Dandie Gallaher, junior sociology major, said she often feels as if she is unintentionally punishing her son by being a single parent.

“School takes up time I wish I could be spending with my son,” Gallaher said. “He must feel like I’m punishing him since I have barely any time to devote to him, but in reality I’m just trying to survive.”

Gallaher said by being a single-parent student, she is unable to put all of her efforts into one field. Since she has to split her efforts, she feels as if she cannot live up to her full potential in any area of her life.

“Going to school to get a degree is challenging enough, not to mention how difficult the task is being a single parent, balancing school, work and children,” said Denise Wessels, director of the Children’s Center at Sacramento State.

Jennifer Scott, junior nursing major and single parent, said raising her child is particularly difficult when she only sees her for two hours a night.

“I feel like I pick her up from the Children’s Center and then we go home and I either have to work on homework, laundry or cleaning rather than devote my full attention to her,” Scott said.

Gallaher, who is also the main resource for her child, said there are many times when she is studying and her son competes for her full attention.

“He wants to play a board game and sometimes I just can’t because I have too much homework, so he is like, “OK, Mommy, you have to do your homework, it is OK,'” Gallaher said. “It just breaks my heart.”

To help families on campus, including single parents, Sac State provides child care for parents through the Children’s Center.

Thanks to subsidy funding, the center is able to offer discounted childcare fees to student parents.

Besides offering top-of-the-line child care, the center helps parents build friendships. Wessels believes is a necessity for support.

“Over the years we have seen many single parents who get to know each other and become a nice support system – kind of like a buddy system for each other,” Wessels said.

Gallaher knows just how important friendships are when living as a single parent.

“Friends help a lot. When you have your friends there, you are able to just let go,” Gallaher said. “Emotional support is very important.”

Kimberly Gordon-Biddle, child development professor, believes time management is a skill that single parents need to have and uphold.

Scheduling and time management are necessities when handling the dual roles of parent and student. Single parents need to be organized, Wessels said, when it comes to scheduling time for their child and for school work.

“Finding the balance between time for your child and school work is really the first challenge,” Wessels said.

Along with time management, Gordon-Biddle said, single parents also need to find some type of support system.

“You are going to need some type of source, you cannot do it yourself, you cannot possibly do this on your own,” Gordon-Biddle said.

One way Sac State offers support to single parents is through the Single Mom’s Workshop. This event is held from 1 to 2 p.m. on Tuesdays in the University Union’s Delta Suite.

The founder and facilitator of this group, Kellie Painter, said she created this workshop to help single parents realize they are not alone in this struggle as a single parent.

Painter said the support group is there to ease the stress of being a single parent because venting helps relieve tension.

Even though the workshop is facilitated by the Women’s Resource Center on campus, Painter said the workshop is for men as well.

“If there are single dads out there, they can definitely join. We want to offer support to all single parents out there,” Painter said.

Wessels said that besides feeling alone in this struggle, single parents might also feel judged by the campus community.

Scott said she feels judged while simply carrying her daughter around campus.

“I feel like when I have my daughter in my arms, students are staring at me as if they are saying “that’ doesn’t belong here on campus,” Scott said. In response, Scott ignores the stares and considers her daughter as a blessing, even if raising her as a single parent is a struggle.

To cope with possible judgment, Wessels said, remember that you mean everything to your child.

“Sometimes you can be the only resource for your child. Remember that your child’s whole experience is in your family, they do not know another way,” Wessels said. “At the end of the day, just remember your child is not judging you.”

Additional reporting done by Hanan Salem

Author can be reached at [email protected]