Lynn Ruane | Contributing Writer
Students who are parents in the Trinity College community are a minority group who, despite our highly diverse backgrounds, have much in common with each other, from our experiences to our distinct set of needs. However, they are often under-represented and indirectly excluded from college life due to the lack of incorporation of families and family life on campus. First-hand experience has taught me that being both a student and a parent means that, for me, the benefits of the full Trinity experience in many ways simply cannot be realised.
A step forward was the introduction of a Student Parents Officer within the Students’ Union this year. Despite this being the very first year for this officership, the demand for it became apparent within in the first month of term. In this position, to date one hundred and fifteen parents have made direct contact with me. On average, three parents per week have presented to me with concerns and issues for them, ranging from childcare to timetabling, and many other concerns. Due to this high demand, a survey was conducted to better understand the detail of the issues that single parents face.
There were a total of 103 responses over a seven day period. Ninety four of those responses were female and seven were male. Two did not provide a gender.
Abseenteism
51 parents expressed that being marked absent if you arrive even one minute later than 9:10am creates a huge difficulty for parent/student life balance. The majority of these fifty one students are in the nursing stream, forty three.
One student noted that it’s “terribly stressful, especially as attendance is so important when trying to qualify for nursing. I live outside Dublin, therefore I travel an hour and a half on the bus. It is vital for me to be on time at the bus stop. That means I have to get the kids up really early, and have them out of the house at a time when other kids are still sleeping.”
For parents to arrive on time at 9am they are sometimes forced to pay for children to be dropped off at schools and crèches. The cost of childcare in Ireland is a huge obstacle for parents fulfilling their goals of education and employment. There is very little by way of funding to help meet this huge cost, and parameters are simply not in place for this to change any time in the near future.
However there are ways to alleviate this issue. Penalisation due to lateness is a huge stress factor for parents. When parents arrive late, it is often not out of tardiness, but rather because of situations out of our control. Extending the cut off point for parents in the morning times will not only reduce stress levels, but will increase the record of attendance for many students. For parents without a lengthy commute it would also mean that they would save financially, as they would be in better position to drop their children to a crèche or childminder. A total of ninety parents ranked the extension of the cut-off point as very helpful in the survey.
With regard to placement-based courses, particularly as regards health science and social work, the two main issues are the location and the required start-time of some placements. Firstly, placements that are based outside of their county of residence are a near-impossible task as a parent. Though it may be argued that these are issues that must be overcome if you are choosing to be a working parent, it must be taken into consideration that as a student parent, you simply don’t have the same earning power to finance childcare as one with a full-time source of income. A system where the locale of placement is matched where possible with a parent’s circumstances would support parents to engage more successfully in their placements.
Secondly, a greater degree of flexibility and discretion might go some way to aid parents required to attend placements with especially early starts. Given the anxiety faced by those attempting to get to college for 9am, it is unsurprising that a 8am, 7.30am or 7am start is acutely difficult, particularly for parents with young children. Most crèches open at 7.30am at the very earliest. While early starts are an unavoidable aspect of placement-based courses, there are numerous ways in which the issue could be addressed: later shifts, the ability to swap shifts with other nurses where necessary, and greater flexibility and discretion exercised by course and placement coordinators.
Childcare
Initially when circulating the survey, I was under the assumption that childcare would be at the forefront for parents. However, it is interesting to note some of the issues of childcare costs and distress might be indirectly resolved by addressing the issues of timetabling and absenteeism.
Costs related to childcare were divided into two categories in the survey:
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Drop-offs to schools or crèche (where a student parent pays somebody to drop his or her children to school or crèche due to their inability to do so themselves) – this ranged from €50 to €290 per week.
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Total childcare costs – this ranged from €27 to some €500 per week.
The on-campus nursery is, in most cases, not an option for parents due to various factors, including the age of children, cost and opening and closing times. Once your child is of school age, arrangements must be made for them to attend after-school care. This comes at a substantial monetary cost to the parent, but can also be difficult to arrange in terms of finding an after school/crèche that will collect your child/children from school. Furthermore, the nursery in Trinity does not cater for children beyond the age of four and a half years old.
This ultimately means that no service exists to meet a critical need of a sizeable portion of the Trinity community.
The ideal scenario would be to create more funding streams to aid students’ childcare costs, to expand the current nursery and to offer subsidied after-school care. In the absence of this, low-cost or no-cost measures such as amending timetables and greater flexibility with being marked absent would help ease the stress.
Timetable – Tutorials and Mid-Term Breaks
In the area of timetable issues there is a cross over with both absenteeism and childcare. Of course, we must appreciate the difficulty in the administration of timetables to cater for all departments. However, there exist more feasible options, including podcasts and recorded lectures. In the cases where lectures go beyond five o’clock, introducing podcasts would facilitate parents in keeping up with course content. Childcare facilities close between the hours of five and six in the evening, meaning parents are often not in a position to attend evening lectures at all.
A second problem that arises in terms of timetables is tutorial attendance. It came across in the survey that departments are generally quite accommodating in switching students to more suitably timed tutorials. This is positive, but it does not account for unexpected parenting duties. On many occasions parents will be called to attend a sick child at home or in school, or have to attend doctor appointments, dentist appointments, or parent-teacher meetings. A solution to this would be if parents at the start of every year were provided with an attendance card to be signed by tutors, to ensure that they’re attending the mandatory number of tutorials each term.
Giving parents the freedom to attend the tutorial that is suitable to them each week is sensible, does not add to the workload of tutors, and would make a huge difference to these students.
Midterm breaks are also an obstacle in the way of parents keeping up with their timetables. Ireland’s primary and secondary schools typically break for midterms a week previous to TCD reading weeks. This incurs huge financial costs for parents or necessitates student parents missing a week of classes. Syncing the two up is one option previously unexplored, and may prove popular amongst students and professors alike, and wo uld save a lot of stress for both.
Overall eighty student parents felt disadvantaged as a student due to being a parent. Disadvantages varied from reasons such as the library to engagement in society life. “When books are only available in the library it’s unlikely I’ll be able to read it because I can’t hang around campus”.
One parent wrote of the despair and guilt they felt when their child pleaded with them to drop them at school themselves. They expressed the impact of being in a position to do that at least once a week would have on their family. The feeling from parents is that they accept that getting their degree will come at some cost to the quality of their family time, however if TCD make the suggested changes it would positively impact the performance and experience of TCD’s student parents, while reducing childcare costs and having the least possible impact on the well-being of students.
“I don’t feel it’s deliberate, as we knew before starting the course what was expected, but if wherever possible concessions could be made we matures would be more than grateful!”
