Legacy

It’s 8:00 a.m., and Brittany Ainsworth awakes to the voice of her three-year-old daughter Natalie, instead of an alarm clock. After cooking breakfast with Natalie, who loves to help make scrambled eggs, Ainsworth and Cameron, her husband of ten months, drive Natalie from their on-campus apartment across town to daycare, then come all the way back to campus for their morning classes.
Though many students on LSU’s campus have the opportunity to revel in the laid-back morning routine of a single, non-dependent lifestyle, there is a surprising number that don’t. These are the students who have families, complete with a spouse and at least one child. According to the U.S Department of Education, roughly 30 percent of college students are parents.

For Ainsworth and Cameron, a finance sophomore, the difficulty of college life is elevated with the responsibilities they shoulder as parents.

Brittany became pregnant at the age of 14 during her freshman year of high school. After a failed precautionary measure and a missed menstrual cycle, a trip to the doctor confirmed the young couple’s fear. As with many teen parents, the news of her pregnancy resulted in more despair than excitement. Cameron remembered being “scared shitless” after hearing the news during a game of poker with friends. The idea of the judgment he felt they would receive was unnerving. “We weren’t bad people, we were each others’ firsts,” he said.

Ainsworth was always considered a “good girl” by her family and friends, so the news of her teenage pregnancy was a shock. Initially, her friends didn’t believe it was true, but the idea of Ainsworth being pregnant hit home once her stomach began to grow. “I kind of pushed my friends away,” she said. Caught between confusion and embarrassment, she assumed her friends wouldn’t understand or even want to be seen with a pregnant girl.

Because all of their friends knew about the pregnancy, the Ainsworths had to hurry and tell their parents before someone else did. Once the teens gave their parents the news, they were supportive and insisted that the young couple complete their education.

“If it wasn’t for our parents we wouldn’t have made it,” Ainsworth said. Her mother became pregnant with Ainsworth’s older brother at age 15 and had to drop out of high school. “She was worried because she didn’t want me to have to live like she did,” Ainsworth said.

Once Ainsworth gave birth to Natalie, the support of their peers showed too. People lined up all along the walls of the hospital to see the baby, and Ainsworth always had a visitor. The couple’s hometown friends continue to offer help whenever they need it, but Ainsworth is hesitant to ask for favors. If she does let someone help with Natalie, she has to be talked into it. “I feel like this is [our friends’] time to have fun,” she said.

Now that the family is on their own, they are determined to give Natalie a quality upbringing. In the last few years, they’ve had to make the difficult transition from life at home with their families during high school to life in college with just each other for support.

Even with financial support from their parents, the Ainsworths must still take care of everyday expenses. Daycare alone is $145 a week. Jobs with nighttime hours are easier to fit into their class schedules, but often conflict with studying or spending quality time with Natalie. With these factors, money tends to fluctuate, causing slumps between grants, scholarships, tax refunds and student loans. Luckily, the Ainsworths can take advantage of their married status and claim their daughter as a dependent; these tax deductions help the couple save additional money.

Recalling the stress of living with a newborn in high school, Ainsworth admitted that it would have been more than she could handle in college. “I’m sure I would have [had] to drop out if it was now,” she said. Natalie can entertain herself, but Ainsworth noted that the toddler doesn’t always want to.

For junior Sheena Prelow, who gave birth to her ten-month-old son Malique during finals week of spring 2008, dealing with a newborn while in college was a reality she had to face.

When she was pregnant, the simple task of going to class was nearly impossible. “I couldn’t fit in the desks!” Prelow recalled, laughing. The desks in Coates Hall could only fit Prelow until she was about seventh months pregnant. Prelow then resorted to sitting by the teacher for tests. Situations like this (or struggling up and down steps every day) might have been embarrassing to some, but not Prelow. “I was proud,” she stated firmly.

Prelow and her husband, a student at Southern University, were married for a year and a half when she suspected she might be pregnant. Before going to the hospital, Prelow and her husband bought a test at a local drug store. “My husband went in and bought it, and when he brought it outside, I just went back in the store and took it,” Prelow said. In shock at the positive result, she ran outside and told her husband.

Prelow’s initial thought was fear. “I wasn’t unhappy, just more like, ‘Oh my God, what are we going to do?” Both Prelow and her husband were worried about how to manage taking care of a child and keeping up with their schoolwork. “I didn’t know whether I would be able to focus,” she said.

Prelow, like the Ainsworths, found that having a child was motivation to successfully make it out of college with a degree. Everyone around her is helpful and works to be a “strong support system” for the couple, but many of the adjustments are still hard to deal with. Never a morning person, Prelowe now has to rise at 8:30 a.m., which would have been unheard of for her before her son was born. The couple shares a vehicle, so every Tuesday Prelow stays on campus for 12 hours because of her schedule. Finding time to study can be a chore, but Prelow feels her son is a “pretty good baby” so she can get some studying done with him around. And her husband knows when it is time give her a break from Malique.

The responsibilities that the Ainsworth or Prelow couples have as parents may seem to cost them a carefree college experience, but they don’t see it this way. “We don’t feel like we’re missing out,” Ainsworth said. They still have fun, but they also have different priorities. Drunken nights in Tigerland are replaced with going out to eat with the family. Trips to the zoo and Mike the Tiger on campus are the highlights of Natalie Ainsworths’ week. Saturday night in the student section of Tiger Stadium is still a favorite pastime of the couple, only they experience LSU football with a three-year-old child in tow.

One trip to an LSU football game during the 2008 season turned into a nightmare for Brittany and Cameron. After going to two games with Natalie, the couple was told that their daughter would need a guest ticket to get into the Georgia game. After running back and forth from window to window, Natalie started crying. Then, Brittany began to cry. Feeling upset and helpless, Cameron started crying too. The three were finally let into the game.

As if dealing with the stresses of being a student, a parent and maintaining a family at the same time were not enough for them to handle, these couples must also face the misconception that they are irresponsible. Juggling the demands of a young child and still maintaining good grades shows that they are capable of handling more responsibility than many of their peers. I asked Prelow whether she felt her experience fit the negative stereotype of unplanned pregnancy. She responded simply, “I’m proud of my maturity.”