Parenthood and Princeton: Four transfer students on balancing kids and classes

Joseph Gonzalez ’28 assumed that having a 10-year-old daughter would exempt him from having to attend Princeton University’s mandatory “Safer Sexpo” sexual education program for new students. 

But when the 40-year-old father texted his residential college advisor to ask if he was required to attend, he did not receive a reply. To “not give transfer students a bad rap,” Gonzalez entered the Butler College basement, which was filled with upperclass students wielding wooden dildos and condoms, ready to teach first-year students how to have safe sex. 

“You can make the argument that nobody needs a safer sex discussion more than people who have children because they’ve done it wrong. It’s provable,” Gonzalez said.

Gonzalez decided to bring his wife, Angel Capriles, with him, stopping by on their way home from a Student Veterans Association event. “When they saw me with my wife, they were like, ‘You know what? You don’t have to be here,’” Gonzalez said.

Gonzalez is one of 36 transfer students welcomed to Princeton this past August. Many transfer students are the first in their families to attend college. Some come from the military. And 13, including Gonzalez, have partners and children alongside being a full-time student. 

In interviews with The Daily Princetonian, four transfer students with children described a delicate balance in their Princeton experience: taking challenging courses and working with professors not that much older than them — all while being home for bedtime.

“They want to play Barbie”: Balancing Kids and Class

Two years ago, Ridge Jaco ’26 and his wife were planning to sell their house, buy and renovate a school bus, and travel around the country with their two daughters. Then, Jaco got into Princeton. For Jaco, the feeling of being accepted to Princeton was unbelievable. He thought it would be a great opportunity for himself academically and for his children — Paxton, 10 and Aspen, four — to see a new place.

Having kids has shaped how Jaco approaches his Princeton experience. Rather than as a first-year, Jaco entered Princeton as a sophomore to minimize the time that his family will spend at Princeton.

“I think having kids changes things. I’ve already moved a lot, and I just want to get the moves over with so that we can finally plant roots,” he said.

While many undergraduates spend long and lonely nights in Firestone, for the 31-year-old father, being home for bedtime is a must. “It’s like a job; it’s your closing hours of the day, where you’re wrapping everything up,” Jaco said. “Every night, we read my youngest daughter stories.”

Students with families are provided with several resources to support them and their families, including housing, academic advising, weekly coffee chat check-ins, and childcare stipends, according to Dr. Queenie Reda, an Outreach Program associate for the Transfer Program. 

For Shaquana Darden ’28, these resources, as well as the public schools in Princeton, were a draw. Her daughter Tamia, 12, has been adjusting well to life at Princeton Middle School, making friends and joining clubs. Her son Zaiden, five, has had a tougher time, transferring between multiple schools due to his autism.

Still, when asked how she balances parenting with school, Darden, who is 37, said, “It’s not as hard as you would think it is, because my kids are old. I just come home and cook and let them snuggle up [with] me and tell me about their day.” 

Meanwhile, Paxton and Aspen are both being homeschooled by Megan, Jaco’s wife. The girls have adjusted well, but because families with children are split between two separate apartment complexes — Lakeside and Lawrence — it can be difficult for them to find community. 

“We would love to have all of the families living together, and I think as the size of the families that come in grows, [this] will [become] more and more apparent. It’s something we’re conscious of. There’s just not a perfect solution to it with our current housing stock,” Dr. Jordan Reed, now the director of transfer and veteran initiatives, said.

But the kids still make friends, as kids do.

“I think all the kids in the neighborhood seek each other out,” Jaco said. During orientation, Paxton met Gonzalez’s daughter, Cataleia, and they became fast friends. The two girls hang out often, watching YouTube videos, playing games, and talking together.

Last year, Paxton was close with a boy from India, but once the boy’s father graduated, they moved back home. “He needed Paxton just as much as Paxton needed him,” Jaco said. “They really clung to each other, and they were little besties. The bittersweet part about it is that families are here just temporarily.”

Gonzalez and Jaco have balanced parenthood and school with the help of their wives, who stay at home full-time to homeschool their daughters. 

Nathalia Allenza ’25, finds parenting at Princeton much more challenging. Her husband works from home and takes care of their four-year-old daughter, Julieta, during the school day, and takes her to karate and taekwondo classes when Allenza studies in the evening. But she still wakes up at 6:30 a.m. every day to make Julieta breakfast and get her ready for school before heading to class herself. 

