paternity Leave Promotes Father Involvement

Fathers cite lack of time as a primary barrier preventing them from being as involved in their children’s lives as they desire. The first benefit of paternity leave is providing fathers with dedicated time to bond with their new child and to learn how to care for their child, which sets them up to be more involved with their children in the long term. Indeed, U.S. fathers who take longer paternity leave remain more involved fathers throughout the first few years of their child’s life. In addition, when fathers take at least two weeks of paternity leave, children later report that their fathers are more involved in their lives, they feel closer to their fathers, and they communicate better with their fathers compared to children whose fathers did not take leave. In short, paternity leave sets the stage for fathers to be highly involved throughout their child’s life, which benefits children, families, and fathers themselves.

Paternity Leave Promotes Stronger Relationships between Parents

In addition to providing time for fathers to bond with their child and gain parenting confidence, paternity leave also provides dedicated time for parents to figure out how to parent together. This increases the likelihood that parents can support one another and reduces the likelihood that one parent (often the mother) becomes the ‘parenting expert’ and shoulders the burden of parenting. In fact, a new study shows that mothers are less likely to discourage fathers from participating in childcare when fathers take longer paternity leave, which allows fathers to more effectively act as parents on their own terms. Other studies further show that paternity leave-taking can help to strengthen parental relationships. For example, mothers report higher relationship satisfaction and greater parenting support from fathers for years following the birth of a child when fathers take longer paternity leave. Paternity leave is even linked to a lower likelihood of divorce.

How Can We Promote Greater Access To, and Use of, Paternity Leave?

The evidence is clear that paternity leave is good for families, and it has the potential to benefit American society by promoting more egalitarian parenting arrangements and greater gender equality in the paid labor force. But to fully realize these benefits, access to paid paternity leave needs to increase. Recent policy developments in Europe show that when paid parental leave policies are expanded and targeted toward fathers, fathers are much more likely to use these policies. However, policy reform alone is not enough to change deep-seated cultural beliefs about gender, work, and family. We also need to become more accepting and supportive of men taking longer periods of leave, as fathers are more likely to use the parental leave they are entitled to if they believe their workplaces are supportive and do not fear negative consequences as a result of leave-taking. Public support for paid parental leave is building, and the benefits for all workers – including fathers – to have access to, and take, paid parental leave is clear. Evidence suggests the time is now! In fact, one recent national survey found that U.S. adults believe employed fathers should receive 10.5 weeks of paid parental leave (and mothers should receive 16 weeks) – over twice as much as was reported in 2017. It is time for policies and workplace culture to catch up to the cultural wave of support for paid parental leave in the U.S.

Acknowledgment

The authors would like to thank the staff at CCF for their assistance with the production of this article and Stephanie Coontz for her helpful comments in drafting this brief.

For More Information, Please Contact:

Richard J. Petts
Associate Dean of the College of Sciences and Humanities and Professor, Department of Sociology
Ball State University
rjpetts@bsu.edu

ABOUT CCF

Read our blog CCF @ The Society Pages – https://thesocietypages.org/ccf/

November 14, 2023

Childcare Challenges During the Pandemic and Their Impact on Parents and Care Providers

A briefing paper prepared by Liana Christin Landivar, Women’s Bureau, U.S. Department of Labor, and Pilar Gonalons-Pons, University of Pennsylvania for the Council on Contemporary Families online symposium The COVID-19 Pandemic and the Future of Gender Equality (PDF).

*Views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the U.S. Department of Labor.

In March 2020, as part of states’ initial pandemic response, most childcare centers and virtually all schools closed to in-person operations, impacting a large share of the country’s children and their caregivers. About one-third of childcare centers remained closed a year later. Additionally, over 60 percent of elementary students attended public school districts that only offered fully or partially remote instruction in the Fall of 2020 with reduced in-person operations continuing for up to a year and a half in parts of the country. Unlike other high-income countries, the weak support for care infrastructure in the U.S. left parents and essential care providers in childcare centers and homes, preschools, and schools unprepared to address the multifaceted challenges posed by the pandemic. This resulted in significant consequences for both parents and providers, and ultimately, for social inequality.

How the lack of care infrastructure impacted parents

Employment swiftly declined among mothers in the first year of the pandemic. Mothers were more likely to leave their jobs and delay re-employment than fathers because they picked up significant and prolonged increases in carework at home, lacking alternative care arrangements for their children. As schools and childcare centers closed, care from friends and family also became more limited because of pandemic-related risks. Employment reductions were particularly large among mothers working in low-wage jobs without workplace flexibilities such as paid leave or telework that could have helped accommodate work and care obligations at home.

