Amy Montanez
Mothers in academia carry the heavy responsibility of ensuring the well-being of their children on top of managing school, work and social commitments. The task can be overwhelming without the proper resources for success.
UH offers resources to lessen the load, but much of the target demographic has a hard time finding these accommodations for their school life.
The Cougar Parent & Family Engagement Center website highlights resources tailored for student parents, along with other accommodations: lactation room support, the Cougar Cub Diaper Depot, the Coog Cubs Closet and the Cougar Family Collective.
Lactation rooms
Lactation rooms are offered in 10 locations throughout the campus, four of which require a card for access entry.
“I know the lactation rooms are awesome for the moms that are breastfeeding and have to pump,” said Cougar parent Jessica Alegria. “Those are amazing because it’s not sanitary to do it in a restroom.”
While this may sound like a sufficient amount of spaces for women with children, there are over 100 distinct buildings on campus over a 550-acre area.
Faculty say only creating 10 spaces for women can be restricting and inconvenient for many student parents.
“They have to go far away to change their baby, and when I went to a conference in A&M San Antonio, they had new infrastructure and buildings,” said professor and Cougar parent Melody Li. “I was so amazed at their nursery room, they have a nice nursery room where moms can nurse their babies or pump milk there. I think infrastructure-wise, UH needs to consider that for future buildings and for existing buildings.”
Children’s Learning Center
“I actually felt like there’s more support for students,” said associate professor of sociology and women’s gender and sexuality studies Zelma Oyarvide Tuthill. “And it’s hard because when you’re a student, you don’t have a stable income. As students, there’s more understanding of your expectations than just school. So if you have a child, people are kind of like ‘we know you have a lot on your plate, you made this decision, but how can we help you?’”
The Children’s Learning Center is an early childhood education program for the children of UH students, faculty and alumni. Since their opening in 1975, they have been actively working towards expanding their accessibility to support parents attending UH.
“I’m always complaining about how things can be better, but I want to make sure to highlight things like the wonderful director and associate director at the Children’s Learning Center, the wonderful students who have been in my class that are working there and the staff,” Tuthill said.
Cakes are lined up for the Cougar Parent and Family Engagement Center grand opening on Wednesday Feb 25, 2026, in Houston, Texas. | Raphael Fernandez/The Cougar
However, since the Learning Center can only accommodate 196 children, the waitlist can be very selective.
“I like the UH daycare a lot, and I know a lot of colleagues and students like it, but I waited over a year to get in,” Li said. “I was in line when I was pregnant, so I think it’s such a long wait list.”
But fifth-year education doctoral student Kai Yagi had a more seamless transition into the daycare.
“The admission process was very easy, but I think they prioritize student parents,” Yagi said. “Because I was told there were 42 people ahead of me lining up on the wait list, so I thought that there was no way I could put my child with CLC, but I was able to get the spot at the same time I started my graduate study, which helped me a lot.”
The amount of resources, then, is not the true issue. Rather, faculty and student mothers emphasize that these resources are sufficiently promoted.
“People at that time are not going out to look for those resources either,” Li said. “So I think sometimes those resources have to be more proactive to reach the people needed before bad things happen.”
Resources that are properly provided to these mothers also support future generations of students, faculty and alumni at the University.
“Similar to how we renovated the football program, we’ve done all these things to show people this matters to us, and so if we could do that with the children on campus and say these children matter to us because they’re children of students, they’re children of faculty, they’re children of alumni, then I feel like that would be super meaningful,” Tuthill said.
news@thedailycougar.com
