Announcing Generation Hope’s Policy Priorities: A Bold Vision For Change

Parents with young children are twice as likely to drop out of college as students with no children due to various systemic barriers.

Student parents are natural leaders, experts, and advocates for themselves and their families. They are also deserving of supports that can accelerate their postsecondary success. Through the voices of student parents, our original research, and the findings of partner advocacy organizations, Generation Hope has developed our first-ever policy priorities, which include three policy areas that we will focus on to remove barriers for student parents: Higher Education, Quality Childcare, and Economic Mobility  

Why policy and why now?

Generation Hope has worked directly with teen parents in college for the past 11 years, allowing us to see the larger systemic hurdles to their success. While our holistic model has helped hundreds of student parents make it to the graduation stage at higher rates than the national average for any college student whether they’re parenting or not, millions of other student parents have continued to struggle.  Fueled by the voices of our students and their peers across the country, we believe that we have both an opportunity and a responsibility to advocate for broader change that could truly make a difference for this population.

The pandemic has bolstered this commitment as it has had a disproportionate impact on students parents and their families.  It has also caused people to think about who has historically been allowed to fall through the cracks in our various systems, including in the higher education system, and how systemic racism has fortified those omissions and exclusions. Now is the time for bold advocacy driven by those who are feeling the need for change in real and tangible ways.

Why these priorities?

From the onset, we knew that we wanted our policy priorities to be curated from the lived experiences of student parents themselves. To that end, we conducted listening sessions throughout 2020 and 2021 to hear directly from our Scholars as well as parenting students across the country about which policies either helped them succeed or hindered their ability to thrive. While there were many areas that we could have focused on, Higher Education, Quality Childcare, and Economic Mobility rose to the top.

How will Generation Hope do this work?

To drive systemic change, Generation Hope will help to build a movement that enshrines what works in student parent support and creates a new and better climate for this population. As an advocate and activist, Generation Hope will elevate the experiences of teen/student parents at the intersection of race and education to pursue national and local policy change. We believe in the power of teen/student parents — including teen/student parents of color — and know that they are the best advocates for themselves and those similarly positioned. To that end, Generation Hope will deploy, support, and utilize student parents as subject matter experts as we seek to eliminate, modify, and create public policies to best support them.  This includes releasing research and reports that provide vital insights for policymakers and activists; convening student parents, policymakers, researchers, and other stakeholders to discuss and advocate for needed change; and providing a platform for student parents to tell their impactful stories. 

Through the implementation of these policy priorities, our hope is to continue to shine a spotlight on the many assets student parents bring to campus communities as well as the challenges that they face and to help build a stronger, more sustainable, system of supports that allows them to reach their fullest potential.

What will each policy priority include?

We have identified the following focus areas for Generation Hope’s first Policy Priorities: 

• Higher education

  • Generation Hope will focus on

    • reducing the financial hurdles to earning a postsecondary credential;

    • creating educational opportunities by establishing more family-friendly campuses; and

    • increasing awareness of the experiences of parenting college students.

• Quality childcare

  • Generation Hope will focus on

    • increasing affordability of childcare that meets families’ needs; and

    • reducing barriers to accessing childcare supports.

• Economic mobility

  • Generation Hope will focus on

    • connecting college coursework to public benefits programs;

    • removing barriers to postsecondary completion for fathers to advance in the workforce; and

    • expanding career pathways and access to family-sustaining wages.

We are eager to advance these policies by centering the voices of student parents and working alongside them to advocate for change. Following the release of these policy priorities, subsequent federal and state-level policy recommendations will be released annually with specific action items curated by the Generation Hope team and led by student parents. 

Explore our 2021 Policy Priorities here

Want to get involved in our advocacy efforts?
Please email policy@generationhope.org.