Dual Role of Mother and Student

RESEARCH PROBLEM

Education plays an important role in growth and development of women’ life. Higher education help developing women’ personal identity as well as it will give them a sense of freedom, pride and achievement. However, it cannot be an easy task for a woman to do her study while managing the house and taking care of her child. It can be very difficult to manage the demands of motherhood and post graduate education simultaneously. Thus, I am thinking exploring the dual role of a woman as a higher education student and as a mother.

The mothers who are post graduate students face many difficulties to manage their time between motherhood and studying. Student mothers always juggled between their university timetable and childcare. A woman may enthusiastically embrace the roles of mother and student simultaneously; however, it can put her in a great dilemma.

JUSTIFICATION FOR THE RESEARCH PROBLEM

I consider this is a useful research problem to examine, as the importance of education is increasing day by day in everyone’s life.

Get quality help now

Marrie pro writer

Verified writer

Proficient in: Children

5 (204)

“ She followed all my directions. It was really easy to contact her and respond very fast as well. ”

+84 relevant experts are online

Hire writer

According to Moghadam et al. (2017), there is an increase in number of student mothers entering in universities since 1966 around the world. A research by Institute for Women’s Policy Research in 2014 shows that 4.8 million college students are raising dependent children and out of these 4.8 million students’ 71 percent are women. According to Lidgard (2004), it is very challenging to be a student mother because woman cannot find much time to navigate between studying and parenting. Moreover, universities culture assumes that students must attend their classes without any other responsibilities so that they can concentrate on their study, which is difficult for a mother (Lidgard 2004).

The research done by Taukeni (2014) shows that, there are many more challenges which a student mother has to face such as; being angry, loneliness, skipping lectures and even failing in some units due to lack of time or management skills.

Woman can seek support from outside to manage their time; i.e. there are childcare facilities available, however lack of affordable childcare also impacts the performance in higher education of a student mother (Bosch 2013). According to Bosch (2013), there are many other reasons as well which impacts a student mother performance such as: lack of partner or family support or being a single parent.

Key ideas present in research problem

Time Management: Raising a child and studying both are time consuming. Student mothers normally get less time as compare to student fathers because women has to manage their family and house chores as well. Time management is very important to perform the dual role of student mother.

University support: To encourage women education, universities can provide affordable childcare facilities in universities and online learning so that student can communicate with staff via internet while staying at home.

Individually ability: Student mother do have many difficulties but it can be resolved by creating a new identity, which can do a proper planning and find a reason which can motivate her to manage her child along with her dream.