A persistent yet dangerous game of solitaire: how the neoliberal university invisibilizes single student-mothers

Unmarried student-mothers are a specific college student population whose enrollment numbers continue to increase on American campuses, yet only approximately 28% of student-mothers graduate within six years (United States Government Accountability Office, 2019). With fierce determination, student-mothers enter universities out of necessity with promises of upward socioeconomic mobility; however, they soon encounter institutional campus barriers influenced by neoliberalism which expect student-mothers to conform to certain traditional college student standards. Extant literature reveals how campus cultures invisibilize student-mothers through flickering or absent services that hinder their degree-completion successes, yet there is a paucity of research dedicated to student-mothers’ experiences within college classrooms. Grounded in a three-pronged theoretical approach, this study examines three areas of inequitable college campus practices: 1) how the neoliberal university’s campus services neglect student-mothers; 2) how matricentric feminism’s call for agency and flexibility illuminates institutional barriers student-mothers face which silence their voices; and 3) how sociocultural learning theory can redirect professors’ classroom policies and practices to provide student-mothers with inclusive epistemic credibility. Six student-mothers who graduated from four New Jersey universities guide this study, which utilizes a Participatory Action Research methodology to actively elevate the participants as co-researchers and generate decolonizing new knowledge (Fine & Torre, 2021; Lennette, 2022). Their narratives foreground their lived experiences to offer recommendations that can inform universities’ future policies and practices at the administrative level, on campus at large, and within the classroom. Keywords: student-mothers, college, university, higher education, neoliberalism, matricentric feminism, communities of practice, invisibilization, sense of belonging, qualitative, participatory action research, non-traditional students