Maybe I’m just a little too sensitive these days. After all, women at the end of their third trimester can be like that. But when I read about a new campaign, one to prevent unplanned pregnancies among community college students, I was a bit taken aback.
According to the nonpartisan group in charge, 48 percent of community-college students “have ever been pregnant or gotten someone pregnant.” And this is a problem, the group contends, because dropout rates are higher among students who get pregnant while in college. So, presumably in order to increase degree attainment in the public two-year sector, we need to slow this trend and prevent unplanned pregnancies.
OK, on the face of it, this seems like a plausible argument and approach. After all, it’s hard enough to get a degree while working full-time, let alone while parenting too. And sure, there’s plenty of research suggesting that the children of planned pregnancies are more likely to be raised in stable, intact families — and to benefit from that arrangement. With college being the new high school, it makes some sense to continue the conversation about healthy relationships and safe sex in the postsecondary environment. And bringing social and health services onto campus makes everyone’s lives a bit easier. All good things.
But something about this effort worries me. Let’s go back to those initial stats — nearly half of all students attending community college either have been pregnant or gotten someone pregnant. Well, the average age of a community college student is 29, and nearly 60 percent of community-college students are women. Furthermore, we know that childbearing has a time horizon — the peak age of fertility and egg qualityis around 27. So, all this statistic tells me is that many community college students are parents — which could mean that after becoming parents adults are more likely to choose to attend a community college or that attending community college increases the likelihood of getting pregnant. Which do you believe? And in a society that values children and higher education, what is the optimal percentage of community college students who should have had this experience?
These aren’t easy questions to answer. We could try and make it simpler to accept the Campaign’s argument by focusing on what seems negative — college dropout. But it’s not entirely clear that these are causal effects — that getting pregnant causes college dropout. Sure, that seems like a rational connection, but it’s also plausible that an overwhelming (biological?) desire to have a child now — even an unspoken, “unintended” desire — leads some to get pregnant and also drives a decision to leave college (for now). What’s most important is that we see women returning to college after having children — so these aren’t dropouts, so much as stopouts.
We might also ask ourselves, what is the function of the American community college, if not to serve as the “second chance” institution where adults can return to resume an education after starting a family? Participating in this campaign must cause at least some community-college leaders to pause and wrestle with that question. Doesn’t the community college have the potential to be one of the healthier educational institutions, where real life meets academic life — and childbearing and parenting occur without the usual stigma? After all, this is a place where we educate adults – not teenagers.
I’ll raise just a few more thoughts before leaving it open to discussion (which I have no doubt this little post will generate):
1) There’s some evidence that rates of college entry and completion are lowered not by childbearing, but by marriage. In fact, unmarried mothers are more likely than married mothers to attend college. Sure, again, that’s not necessarily a causal relationship — but shall we begin to discourage marriage among community college students too?
2) There’s also evidence that while parents finish college at lower rates, that’s largely a function of having to take longer to finish. They tend to work and enroll part time, so when we look at a typical window of time for completion, their rates look low. Give them longer, and parents finish up. Is this a problem? I can only argue yes from a purely economic perspective that says the sooner the economic returns begin, the better.
And that perspective is one that may be limiting our views here. After all, don’t we treasure higher education for its intergenerational benefits — what it allows us to pass on from parents to children? Presumably these benefits only occur if we do, in fact, have kids. Some demographers (and also some right-wingers) are concerned with the delays in fertiility among college-educated women — and we’re bringing pregnancy prevention efforts into colleges?
It’s all a bit confusing. We don’t want students to get knocked up and knocked out, sure. But maybe instead of trying to alter student behavior we should instead invest more in supportive services to help parenting students complete degrees? The Campaign notes that community colleges already offer child care — but it doesn’t make it clear that campus child-care centers are notoriously over-enrolled, and sometimes too expensive. Increasing the availability of high-quality, inexpensive, on-campus child care seems like another good way to promote degree completion among parenting students. Another approach would be to increase students’ financial aid so that they can afford to purchase decent health care, to ensure healthy pregnancies and healthy children.
If the Campaign has an unintended side effect of stigmatizing pregnant and/or parenting students attending community college, it will have more than failed — it will have made things worse. We have enough anti-child environments already. Efforts like this one should proceed very, very carefully.
