Singing your 6-year-old daughter to sleep and snuggling up next to her may sound like a perfect evening for a parent. But what if you have to get up at 4 a.m. the next morning to study for a midterm?
Sombra Ruiz, 38, has balanced being a mother and a full-time UCLA student for more than a year now.
Weighed down by a feeling of isolation from the rest of the undergraduate student body and astounded by the lack of collected resources on campus, the third-year Chicano studies student created a student group called Parenting Students at UCLA in an effort to bring together students who are raising children.
The group, which has roughly 25 members, including a few fathers, meets about once a month to discuss issues facing student parents on campus. Members exchange child care tips and provide a supportive community that parents can feel a part of, said Valessa Michel, co-president of Parenting Students at UCLA and a fourth-year French student.
“Once you sign up for the group, you give your phone number and other information, so if you need some help you can e-mail everyone and maybe someone else can come and pick up your child if you have a midterm or a meeting,” Michel said. “It’s important that they are someone you know and trust.”
One of Ruiz’s main goals in creating the group was to provide a “space and a resource to help with the growing pains.” To this end, Ruiz and the student group will be hosting an open house today to provide student parents with the resources that can help them adjust.
The event will take place today from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the Bruin Resource Center, which is located in Room B44 of the Student Activities Center.
Carol Block, the wife of Chancellor Gene Block, is planning to attend the event, said UCLA spokesman Phil Hampton.
“Many UCLA students have special needs outside of academics, and the (Bruin Resource Center) provides a caring, dedicated community to help them,” Carol Block said in an e-mailed statement. “It’s a wonderful resource for those who need it.”
Ruiz maintains that such a support system affects two generations: the students and their children.
“We arrange events where your child can spend quality time with other children who get them, who understand things like midterms and papers,” she said.
Ruiz said she felt so overwhelmed during her first quarter at UCLA that she temporarily withdrew during fall 2008.
“During my first quarter taking several upper-division math courses, I was one of a few women, one of the few women of color and often one of the oldest students,” Ruiz said. “I often felt disconnected, like I didn’t belong here.”
A single mother by choice, Ruiz said she decided to relocate herself and her daughter to pursue a higher education after realizing she wasn’t reaching her full potential.
“I can live in poverty for a while if it means going to school and fulfilling what my passion is,” she said.
As both a transfer student and a mother, however, Ruiz said she experienced great difficulty in locating all the information she needed to adjust to campus life.
“There were a lot of resources for everything except what spoke to my principal portion of being, (which is) being a mother,” Ruiz said.
Though she found that there are a lot of resources that can benefit students with children, Ruiz noticed that this information was very scattered and difficult to track down.
After realizing that she wasn’t the only one experiencing this problem, Ruiz and a handful of other student parents looked into collecting information on day care services, financial aid and family housing in one place for easy access.
At the center, counselors are available to guide students who are trying to figure out how to balance school and family.
According to Michel, part of getting used to juggling parenting and higher education is learning from people who have done it.
“Most of the people that have infants are new to the game,” said Michel, who has a 6-year-old son. “By sharing the experience and telling them how we did it, how it can be done, we hope to make it easier for them. I think it will be a great inspiration.”
Michel was one of the group’s original members when it formed in winter 2009.
“It was at the day care center at the university village where I met all the people in the group,” she said. “We all noticed that parenting students don’t have any support at the university level. We’re not traditional students, but we want to have a real college experience, even as parents.”
Since many of the group’s officers are transfer students who will most likely be leaving UCLA within two years, the future of the group depends on new members taking up leadership roles, Ruiz said.
“The group also needs to maintain its flexibility,” she said. “We need to allow the group to look different year to year as the parent population changes at UCLA. By sheer need, the group will maintain itself.”
Though students raising children still number very few, the notion of parents pursuing higher education is a much more accepted idea now than in 1968, when Judy Bencivengo, UCLA’s child care resource coordinator for the past 30 years, was raising her 4-year-old son by herself while completing a master’s degree.
“It used to be that everyone asked, “˜Can you do that? Something is going to suffer,'” Bencivengo said. “I didn’t appreciate it then, but now I see the flip side. It’s not fashionable to talk about any more, but it’s still difficult.”
Bencivengo agreed that in a time when few people question the difficulty of being a parent and a student, it is important to have a support group for parents that openly acknowledges how tough it is to work toward a degree while raising children.
“For example, if you want to exchange babysitters, (this sort of group) will give you the opportunity to make contacts you would’ve been able to make socially,” she said. “But now you don’t have any social time to get to know people.”
Third-year sociology student Guadalupe Casillas, a 37-year-old mother of three, said she too has a hard time finding “someone (she) can feel comfortable enough with to allow so much closeness to (her) kids.”
“Sometimes I feel like I’m alone, like I’m caught up in work … but during my free time, the first thing I want to do is see my kids,” Casillas said, explaining why she is unsure whether she plans to commit her time to the group.
In the long term, the members of Parenting Students at UCLA hope to simply “alleviate the little stresses so the (parents) can focus on their degrees,” Ruiz said.
The group is also working toward adding a portion to the UCLA application in which incoming students can identify themselves as parents so that the university can give these students information tailored to meet their needs.
The group is considering creating a possible scholarship fund for parenting students who are struggling financially, Michel said.
Despite these developments toward making college life easier for students with children, Ruiz does not deny that the years before graduation will be tough.
“It’s OK that it’s hard,” she said. “I’m a better student because of my daughter. I’m motivated to do well, secure employment so I can provide her with a home, a yard, a puppy and a sense of pride.”