More than half of parenting college students drop out before attaining a degree. For these families, graduating during a pandemic was a special victory.
CALIFORNIA, USA — This story was originally published by CalMatters.
When Charity Machado had her first child, Cali, at the age of 15, she expected many of the sacrifices that came with being a young mother, but was determined not to let her education be one of them. Machado completed her general education requirements at Sacramento State before transferring to the nursing program at CSU Stanislaus in 2020.
The COVID-19 pandemic hit six months after her transfer, shutting down schools and daycare centers overnight.
Cali, now nine years old, remembers the transition to remote learning as “kind of crazy.” Machado recollects “survival mode.” Dishes and laundry piled up to the point where Cali and her 4-year-old sister knew that plates would be in the sink and clean clothes in the dryer.
Her mother helped with childcare and household chores, but Machado still struggled to keep up with her own studies on top of Cali’s.
“And that made me feel really bad,” Machado said. “Because I’m trying to instill the importance of education, and then there I was…