The pandemic left a long-lasting imprint on mothers lacking care arrangements during the first year of the pandemic. Mothers who lived in areas with remote public school instruction had prolonged reduced employment, particularly mothers without a college degree. Even three years later, the employment rates of Black mothers and mothers without a college degree had still not returned to pre-pandemic employment levels. Among college graduates, many of whom were able to keep working, the gender wage gap expanded.

Today, parents are still dealing with childcare disruptions, resulting in an increase in work disruptions. A new report shows that in 2022, 3.3% of mothers and 1.5% of fathers reported being absent from work in the past week due to childcare problems. An additional 4.1% of mothers and 3.2% of fathers who regularly work full-time had worked part-time in the past week due to childcare problems. These numbers are higher than prior to the pandemic, with mothers continuing to report more work disruptions due to childcare lapses than fathers.

Increasing childcare prices are also putting pressure on parents, many of whom rely on paid childcare to be able to work. Since the start of the pandemic, childcare prices have risen to cover temporary reduced capacity limits, safety equipment needs, significant worker turnover, and rapidly rising inflation. New data from the Women’s Bureau shows that families were paying between $4,810 per year for school-age children in before/aftercare to $17,171 per year for infants (in 2022 dollars), absorbing between 8 percent and 19 percent of family income per child in paid care. In the past year, childcare prices have risen an additional 7% from a year earlier – outpacing inflation (Figure 1) and putting childcare farther out of reach for lower- and middle-income families.

Figure 1. Consumer Price Index for All Items and Day Care and Preschool: 12 Month Percent Change

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Consumer Price Index. Authors’ calculations.

How the pandemic impacted care workers and providers

Care workers and providers were profoundly impacted by the pandemic.

Nearly 16,000 childcare centers went out of business in the first year of the pandemic, representing about 9 percent of childcare centers nationwide. Among providers remaining open, new capacity limits drastically reduced the number of children that could be served. Closures and capacity reductions were especially concentrated among providers serving Asian, Black, and Latino children.

Childcare workers were more than twice as likely to experience job loss and employment reductions than workers in other industries (Figure 2) and saw their earnings decline 50% more than other workers. Childcare employment has lagged behind other sectors in its recovery, with the number of employees per childcare establishment remaining below pre-pandemic levels as of 2023. Though public school teachers earn more than childcare workers, and were largely protected from job loss during the pandemic, they left their jobs for retirement at double the rate of other workers. Even as most schools reopened to in-person instruction in Spring 2021, teachers are continuing to deal with increased mental health and well-being concerns among students, difficulty securing resources and equipment, and lost instructional time as a result of the pandemic, increasing the demands in their jobs.

Figure 2. Percentage Change in Number of Employed Individuals in the US Economy and in Select Childcare-Related Jobs: 2018-2022

Note: The sample includes all working age adults (16-65) and uses sample weights. Percentage change calculated in reference to March 2020. Teachers’ employment levels decline during summer months due to seasonality of employment.
Source: Current Population Survey 2018-2022. Authors’ calculations.

Some of the challenges in rebuilding the educational and childcare sector stem from poor compensation of care workers, and inadequate government funding of care providers resulting in what the U.S. Treasury calls a broken market. Childcare workers are paid among the lowest wages of all occupations in the United States: $13.71 an hour in 2022. As prices and inflation surged in 2021 and wages increased for lower-paid workers, childcare worker compensation became even more inadequate, resulting in greater difficulties attracting a sufficient number of workers to the sector to develop adequate supply. Similarly, the education sector has experienced staffing shortages and teachers are underpaid for their qualifications. Taken together, these factors have led to a slower recovery among care workers and providers than the rest of the economy.

The US Care Infrastructure and the Future of Gender Equality

The COVID-19 pandemic drew unprecedented attention to the fragility of the care infrastructure in this country. Longstanding hesitation to government investment in care infrastructure has resulted in a “system” of disconnected and largely privatized care providers, particularly when it comes to the care for younger children, and unaffordable prices for families. In all, by radically disrupting an already fragile care infrastructure, the pandemic has exacerbated economic inequalities by gender as well as by class and race. Gaps in employment and wages between mothers and fathers grew and the slow recovery of the care sector is disproportionately hurting working class women of color. Care infrastructure is the backbone of the economy. Adequate public investment is necessary to increase stability in employment, reduce disparities in labor supply and childcare access, and achieve a more equitable recovery.

About the Authors

Liana Christin Landivar is a senior researcher at the Women’s Bureau in the U.S. Department of Labor and faculty affiliate at the Maryland Population Research Center. She can be reached at liana.c.landivar@gmail.com.

Pilar Gonalons-Pons is the Alber-Klingelhofer Presidential Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. She can be reached at pgonalon@sas.upenn.edu. You can follow her on Twitter at @pilargonalons.