NurseWeek: Off the Welfare Track: Single mother juggles nursing school and raising a daughter

Off the welfare track
Single mother juggles
nursing school and raising a daughter

By José Alaniz
July 24, 2000

Poor, working parents have fallen through the cracks of state and national welfare reform because they earn too much for automatic state child care, but not enough to buy their own.

Photo: Photodisc


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They are the catchphrases familiar to every parent: "I’m not gonna tell you again …" "You eat one at a time …" "I’m not gonna play this game with you …" These parental platitudes pepper the speech of single parent and nursing student Jennifer Weikle, even during a telephone interview:

"Stop pulling on my shorts …" " This is important, Mommy has to do this now …"

Weikle, 27, drawls out the age-old mommy-baby cadence, in between bemusedly explaining her newfound celebrity after a recent newspaper story on her in the San Antonio Express-News. The May 7 article detailed the daily struggles of the young divorcée, a student in the Department of Nursing Education at San Antonio College, as she single-handedly tried to raise 2-year-old Sydney on a thin budget and little sleep.

Among other things, such as anonymous phone calls of support and disparagement, Weikle gained the only thing she actually wanted from publicity: day care for Sydney and a fair shot at becoming a nurse. In the process, Weikle also has become a living symbol of the aspiring career woman in the postwelfare-reform era.

"The front page article came out on the first day of finals, so I wasn’t in a frame of mind to appreciate it right away," Weikle said. "Since December, I had been writing to lots of organizations, including the press, about how difficult it is to get child care for people like me who want to go to school and make something of ourselves. But I kept running into roadblock after roadblock. They kept telling me that the only way I could get help would be to quit school and go back on welfare. I refused to do that.

"But within a week after the article came out, the mayor’s office agreed to give me emergency child care until October, when Sydney turns 3 and she qualifies for Head Start. I guess the city just didn’t want to look bad."

Poor, working parents such as Weikle (she has a part-time "stay in school" filing job) have fallen through the cracks of state and national welfare reform because they earn too much for automatic state child care, but not enough to buy their own.

San Antonio, with one of the lowest average incomes for American cities, has a 4,000-person waiting list for the day care that Weikle needs. Head Start’s waiting list is even longer, but she’s keeping her fingers crossed. She’ll certainly need to find something: This fall’s core nursing courses – microbiology, pathology, chemistry – will be among the most challenging Weikle has taken, and she’ll have at least three more heavy semesters after that.

"It’s going to be a challenge, but I already decided it’s pretty much all or nothing," she says. "Why should I put my life on hold, scrape by as a secretary? But I am still a full-time parent. I can’t just come home and start studying right away like some people. If Sydney doesn’t sleep one night, I don’t sleep either. I just pulled off a B in anatomy class – I don’t know how. We’ll take it one day at a time, I guess."

Balancing home and school has always been difficult, although in some cultural contexts, such as in the Latino community, the extended family can help share the burden of child care, said Sandy Sanchez, RN, department coordinator at the University of Texas-Pan American School of Nursing in Edinburg.

"But even some students who have that social support still need to take care of older parents," Sanchez said. "It’s a struggle with such a hard, time-intensive program like nursing. I tell students to balance three things: school, family and off-time; they need to have some space to relax mentally and spiritually."

Weikle’s off-time started to wane when her husband abandoned the family two years ago. Her mother, who is partially blind, lives 30 miles away and also works, could help with Sydney only occasionally. Yet despite an ear infection that led to speech therapy for her daughter, mad scrambles for money to pay for school, sporadic child support payments from her former spouse, a ruined credit history, plus the normal demands of studying and exams, Weikle has maintained a 3.4 GPA, which she hopes will keep her in the competitive nursing program.

"I guess I have my ex-husband to thank for helping me see that I can be a real person, that I can stand on my own two feet. I don’t want to depend on anyone else," Weikle said. " I’m doing this for Sydney. I’m all she has. And she’s my driving force, my main motivation. But a 2½-year-old can’t understand why Mommy needs quiet time for studying, why she can’t touch the books."

As if to underscore the point, she abruptly slips back into fluent parent-ese:

"What do you say? What do you say? Can you say ‘please’?"