It has been an uphill battle from the get-go: Studying, single parenthood, and the Covid-19 pandemic

One-quarter of all families in the UK are single-parent families (Gingerbread, 2019), yet literature suggests that single-parent students face challenges in accessing, participating in and completing higher education (Hinton-Smith, 2012; Byrne & Flood, 2006; NUS, 2009). This blog post draws on evidence collected between April and June 2021, when I conducted a three-month mixed-methods research project with 101 single-parent students to explore what it meant to be a single parent studying at university in the UK in the context of Covid-19. Two key themes were highlighted from the research: first, the personal demands that the pandemic placed on single-parent students in terms of time, money and childcare; and second, the academic and peer support provided by UK universities.