13 Responses to Knocked Up … and Knocked Out?
what4 - November 26, 2009 at 8:23 am
Colleges should actively encourage students to finish their education first, get a solid job next, then form a stable relationship and get married before having a child.It is deceptive to allow young women to think they can easily handle having children out of wedlock, finish their education, and establish a decently paying job, all while raising one or more children. The superwoman myth has created many a burdened single student who is stressed out and overworked. Even being confused about this issue is a disservice to young women. Many have been misled into thinking they will have more social support than in reality they receive.Sure, some women can do everything at once, but it is needlessly difficult for most women and children to try. It’s a simple idea that permeates all areas of life: Take things in an order that allows you to handle them well. And don’t get taken in by utopian fantasies of how easy life will be if you just follow your feelings.Prove me wrong.
suomynona - November 27, 2009 at 9:09 am
what4,The argument that college is probably easier to do without large, parallel responsibilities like childcare is neither new, nor insightful, nor particularly relevant. Ditto for the argument about in what order and in what timeframe people *should* finish their education, get a job, get married, have children, etc. What measure of social control would you enact in order to get people on the ‘right’ track? What good does it do to say ‘prove me wrong’ to someone who’s already had children out of wedlock, or dropped out of school because their spouse is independently wealthy, or served in the military for 8 years before going to college and wants children before biological windows close?The traditional life narrative of school, job, marriage, kids (which assumes, given when most people begin school, marriage in the mid-20s anyway) is only optimal because it’s traditionally what we’ve supported institutionally. And even if it were optimal in some essential way, it’s quite clear that the typical life narrative has changed. The relevant challenges are how to adapt to these changes, rather than how to socially engineer things back to the way they were.
goxewu - November 27, 2009 at 10:55 am
There are delicate lines to negotiate between adapting and caving in, between upholding standards and penalizing unfortunates. There’s a crucial difference between wanting a) more single mothers to be in college, and b) more women in college to be single mothers. The trick is to encourage the former without encouraging the latter, and to discourage the latter without discouraging the former.On what4′s side is the kind of reasoning that says just because college students do more binge drinking these days and more of them are hung over on Mondays, shouldn’t mean that professors should adapt, by, say, not giving any quizzes or introducing especially difficult material on Mondays. “Hey, no quizzes or difficult lectures on Mondays in this class, dude! If we take that one, we still can party hard on weekends.” Not what you want to encourage.”I want to go to college, but I want to have a baby now without a resident father” is probably not what you want to encourage, either. A college’s saying, in effect, “No problem. Go ahead and have the kind and enroll anyway. We’ll make it easier for you,” is probably not good for the college or for women students in the long run.A close call, muddied up by anecdotal evidence (e.g., courageous single mothers who defy the odds and have Lifetime movies made about them), but a little stigma is probably, in the end, a good thing.
goldrick - November 27, 2009 at 3:39 pm
Interesting debate. I think the question is the role of the instituions– whether they should be in the business of creating incentives or penalties to encourage/discourage student behavior, or whether they should instead simply support/accomodate choices. Goxewu, I think this is part of your point too. Maybe one way to think through this dilemma is to shift the focus to whether the action creates an unfair or unequal impact. So, yes, holding quizzes on Mondays may disadvantage partiers. But that’s neither unfair, nor does it affect a particular social group (except maybe those with less self-control). Not providing adequate childcare, or creating a culture around pregnancy prevention– both of these have unequal impacts, on women in particular. It strikes me as a bit odd for a college to get involved in discouraging childbearing, rather than adopting a ‘universal design’ perspective that says we’ll provide services that will benefit everyone (who isn’t childcare good for?) that may have a positive benefit of helping one group finish college. Unlike widespread campus binge drinking, which can affect dorm life, campus safety, etc. students having children out of wedlock really doesn’t affect the college– it affects the students. What “what4″ suggests- that colleges should be in the business of teaching students life lessons– is a bit scary…
goxewu - November 27, 2009 at 6:05 pm
1. Whether colleges should be in the business of encouraging/discouraging certain behaviors: Funny, when the behavior is “tolerance” or adhering to speech codes or moderate intake of alcohol, then encouraging/discouraging is OK. But when it’s “Try not to get pregnant when your single, still want to go to college, and have no partner to help,” it’s not OK.2. Affecting a particular social group, and “those with less self-control”: Since the advent of readily available birth control and since the pervasive presence of public service announcements and propaganda on the part of organizations such as Planned Parenthood, pregancy among those qualified to go to college can be assumed to having something to do with self-control and the conscious desire to become a mother at a particular time. While having unprotected sex and becoming pregnant may not quite equate with getting drunk and missing classes because of it, they are not entirely dissimilar. They both involve the issue of self-control.3. Re the same point in (2), above: Do we not want to discourage MALES who want to become FATHERS and who want to go to college at the same time from impregnating their girlfrieds (or women with whom they simply happen to hook up)? My guess is that Prof. Goldrick-Rab wouldn’t say to a male college student, “Sure, go ahead and get your girlfriend pregnant. Somehow, it’ll all work out about you being able to stay in school and take care of your kid financially and otherwise at the same time.”4. Inadequate childcare and pregancy prevention impacting women more: Of course they do. That’s biology. The man can hit and run and the woman is left to go through the pregnancy, give birth, and care for the infant in the early stages. And that’s why “pregnancy prevention,” impacts more on women but also impacts for the better on women.5. In-house collegiate childcare beyond a certain level may not be good for budgets, for students who do not have children, for a college’s focus on academics, for a lot of people and programs. In this day and age–take a look at the state of California’s budget, the state of New York’s budget, where higher education is being cut–it’s not simply of matter of saying, “Oh, we want to accommodate students who are single parents by offering more and better childcare” without regard to thinking about what you’re going to cut in order to pay for it.6. That colleges “should be in the business of teaching students life lessons–is a bit scary”: Hello? Isn’t that what college is all about? (We hear from liberals–and I’m a liberal–all the time that college should be about something more than career preparation, and unless it’s just vacuous, free-floating “critical thinking,” it has to be “life lessons.”) Tolerance, celebrations of “diversity,” questioning of authority, are life lessons we liberals approve of. What’s wrong with “You’re probably going to hobble your life if you try to be single parent and a college student at the same time” as a life lesson? Will anybody say that it isn’t–no matter what degree of childcare a college provides–true?7. Having babies is, in general, a nice thing. But in certain circumstances, it’s not so nice, for the child, for the mother, for the father, for the extended family, and, sometimes, the community. Being young, single, with very limited resources, and a college student is one of those circumstances. There’s nothing wrong with an academic institution saying that out loud. In fact, an argument could be made that an academic institution not saying that out loud is in a way a derilection of duty.