“I think being a parent is such a heavy weight because sometimes, honestly, I don’t have time to do my assignments,” Allenza said. “I really appreciate that my husband helps me; otherwise, I wouldn’t have allowed myself to do what I’m doing. I would say that support is the key for Princeton,” she said.

The 31-year-old mother said she’s found professors don’t know how to support students who are also parents.

“I’m treated as if I’m younger and don’t have children,” she said. In contrast, when Julieta was born during her second year at Middlesex Community College, Allenza said that “My professors understood that I was a mom and that I had a different background … Community colleges are trained and structured to help adult learning, while universities like Princeton are not prepared to support non-traditional students.”

Parenting can often run up against academics. It has been difficult for Allenza to participate in group projects, as many younger students are only available to meet at night. “I had to meet twice at 9 p.m. because it was the only time [my group] could do it. So, I had to come to campus. To me, that was my time with my daughter,” Allenza said. 

Jaco tries not to worry about his grades and says his kids are his highest priority. “Kids don’t care if you make an A or B — they want to play Barbie,” he said. 

Gonzalez, however, has been trying to take full advantage of his education. He decided to take six classes during his first semester, instead of a typical four. “It’s atonement for my sins,” he said, referring to the shame he still harbors for dropping out of high school. 

He holds himself to a high standard: “I’m an A-minus student across the board, so I’d like to get those grades up,” he said. Now in his second semester, Gonzalez is taking seven classes. After this semester, he will have already completed all the requirements for a minor in Humanistic Studies.

“I can start over”: The Road to Princeton

Growing up, Gonzalez never dreamed of attending college. His childhood in Long Island was tumultuous: His parents, both taxi drivers, were separated. After his mother died of an opioid overdose, Gonzalez dropped out of high school and got a job collecting shopping carts at Best Yet Market. He soon obtained a general education diploma and felt that joining the military was the easiest route to the middle class.

Gonzalez served in the Marine Corps from 2003 to 2008, doing three tours in Iraq before he left the military and began looking for jobs. During the 2008 recession, Gonzalez was rejected from every minimum-wage job he applied for, including Walmart.

Desperate to find a source of income, Gonzalez decided to re-enter the military and join the army. He and his partner, Capriles, sustained a long-distance relationship and were married in Hawaii in 2012. In 2014, their daughter, Cataleia, was born.

At the time, Gonzalez was deployed in Iraq. While running border patrols in the Al Anbar province near the Syrian border, he was struck by a bomb blast, sustaining a traumatic brain injury and severe nerve damage. He returned to Long Island to recover, officially retiring from the military. Higher education did not cross his mind until an offhand comment from his daughter.

During the pandemic, Gonzalez and his family visited the Marine Corps base where he had been stationed. When Gonzalez identified himself as a Marine, Cataleia — who was six at the time — shouted, “He’s lying! He was never a Marine!” At that moment, Gonzalez realized that his daughter was unaware of a significant portion of his life. She was only aware of her parents staying at home, living off military retirement benefits. 

“It was highly embarrassing,” Gonzalez recalled. “I was telling my daughter to go to school, and I was worried she’d say, ‘Since I was a kid, my dad hasn’t done anything.’” 

This made Gonzalez consider going back to school. Capriles was supportive, but she had very high standards. 

“You are only allowed to go to an Ivy League school. I know I’m not getting into an Ivy League, so you’re gonna live my dream for me,” Capriles told him. She accepted community college as a stepping stone of her master plan. In 2021, Gonzalez used the GI Bill, which helps veterans pay for college, and enrolled in Suffolk County Community College in Long Island. 

There, Gonzalez won several awards and became a tutor for other students, but his lack of a high school diploma still haunted him. One day, a student who came in for tutoring refused to work with Gonzalez because he did not graduate from high school. “High school dropouts are not known for their achievements. Neither are infantrymen, so it’s a double strike against me,” Gonzalez said. 

However, Gonzalez’s professors saw his potential and encouraged him to apply for bachelor’s programs. “[Gonzalez] is the greatest student I’ve ever had,” said Daniel Wishnoff, his community college history professor. “There was no doubt to me that he could transition from community college to an Ivy League University.” 

