Abstract

Education is central to development as it empowers people, strengthens nations, and is thus critical to Kenya’s attainment of Vision 2030. Investment in education benefits the individual, society and the world as a whole. Teenage pregnancies have become more rampant among technical training institutes student in Kenya. This study highlights the challenges, coping mechanism and support accorded to student mothers in technical training institutes in Baringo County. The study used the ex-post facto research design. The target and accessible population constituted of student mothers and counseling officers in the office of dean of students in Emining and Baringo technical training institutes. Purposive and stratified random sampling techniques were used to select a sample size of 64 respondents for the study. The major challenges highlighted by student mothers were economic (93.6%) while others comprised of socio-psychological problems which include; stigma and discrimination (90.6%), low self-esteem and guilt (84.1%) among others. This study concludes that there were a number of challenges student-mothers went through within the school environment. The student mothers had developed various coping mechanisms to complement the support that they receive from their parents, relatives, friends, lecturers, and school administrators to manage their conflicting role. This study recommends that lecturers need guidance with respect to how student-mothers can be encouraged and supported academically so that they do not make these students’ lives worse because of insensitivity.

Key words: Challenges, student mothers, coping mechanism, support accorded.