When Brigid Riley enrolled at the College of St. Catherine, a Catholic women’s college, she had 12 years of education in the Catholic school system, a desire to learn and a supportive network of friends and family to help get her through.
She also had a 1-year-old daughter.
“When I was attending college, all I did was study and play with my daughter. It was a huge challenge,” Riley said.
Single mothers are not typical college students, especially at private religious colleges. But at St. Kate’s, the local name of the College of St. Catherine, Riley is far from alone.
There were more than 300 single parents at St. Kate’s St. Paul campus during the 1995-1996 academic year out of 2,500 students, according to a report Riley wrote, “The College of St. Catherine Single Parent Student Survey.” That’s 12 percent of the student body.
At the Minneapolis campus, a second campus of St. Kate’s that offers associate degree programs, the number and percent of single-parent students is even higher. There almost one-quarter of the students are single parents, in part, because the campus has a 10-year-old program called Access and Success designed to assist student parents.
Several factors account for the large numbers of single parents in the student body of a private Catholic college.
St. Kate’s is sponsored by the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, an order founded in 1650 that has a tradition of social involvement. One of the St. Joseph nuns’ first ministries was a project to teach lace-making to young women who had previously worked as prostitutes, allowing them to get off the streets.
That tradition of outreach has not changed. The sisters still work with the less fortunate of the world, from serving meals to homeless people to refurbishing former crack houses.
“We are very much involved in the global search for justice,” said Sharon Doherty, director of the St. Paul campus’ Center for Women’s Research, Resources and Scholarship. She said the order and the school struggle to find a balance between helping the world and following Catholic doctrine.
According to the Minnesota Department of Health, in recent years almost half of all births to college-aged women in the Twin Cities were to single parents. Serving this growing group of women fits in with the heritage of the Sisters of St. Joseph.
“They don’t push the religion on you and say these are our morals and this is what we believe,” said one student. Rather they encourage you to reach your goals, no matter your beliefs, she said.
And St. Catherine is not alone. Other colleges are welcoming single parents. Marian College, a small Franciscan Catholic college in Indianapolis, Malone College, a Christian liberal arts college in Canton, Ohio, and Alverno College, a Catholic women’s college in Milwaukee, all have programs to assist single mothers.
But for many young parents, finding a welcoming school is not the toughest aspect of going to college–money is.
Many students attending St. Catherine are on some form of government assistance, usually under the federal Aid to Families with Dependent Children program or the Minnesota Family Investment Program. Because of the federal changes in welfare programs last year, those students may be cut off.
Several officials, both at the college and in federal and local government, said that it is still not clear how students such as those at St. Catherine will be affected by federal welfare reform. But financial fears are ever present in this group of students’ minds, according to Riley’s study.
But several students said personal drive and emotional support help get them through.
Riley graduated from the college in 1988 with a bachelor’s degree in psychology and speech communication, with grades good enough to enroll in University of Minnesota graduate school in 1994. Her daughter is now 13 years old, and Riley has used her graduate thesis to focus on the needs of other single parents.
“I think the issues of single parenting have their time, and it is time for this to be talked about on campus,” Riley said.
One student who returned to school so that she could better support her 1-year-old daughter chose St. Catherine because she had heard that the school really “caters to single moms.”
“They really make you feel like you belong here, and because it is a women’s college, you can open up more here,” said a 23-year-old student who wished to remain unidentified.
Despite that welcome, it is tough being a single parent and attending a rigorous four-year program at St. Kate’s, she said.
A typical day for this student begins at 6 or 7 a.m. when she gets up with her daughter and they both get dressed and ready for the day. She leaves her daughter with her mother at 8 or 9 and leaves for school. When class is over, she usually goes to work, returning home to make dinner, play with her daughter and put her to bed. At 9 p.m., after her daughter is asleep, she studies until she, too, goes to sleep.
“There are days when I look at my planner and say, `How am I going to do all this?’ Some days I get so stressed out that I cry, and then I feel better,” she said.
But, like others, she said the stress and frustration have a worthwhile payoff. She is earning A’s and B’s in school, and her daughter is happy and healthy. She added, “I decided to go back to school for my daughter. Coming to school has been the best decision I could make.”
