Abigail Martinez, a mother of two toddlers, has weathered many obstacles as a college student in the past five years.

The 22-year-old gave birth during midterms in 2016 and again as a surrogate during testing-finals week a year later. She has attended class pregnant and successfully juggled schoolwork with motherhood.

But the coronavirus pandemic is threatening to wipe her out.

Now just weeks away from graduation, the aspiring kindergarten teacher is struggling to make sense of her new schedule of juggling six classes while taking care of her children and weathering the pandemic – all in the confines of her home.

“For the past two weeks, I’ve been having breakdowns where I feel like, you know what, I can’t do this anymore,” she says. “I feel no motivation.”

Student parents a ‘hidden’ population

At nearly a quarter of the population, student parents are one of Fresno State’s largest yet most hidden demographics, according to Larissa Mercado-López, an associate professor of women’s studies at Fresno State.

The Institute for Women’s Policy Research puts the percentage of U.S. undergraduates who have children at 22%, but it could be higher in the central San Joaquin Valley. Fresno State has a high rate of transfer students, who are more likely to be parents.

Fresno State is the first CSU to start collecting data about student parents, according to Mercado-López, but so far, it’s voluntary. “That keeps us from really understanding the number of students who are parenting.”

Most student parents have more than one child, and many of those kids are under 5 years old, which is a demanding age.

“They want their parents to play with them, and students feel very pulled by them,” she said. “And of course, they have to care for them, change their diapers, feed them, help them in the restroom.”

Mercado-López, who was a student parent herself, has invested her seven years at Fresno State focused on how higher education institutions can better serve parents.

Since the transition to online education began in mid-March, she has advised faculty on how they can best keep student parents enrolled and learning.

“Our student parents are definitely feeling overwhelmed,” she says. “They’re trying to figure out how to navigate four to six different approaches to online learning for each of their classes. Some struggle with narrow time windows that they’ve been given to complete exams or to turn homework.

“This is a time for radical flexibility and radical compassion,” she said.

Not only would it help parents, but others whose lives have changed during the pandemic.

“We have students that are working overnight shifts or students that are now caring for grandparents and having to be the one who is doing a lot of the shopping for people in their family.”

Zoom conferencing makes parents nervous

Zoom, the videoconferencing tool that most colleges have turned to this semester, is posing a challenge for many students, but parents in particular.

Most of Martinez’s instructors require her to be live in front of the camera.

“Basically, if you missed the lectures, you missed your notes,” she said.

Martinez emailed her professors after realizing that her boys, ages 3 and 1, could make it hard to leave her camera on.

“I let (my professors) know, like, ‘Hey, I have two toddlers, this has gotten really difficult. If you hear them in the background, I’ll make sure to mute myself.’ And they’ve done a pretty good job at helping me out as far as that because they emailed me back, and they understood my situation.”

But Martinez does have a few ideas on how instructors can further ease the burden.

“Instead of doing Zoom meetings, they can probably record themselves and maybe upload it to YouTube and give us a link,” she said. “Because not everybody has the same schedule we used to have now that this whole thing is going on.”

Mercado-López agrees.

“Attendance policies that penalize students for not participating in Zoom sessions during regular class time are detrimental to students who are experiencing challenges outside their control,” she said.

Forcing students to appear on camera could cause privacy issues. Students should be free in case they need to breastfeed or otherwise tend to their children, she said.

If Zoom meetings must be attended live, then students should have the option to participate by using the chatbox instead of through audio or video.

Wider assignment windows on Canvas

Fresno State student Natalie Godinez has to be up and in front of her webcam at 9:30 a.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays for her Zoom class lectures.

The Porterville mother is also juggling teaching duties now that her 4-year-old daughter, Rylan, and her 8-year-old son, Axton, are home.

Axton has a tablet on loan from his school that he uses for class, but keeping Rylan entertained while out of preschool is difficult.

It would help if instructors gave her flexibility when taking exams, she said.

Godinez recently took an online midterm that was only open for a short time in Canvas, the online learning system that Fresno State uses.

