This is a qualitative study that explored the experience of stress in parents during graduate school and examined how the challenges of balancing parental obligations with academic responsibilities impacted the parent graduate student's ability to satisfactorily meet the demands of the parent and graduate student identities. Eight participants who successfully completed their graduate degrees while being the custodial parent of their children participated in a semi-structured interview, and a conventional qualitative content analysis was used to analyze the data. The study found that parent graduate students experienced multiple challenges with balancing the demands of the parent graduate student identity such as challenges with childcare, issues with support systems, feeling of guilt and shame, mental health and coping difficulties, and feelings of resentment. In addition, the study also identified resources that helped parents to cope with these challenges, as well as positive aspects of the parent graduate student identity. The discussion focused on the importance of support systems, role strain in parent graduate student identity, and successes in coping with graduate school parenthood. Clinical implications and directions for future research are also discussed. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com.bibliotheek.ehb.be/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]