Gonzalez realized that at Princeton transfer students could enter as first-years, allowing them to experience the four-year college experience. “I could start over,” Gonzalez said at the time.

When Gonzalez and his family visited, they were quickly sold. Gonzalez, who was also weighing Columbia, met with transfer program staff members who explained that Princeton would provide full financial support and housing for his family. “They treated me like a full student,” Gonzalez said. 

“I was sold,” Capriles said. “If Columbia was one of the guys I was dating and Princeton was the other guy I was dating, Columbia would be sent packing and Princeton would win,” Capriles said. “I’d be like, ‘Yes, you can have my hand in marriage.’ That’s how you woo someone.”

The allure of starting over has been a common theme among transfer students. 

Like Gonzalez, Jaco also served in the military. After five years as an avionics technician, Jaco moved back home to Tennessee and continued working in aviation, but he didn’t love it. “I was sort of in it for the money, and I was realizing the money wasn’t worth it,” he said. He also used the GI Bill for a Tennessee program that allowed him to attend community college, where he studied philosophy and psychology.

Once Jaco graduated with an associate’s degree, he enrolled at a state university, hoping to eventually obtain a master’s or doctorate in psychology. One day, he received an email from Princeton with application information. “I thought it was fake,” he said. “I’d never heard from an Ivy League school in my life.” 

Some other transfer students hail from outside of the United States. Allenza grew up in a working-class family in Costa Rica and could not afford to continue her education after high school. She came to the United States when she was 24 and decided to stay after meeting her husband. After the two married in 2018, Allenza enrolled in Middlesex College in Edison, N.J. to study psychology. There, she excelled in her classes, and her professors encouraged her to apply to Princeton.

Darden, meanwhile, dropped out of college twice. Growing up in New York City, she was the only girl in her family to graduate high school without becoming a teenage mother. Her mother had her at age 16, and her father was in and out of prison for drug charges throughout her childhood.

“I had all this focus on me to be the first in my family to go to school and do everything right,” she recalled. When it came time to apply to college, her mom forced her to apply to Virginia Union, a historically Black, Baptist university. “They accepted me, so I had no choice but to go,” she said.

She went, and she was miserable. She didn’t go to class or join any clubs, and she was robbed one day walking home after getting school supplies. After one semester, she dropped out. She returned home, but her mother again forced her to enroll in community college. “I went to class one day and never returned,” Darden said, adding, “I wasn’t ready. It was forced on me.”

Darden worked job to job, sometimes struggling with housing insecurity. She and her partner, Paul, were repeatedly denied from the New York shelter system because they didn’t have a domestic violence or child protective services case. Her daughter Tamia was born in 2012 and her son Zaiden in 2019. Finally, in 2021, a life coach suggested that she go back to school — this time on her own terms.

In 2022, she enrolled at Bronx Community College, the same college she dropped out of in 2007. 

This time, Darden was accepted into the honor society and invited to join a leadership program that helped her apply to four-year colleges for social work. Her advisor suggested Princeton.

“Why would you put Princeton on here?” Darden asked.

“Why wouldn’t I?” her advisor said. “You can do that.”

“I look like a trespasser”: Navigating Belonging

Landing at Princeton, however, was just the beginning of these students’ journeys toward belonging.

Since moving to Princeton last August, Gonzalez’s life has been a whirlwind of classes, readings, papers, and spending time with his family. Still, Gonzalez continues to experience bouts of imposter syndrome. At orientation events, he was mistaken for a non-student and considered buying a lanyard so he could wear his ID around his neck — but he ultimately decided that he should not need to prove to others that he belongs. 

Though he has now found friendships in the transfer community and student veteran clubs, Gonzalez still sometimes feels out of place. “I look like a trespasser,” he said.   

Meanwhile, Capriles spends her days with Cataleia as she completes online school, taking care of household chores, and going to lectures with Gonzalez. “I can sit there, knowing I couldn’t go to these schools, and can have these conversations I’ve always dreamt of having. This is a dream for me,” Capriles said.

At Princeton, Capriles feels that she can finally relax. “It’s so laid back, so it’s perfect for me, because I’m sick,” she said, referring to her life-long struggles with lupus. She has worked hard to find a community, befriending both students and non-students and hosting watch parties for wrestling matches. 