“I got it done, but it’s kind of stressful when you have kids,” she said. “You really don’t know if someone’s gonna start fighting or, I don’t know, with kids around, things happen.”

In another class, her instructor opened the exam from 6 a.m. to 11:59 p.m., “which give me a big window to complete it,” she said. “It was super helpful because, for me, I got up really early and just finished it before the kids woke up.”

Flexible due dates and exam times are especially important for households with more than one student, Mercado-López said. Multiple people are sometimes sharing devices, data and workspace with their children and spouses.

For her classes, Mercado-López did away with all but one mandatory due date.

” I created an assignment packet that they could turn in at any time before the last day of class, which is May 6. If they wanted to turn in any particular assignments and get feedback early, that was up to them, or they could just turn it in at the very beginning or the very end.”

A disruption in routine

As the state struggles with new and changing habits and schools and businesses remain closed indefinitely, families and children who thrive on routines to stay on track are struggling.

“For a lot of student parents and students in general, college gives them a sense of normalcy,” said Mercado-López. “Some of the student parents that I talked to have said that they really enjoyed the routine that they had, and are really mourning the loss of that routine.”

Students use time on campus to work in a distraction-free space and “to prioritize their identity as a scholar,” she said. That transition back to a home where they feel pulled in different directions is discouraging.

Martinez’s husband, Jose Martinez, works long hours as a supervisor at MB Technology, but he is bringing her some relief at the end of the day.

“When he gets home, he’ll take (the kids) to the living room downstairs while I’m upstairs trying to get some work done,” she said. “I know if I didn’t have him, I wouldn’t have been able to be juggling everything.”

Loss of childcare

Losing childcare is troubling not only because she no longer has a quiet place to study, but because she and her family are also missing her mom, who usually watches her sons during the day.

“We had a routine going Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays,” Martinez said. “I would wake up. I would get them ready. I would go drop them off to my mom.”

Martinez would get to class, then have a break on campus to finish homework. She’d pick up her sons in Sanger around 3 p.m.

Since her mom doesn’t allow electronics, she didn’t feel guilty giving the kids TV time in the evening so she could finish her school work.

Now with the fear that she could infect her mother or vice versa, she’s keeping her kids at home with her.

“The kids miss my mom so much. That’s their ‘Mama,’” she said. “I’m put in a difficult situation where they don’t understand why they cannot see their grandma.”

A silver lining

Still, there is a bright side amid all the shuffle, Mercado-Lopez said. It’s forcing needed conversations into the forefront.

“Those who haven’t really been actively engaged in conversations about equity (it’s) forced them into those conversations about equity.”

It’s pushed faculty “to learn technology and to find new ways of enhancing our pedagogy and creating other forms of connections to our students. I’ve really been heartened by the way in which Fresno State has pulled together as a community to highlight their resources on campus to show concern for one another’s well being.”

The administration has rushed to get hotspots and laptops out to students, and the university has relaxed letter grades for the semester.

Fresno State’s student cupboard remains open during regular hours, and there are diapers available for parents.

Some out-of-town students, such as Godinez, are relieved about one aspect of remote learning.

“It’s kind of like a silver lining that I get to not commute every day anymore,” she said.

If she had to give other students advice, there is one thing that’s helping her through it.

“Honestly, self-discipline,” she said. “It’s kind of stressful, not being in class. I’m constantly checking Canvas, like, am I missing anything, am I on everything? I’ll get emails from my school and then my son’s school, and I just have to keep track of everything.”

Even through the hard times, Mercado-López doesn’t expect there to be many drop-outs this spring.

“Student parents are extremely resilient,” she said. “They’ve gone through so many challenges that they see this as another challenge that they can potentially overcome.

“They are, at this point, counting on that strength that they have and that resourcefulness to get them through this semester.”

The Education Lab is a local journalism initiative that highlights education issues critical to the advancement of the San Joaquin Valley. It is funded by donors. Learn about The Bee’s Education Lab on our website.

This story was originally published April 9, 2020 at 2:55 PM.