Parenting Students are Binge-Worthy Heroes that Audiences Want to See on Screen

Working families striving for a better life have long been fertile ground for US television writers, from The Honeymooners and All in the Family to more recent depictions in Jane the Virgin and Maid. Today’s TV audiences continue to crave these stories, with around 9 in 10 viewers saying they want even more depictions of family, caregiving, and work.

For storytellers looking to reboot the working family narrative for modern audiences, the parenting student experience offers a deep well of powerful, relatable stories yet to be told. 

One in five current US college students is a parent – a sizable population that doesn’t include the 12 million more parents with some college experience but no degree. Many work while going to school, navigating flawed systems of learning, work, and care that force parents to choose between raising children and pursuing an education that unlocks greater opportunity for their families. These parents are talented, motivated students who make the same grades as non-parents despite significantly greater demands on their time, attention, and money – yet most never graduate. 

Imaginable Futures recently partnered with the Writers Guild Foundation to host a virtual character creation lab on “Writing Student and Working Parent Characters.” With writers Michelle Denise Jackson (Maid), Madeline Hendricks Lewen (Jane The Virgin), and Anya Meksin (High Potential), we unpacked why telling student parent stories matter and how to tell them in a way that resonates with today’s audiences.

Watch the recording and learn more about the speakers on the Writers Guild Foundation event page.

How to Flip the Script on Education, Work, and Care with Student Parent Stories

If you are surprised to learn that there are so many parenting college students in the US, you’re not alone. Most colleges, in fact, would be surprised too: very few postsecondary education institutions ask the parenting status of their students (though some states are changing that). Meanwhile, many programs established to support working parents often exclude those pursuing education. Exacerbating all of this is the child care crisis in the US which affects both working and student parents. 

These are the cracks between our systems of learning, care, and work that millions of US families slip through – rendering them invisible to those who make decisions that shape their lives and their families’ futures.

Storytellers – whether they be TV writers, journalists, or novelists – have the power to show us these cracks and can even help us imagine a future where we fill them. Here’s how student parent stories can rewrite the narrative on working families:

• Relatable characters that reflect America today – Student parents are largely motivated to pursue postsecondary education for the economic benefits, which can be significant, to the tune of $625,000 more over their lifetimes. Amid skyrocketing rents, inflated prices at the grocery store, and general economic turbulence, most Americans are feeling squeezed by a rising cost of living. That pain is especially acute for student parents – most of whom are students of color –  and the millions more Americans whose college dreams have not panned out. Student parents know at a deep core level what a degree would mean for their families’ futures – that’s why they enroll.
• Important social commentary that challenges an outdated status quo. Student parents must move mountains every day just to get to class – largely due to policies that fail to recognize their dedication as both caregivers and students. From safety net programs to child care to workforce, the Urban Institute identified more than 80 policies across 11 different policy realms that student parents must navigate just to complete their degree.  For students without kids, it’s just one. That’s a lot of challenges — but a lot of potential stories of inspiring solutions too.
• Compelling  multigenerational storylines rooted in love and connection. Despite a system that’s designed otherwise, student parents see their children as a profound motivating force, not a barrier to overcome. The struggles faced by student parents are also felt by their children, but so too are their successes: even a relatively small increase of $3,000 per year in a parent’s income has been shown to increase their children’s future earnings by 17%. When student parents walk across the stage to receive their degree, they bring future generations along with them (sometimes literally).

Depictions of working families on TV have evolved alongside broader shifts affecting family life in the US – the “One Day at a Time” of 2017 explores different storylines than the 1970s original, for instance – but the narrative thrust has always centered on the hopes and dreams that families have for their future. Student parents are living a modern working family story – it’s time our screens reflected that.

More Resources

• Watch: Raising Up, A Student Parent Film Series
  • Read our Q&A with ‘Raising Up’ director Jaye Fenderson: “Ultimately I want the series to spur a collective urgency to “count” student parents. We need institutions of higher education and states to collect the data in order to allocate the resources needed to support student parents on their journey to and through higher education and into the workforce.”
• Listen: “1 in 5” podcast from Ascend at the Aspen Institute
• Read: Pregnant Girl, by Nicole Lynn Lewis, president and founder of Generation Hope
  • More on how Pregnant Girl and Stephanie Land’s Class are authoring a new narrative on the college experience: “We need to look at the college degree as the vehicle for our brilliance, rather than the thing that makes us brilliant.”
• Learn: SPARK Collaborative’s Resource Hub has data analysis, research, and insights from field experts, including student parents.
• Join other efforts around the country, including from partners:
  • American Council on Education
  • Ascend at the Aspen Institute
  • Believe in Students
  • California Alliance for Student Parent Success
  • College Attainment for Parenting Students (CAPS), Virginia Foundation for Community College Education
  • EdTrust
  • Generation Hope
  • Jeremiah Program
  • Kids on Campus
  • New America

Recent journalism:

• “Universities and colleges that need to fill seats start offering a helping hand to student-parents” by Jon Marcus (The Hechinger Report)
• “The new kids on campus? Toddlers, courtesy of Head Start” by Elissa Nadworny (NPR)
• “A mom, a student: How a San Antonio parent juggles school, work and child care for a better future” by Sneha Dey (Texas Tribune/Open Campus)