ABSTRACT While South African educational policy gives all persons the right to attend educational institutions irrespective of pregnancy or maternal status, it can be demanding to be both a student and a mother and to reconcile competing conceptions of what it means to be a “good student” and a “good mother”—particularly within African culture. The research adopted a feminist ethics of care perspective and gender role theory to explore the challenges that university-level mothers experience and the strategies they adopt to cope with their situations. The study was located within a qualitative research paradigm and involved semi-structured interviews with a purposive sample of 14 female undergraduate university students. Key findings were that the student mothers experienced financial, social and emotional challenges, but were able to cope with the support of family and friends. These findings have implications for the support and empowerment of student mothers to enable them to reconcile competing roles of student and mother.

中文翻译：

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南非大学黑人本科生的母性经历：调和竞争角色

摘要 虽然南非的教育政策赋予所有人就读教育机构的权利，无论其怀孕或孕产状况如何，但它可能要求既是学生又是母亲，并调和关于成为“好学生”意味着什么的相互矛盾的概念和“好母亲”——尤其是在非洲文化中。该研究采用了女性主义的关怀伦理观和性别角色理论来探讨大学水平的母亲所经历的挑战以及她们为应对处境而采取的策略。该研究位于定性研究范式内，涉及对 14 名女本科大学生的有目的的样本进行半结构化访谈。主要发现是，学生母亲经历了经济、社交和情感挑战，但能够应付家人和朋友的支持。这些发现对学生母亲的支持和赋权具有影响，使她们能够调和学生和母亲的竞争角色。