College Moms: The Hidden Stereotypes Of College Students

What do you imagine a college student to be? Do you imagine a student who parties on the weekends and stay up all night cramming for exams? Or Do you imagine a student who is raising a child while trying to juggle school and work? Most of us would more likely agree with the first image of a college student. However, based on a 2014 research done by Institute for Women’s Policy Research stated that 4.8 million undergraduate students are raising children and 71 percent of that is women (Gualt, 2014). Yet, very few of us know a mom who is attending college let alone at a four-year institution. Thus, I was intrigued on discovering the “hidden population” of college moms at the University of Georgia. I described college moms as a “hidden population”, because when you look through the demographic of …show more content…
The topic is of further interest because I am a married undergraduate student. Every time someone hears about it for the first time, he/she is shocked and thinks I am joking. Many of them believe it is because I am pregnant or have a child but I do not. Therefore, it made me wonder what it is like to be a young mom trying to get her degree. The main goal of my research is to explore life histories of student moms and find out what motivates them to continue or start their college education. I mainly focus on mothers instead of fathers because there are fewer fathers attending college, which would make it difficult to conduct my research. The project is important to society because the demographic of college students are changing. The numbers of non-traditional students are increasing. In the article, “Older College Students Face Challenges”, Allie Bidwell stated “…fewer than half of all college students are 21 or younger….the ‘first-time, full-time’ student that's becoming less the norm…“(Bidwell 2014). Consequently, universities such as University of Georgia