Newspapers / Fayetteville State University Student … / Jan. 1, 1994, edition 1 / Page 3
Part of Fayetteville State University Student Newspaper / About this page
This page has errors
The date, title, or page description is wrong
This page has harmful content
This page contains sensitive or offensive material
The Broncos’ Voice December 1993 The Non-Traditional Student Child Care: A Social Change That Has To Be Reckoned With Part of a continuing series of articles by Usban W. Harrison Non-traditional students have voiced concerns about not having enough financial aid funds to assist them in their child care needs in order for them to attend Fayetteville State University on a full-time ba sis. Let’s focus in on one particular group of non-traditional students. Ursula Merriweather is a non-tra ditional full-time student who is married to a military service mem ber and has one child who is in Kindergarten. “One never realizes how much day-care costs add up when you have to go to Biology lab or get help on a particular subject after regular class meetings,” said Ms. Merriweather. Sharon Doutt, also a full-time non-traditional stu dent who is a ex-service member, is faced with raising her eighteen- month-old little girl while her hus band has been sent to Korea for one year to fulfill his military as signment. “I found the cost over whelming and the conditions imsuit- able for my child. After searching high and low, I finally found one [day-care] I could afford but the waiting list was a year long, “ Ms. Doutt exasperatingly said. Both of these students are a cross between being married and a single parent. The list could get longer and longer of various military family situations. This proves to be a normal situa tion for many military families, and the presence of the military provides a bedrock for Fayetteville's economy. Ms. Merriweather and Ms. Doutt, like many others, are placed in the “middle of the road” position. Their spouses make just enough income to keep them above the pov erty level but not enough income so that financial aid or loans are not necessary. And when financial aid or loans are put into play, it is not enough to provide adequate child care for their children. Many single income families who are lower middle income (according to eco nomic stratification) are falling through the cracks when it comes to child-care programs offered by the Department of Social Services. Maybe it would be easier if we, non- traditional students with child-care needs, would divorce our spouses and get on the local welfare sys tem. That way oiur child-care needs would be provided for one hundred percent. And even those who are receiving Aid to Families with De pendent Children are on a state waiting list to receive day-care fund ing and could be on the list for months or years. Some have even dared to take on the challenge of working full-time, attending school full-time, and rais ing a family. After one or two se mesters of this grueling experience, they have to rethink their priori ties. These non-traditional students have realized when you continuously spread yourself thin, you become like a piece of elastic. If you put too they may be feeding the children substandard food menus for break fast, lunch, and snacks. Therefore, the student-parent is forced to pay more money for a better day-care which they cannot afford. “Our job here is not to take care of your personal family obligations.” “You need money, get a job.” “Edu cation is a luxury.” These are words a non-traditional student might hear when pleading for help. I am sxu'e I am speaking on behalf of many non-traditional students when I say: we are not looking for handouts, but mm wS much tension on both ends, the elas tic is bound to snap in the middle. I am sure there are many non- traditional students that have been faced with putting themselves and their families in compromising po sitions to search for child-care they can afford. And what do they find? If you open one door to a particular day-care, you might find that the air reeks of excrement that has not been dealt with in a few days. Or you may find that the child-care workers are changing the infants on newspaper like a puppy’s which leads to unsanitary conditions. Or, for solutions to a problem that soci ety must identify with that has been stirred up by contemporary currents of economic, social, and cultural changes. Education is not a lux\iry but a necessity. A starting position with no educational backgroimd will put a person into a position making Tninimum wage or very little above it. And the money that person takes home each month would go to pay ing monthly child-care expenses with enough extra money to buy the fam ily a meal at McDonald’s, if any is left at all. So this puts people in a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” position. We need to stop and take a moment to look at what has caused this onslaught of day-care problems. According to the anthropologist Conrad Phillip Kottak, “we .. . have to look at gender issues and indus trialism.” At one time in the his tory of human evolution it was be lieved that the woman’s place was in the home due partly to biological reasons. Women were less mobile outside the home because of suck ling infants. Then, wartime short ages of men caused the women to have to leave the home. This brought on the invention of bottles and disposable diapers to accommo date the change in mobility. And what always happens during war time situations? Inflation. Employ ers discovered that they could in crease profits by paying women lower wages than they would have to pay returning veterans. There fore, families had to eat and sur vive and were forced to send the mother outside the home to work and get educated. So out went the Beaver Cleaver Family (Leave It to Beaver) and in came the Huxtables (The Cosby Show). Now that is this new sociologi cal system has created a new prob lem, what do we do with our chil dren? And what does the rest of the world have to do with it? The system is putting our future in jeop ardy. What is our future? Our future in our children. These chil dren will unlock doors we, the stu dents of today, have just found the combination to. In other words, when we are on the brink of a tech nological breakthrough, we must face a fate that all humans must deal with, death. Consequently, these children wUl break the technologi cal barriers that we laid the foun dation for. What are we up against when looking for solutiona to the prob lem? Let’s start with the Financial Aid Office here at Fayetteville State University. I am sure traditional and non-traditional students alike have found dealing with the Finan cial Aid Office to be a most encum bering experience. Every time you visit the office it begins to soimd like the recording that you might hear from the telephone company when a number is no longer in ser vice. “I’m sorry, your award letter has not gone through the computer. Check back with us next week.” In the meantime, your day-care pro- Continued on page 6
Fayetteville State University Student Newspaper
Standardized title groups preceding, succeeding, and alternate titles together.
Jan. 1, 1994, edition 1
3
Click "Submit" to request a review of this page. NCDHC staff will check .
0 / 75