Each year, the partners of current students host a dinner for the partners of the incoming students to help them get to know each other and form their own community. Capriles has been able to take advantage of these opportunities and forge her own Princeton experience, despite not being a student herself.

But the fact that Gonzalez, Darden, and other students can be married is a bit of a historical anomaly for Princeton. Until 1970, Princeton students were not allowed to be married. “We were all told that if you got married before you graduated, you were out,” Knox Little, a Princeton student who graduated in 1950, told the Princeton Alumni Weekly nine years ago. “Of course, there were some who never told the University they were married, and kept their wives hidden.”

After Pearl Harbor, many Princeton students dropped out and joined the military. Facing a record-low budget and enrollment levels, Princeton decided to host several military training schools. In 1943, nearly 20,000 people were trained for the military on campus.

After the war, Princeton promised to educate students who entered the military before graduating. The newly instated GI Bill provided educational benefits to World War II veterans, encouraging thousands of veterans to return to campus, oftentimes bringing their wives and children with granted permission.

“Chaos reigned for some weeks while the University tried to settle in us ‘regular freshmen’ along with a huge number of returning military veterans of all classes,” Little reflected. With a lack of housing, Princeton converted Baker Rink into housing for students.

In the 1970s, Princeton began to allow married students to enroll. A handful of these students had children, though the University would not provide them with housing. 

Records of Princeton’s transfer program date back to the 1920s, but in 1990, due to a housing shortage and large class size of incoming first-year class, the University decided to stop accepting transfer applications, according to the ‘Prince.’

In 2016, the University began to consider reinstating the transfer program to help diversify the student population by including perspectives not present on campus. In 2018, Princeton admitted 13 transfer students. Over the past seven years, the number of transfer students has continued to increase, bringing more students with partners and children to campus.

Today, programs for the families of the students are growing, according to Reda. “As a mom, one of my focuses is these little ones, and how we can make their experience on campus equally as positive as their parents,” Reda said.

Now, the apartments south of campus are the center of a small but thriving transfer family.

On a crisp fall day in late October, around 20 transfer students and family members gathered on the patio at Lakeside Apartments for the Transfer and Veteran Fall Festival, painting pumpkins and enjoying pizza, pie, and apple cider. 

Jaco helped plan the festival as part of his role as a transfer student mentor. He wanted to create an event that would inspire the children to interact with each other.

Jaco’s daughter, Paxton, rode around on a scooter with Darden’s daughter, Tamia. Jaco’s younger daughter, Aspen, ran around playing tag with two younger boys.

Tamia ran up to the patio, which was decorated with fake leaves and orange tablecloths, complementing the red and yellow leaves on the trees above. She grabbed two slices of pumpkin pie, and Darden shouted, “Save one for grandma!” — who was visiting Princeton for the weekend. 

Because Tamia will be in high school when Darden graduates, they are planning to stay in Princeton until Tamia graduates. “The education system has been so good out here, I do not want to take her back to New York,” Darden said. “I haven’t had one bout of anxiety since we got here. I’m stressed, but I’m not anxious, and there’s a total difference.”

Still, Princeton is still just one step on the path of these transfer students. They have dreams that extend beyond the Orange Bubble.

Darden is planning on majoring in either Sociology or African American Studies. She wants to get a master’s degree in social work and eventually open a holistic shelter that includes therapy and resources for entering schools, including trade schools. She is inspired by her mother, who is the director of social services at a shelter in the Bronx.

Now a senior, Allenza is a Sociology major and plans to obtain a master’s degree. While in community college, she conducted research on the challenges that students with children face. “I think there are a lot of misconceptions about students who have children. It is interesting to me that there is such a small space for us,” she said.

Jaco plans to work in education one day, in a job like Reed’s, to help first-generation and low-income students obtain an education.

Gonzalez hopes to one day become a history professor at a community college to give back to students with similar backgrounds to him. “My plan is to take full advantage of the education I can get here and turn that into community college success for others,” he said. 

Capriles is on board, as long as Gonzalez teaches in Hawaii. “I already looked at the apartments that they have for the teachers. I loved it,” she said. “I take such pride in him. I don’t need the spotlight. You take it all.”

Hannah Gabelnick is a senior News writer for the ‘Prince.’ She is from Buffalo, N.Y. and typically covers academic policy, institutional legacy, and health.

Please send any corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.