Philippine E-Journals

SCHOOLING + PARENTING: HOW DO STUDENT-PARENTS JUGGLE STUDIES?

Dyanika P. Nolasco | Jonah C. Celestino

 

Abstract:

Parenting is a demanding a job. Schooling, on the other hand is a difficult endeavor. Parenting and schooling when combined makes parenting more demanding and schooling more difficult. This study analyzed the problems encountered by student-parents and strategies they use in coping up with problems on their studies. The study is descriptive in nature incorporating inferential statistics. A survey questionnaire was administered, and unstructured interviews were done to thirty randomly selected student-parents in the College of Information Technology and Computing Sciences. Results showed that the greatest number of student-parents have ages 16 – 20, were sophomores and had only one child. Equal number of married and single student-parents were involved in the study. Guilt and sadness being away from their kids, challenge of carrying out obligations and difficulty in balancing priorities are serious problems they encountered however to cope up with these, they allotted time for their child(ren)’s studies and played, prayed, learned to make priorities, did selfstudy, sought advice from parents and treated family as motivation. Those who were in their senior years faced lesser problems on guilt and sadness being away from kids, challenged about obligations and adjusting to expectations. Married student-parents less likely experienced domestic problems compared to the single parents. Freshmen and senior student-parents used to find time to study with kids more frequently than other parents. Those who had only one child prioritized most important things, made timetable for activities and did self-study more often as compared to others.