Parenting by day, studying by night: challenges faced by student-parents in the COVID-19 pandemic

In 2020, COVID-19-associated measures closed the majority of work places resulting in the transfer of education to online classrooms. Many parents were forced to work from home whilst simultaneously providing childcare or supervising home-school-learning activities. In common with many countries worldwide, the drive to widen participation in UK higher education has resulted in a more diverse student population, including mature students. Such students are more likely to have children than their younger peers who have followed the traditional route into higher education straight from school. However, the hegemonic discourse of neoliberalism that saturates higher education regards widening participation from a meritocratic perspective; potential and ability are key to participation regardless of social background, thus ignoring issues of power and inequality. Adopting a feminist intersectional and critical post-structural analysis, this article uses qualitative data from semi-structured interviews to unravel the experiences of student-parents during the pandemic. The findings suggest that the pandemic and associated restrictions served to magnify existing inequalities experienced by student-parents as well as creating significant additional barriers. Consequently, such results problematise the lack of institutional awareness of the unique circumstances faced by student-parents, made evident by the lack of data collected on the diversity of the student population.