Grandparent Raising Grandchildren

Grandparent Raising Grandchildren



Grandparent Raising Grandchildren

Introduction

All throughout human history, grandparents have raised the young while parents supplied the basic needs for survival. Parents and grandparent served as a family "team" supporting and nurturing the young. Lately however, the family team has broken apart for many with the result that over the last several decades the numbers of children being raised by grandparents, either solely, or part-time, (www.aarp.org) has been on the increase. So pervasive is this situation that no grandparent can exclude the possibility that he or she might be faced with the decision to raise grandchildren, part or full time, at some time in their lives.

Grandparent Raising Grandchildren

Here are some statistics that will give you an idea of the extent of the issue. A recent report from the U.S. Census (which only partially reflects the widespread nature of this issue) made the following comparison. In the year 1970, 2,214,000 children under 18 lived in grandparent-headed households, with the mother present in half of these households. By the year 1997, this number was reported as 5,435,000, or 7.7 percent of all children in the United States. The majority of children are being raised by 2 grandparents, or a grandmother alone, with different degrees of parent involvement. Since then, the number has increased substantially. (www.aarp.org)

In families that have both grandparents and grandchildren, the grandparents are the head of the house three-quarters of the time. The parents are heads of the household in the remaining one-fourth of the homes. In the former arrangement, half of the families have a grandmother and grandfather present. The rest have a grandmother with no spouse. The majority is under 65 years of age and employed. Half of the grandchildren are under 6 years of age, and often have neither support nor health insurance. This underlines the financial as well as the emotional burden for grandparents. Although official census estimates made in the year 2000 hint the number to be more than 6 million it does not present the full picture. I estimate that the number of children being raised by grandparents in America today, part- or full-time, (www.giclocalsupport.org) is now close to 8 million.

The dramatic increase in the number of children who need to be rescued by their grandparents during the last several decades poses an important challenge for grandparents today. For many it involves making a life-changing decision to dedicate one's life to raising a child at a time in life when one may be looking forward to more leisure and less responsibility (Minckler & Roe, 1993). The rise in grandparent-headed households reflects both a parent's understandable need for help with childcare and, in the worst case "parental failure." (www.giclocalsupport.org)

What follows will help you to understand some of the reasons for the explosion of this trend, its repercussions on the family and society, and what is being done to help grandparents do the job. For example, as a result of the increase in the number of grandparents raising grandchildren, personal and governmental support organizations ...