post_functional - November 29, 2009 at 8:02 pm
I thought the raison d’etre of community colleges was that they are the colleges for people who have experienced and continue to experience Real Life.
goxewu - November 30, 2009 at 12:46 pm
It’s just one of the reasons. Community colleges also exist for recent high school graduates who don’t have the grades, test scores or money to go to a four-year school. If they’re single, on very tight budgets and/or going into debt, and have no resident/dependable partners to help them care for a baby or raise a child, they shouldn’t be getting pregnant or getting anyone pregnant. For the community college not to say this just because it might “stigmatize” and hurt the feelings of students who are single parents is a kind of cowardice. And I’ll bet that a 34-year-old single mother of two attending a community college would be the first to advise a 19-year-old single, childless student attending a community college NOT to get herself pregnant.
post_functional - November 30, 2009 at 10:10 pm
Yes. If everybody did what everybody should, it would be a perfect world. Should, should, should, should, sing it with me, to the tune of “Spam”: Should, should, should, should. (I’m not sure who *should* be telling everybody what he or she *should* be doing, *could* somebody let me know?) This statement— “But maybe instead of trying to alter student behavior we should instead invest more in supportive services to help parenting students complete degrees?”— seems to be at the heart of the matter. The only quibble I would have with it is that it’s a false dichotomy. We should (that word again) try to alter student behavior, but also be more supportive in the provision of services to help parenting students complete degrees. Call me crazy, but let’s try to do both.
goxewu - December 1, 2009 at 6:02 am
I didn’t say to stop all services to pregnant community college students, or those who are single parents. I’m simply contesting the idea that for a community college to tell students (in its handouts, counseling, etc.) that it’s not a good idea to get pregnant or impregnate someone if you’re a single student with limited means is to “stigmatize” parenthood or childbearing to some unfair degree.As to “should”: ‘Tis what the Law is all about. Doesn’t prevent all crime, but just because it doesn’t, doesn’t mean the Law should be abandoned. Likewise, if community-college propaganda and counseling doesn’t prevent all inadviseable pregnancies (which are not, of course, crimes–I’m simply noting a parallel), doesn’t mean they should discontinue advising against it.Then there’s the matter of what Prof. Goldrick-Rab cites as “an overwhelming (biological) desire to have a child now–even an unspoken, ‘unintended’ desire.” While unintended pregnancies do happen, is it not reasonable to expect some control over one’s reproductive life from both single male and female community college students who are in no position to accommodate having a baby or rearing a child? So, to answer the rhetorical question Prof. Goldrick-Rab poses at the outset of her post, yes, in this regard at least, she is a little too sensitive these days.
bghansel - December 1, 2009 at 9:24 am
It isn’t easy to go to school and have a toddler, but the school schedule is also more flexible than the work schedule. I found it much easier to return to classes when my daughter was 18 months than I did to stop working once I started my career.
laoshi - December 1, 2009 at 2:52 pm
Motherhood is more important than academe.
goxewu - December 6, 2009 at 5:13 pm
A bachelor’s degree in Pregnancy Studies, with full credit for “life experience,” given to the mother upon childbirth.Problem solved!(Or maybe not. It discriminates against males.)
persefone - October 14, 2010 at 10:28 pm
Motherhood is more enjoyable for baby and parent(s) when there is a carefully prepared, solid foundation for the family in place. Trust me, as a voice of experience, going through school, working, caring for a little one is REALLY REALLY HARD! Hence. Anything we can do to educate young people well before college years would be valuable. A person makes the best choices when, she/he has a clearly distinct, complete collection of factual information, options and possible results.
We should address this well before college. Middle school? Grade school? Every baby brought into this seemingly godforsaken world, deserves the best beginnings. Being born into poverty harms everyone.