You've Always Been There for Me: Understanding the Lives of Grandchildren Raised by Grandparents

You’ve Always Been There for Me

The Rutgers Series in Childhood Studies

The Rutgers Series in Childhood Studies is dedicated to increasing our understanding of children and childhoods throughout the world, reflecting a perspective that highlights cultural dimensions of the human experience. The books in this series are intended for students, scholars, practitioners, and those who formulate policies that affect children’s everyday lives and futures.

Editorial Board

Mara Buchbinder, Assistant Professor, Department of Social Medicine, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Meghan Halley, Assistant Scientist, Palo Alto Medical Foundation

David Lancy, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology, Utah State University

Heather Montgomery, Reader, Anthropology of Childhood, Open University (United Kingdom)

David Rosen, Professor of Anthropology and Sociology, Fairleigh Dickinson University

Rachael Stryker, Assistant Professor, Department of Human Development and Women’s Studies, California State University, East Bay

Tom Weisner, Professor of Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles

Founding Editor: Myra Bluebond-Langner, University College London, Institute of Child Health

For a list of all the titles in the series, please see the last page of the book.

You’ve Always Been There for Me

Understanding the Lives of Grandchildren Raised by Grandparents

Rachel E. Dunifon

Rutgers University Press

New Brunswick, Camden, and Newark, New Jersey, and London

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Dunifon, Rachel E. (Rachel Elizabeth), author.

Title: You’ve always been there for me : understanding the lives of grandchildren raised by grandparents / Rachel Dunifon.

Description: New Brunswick : Rutgers University Press, 2018. | Series: The Rutgers series in childhood studies | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017056009 | ISBN 9780813584003 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780813583990 (pbk. : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Grandparents as parents—United States. | Grandchildren—United States. | Grandparent and child—United States. | Families—United States.

Classification: LCC HQ759.9 .D854 2018 | DDC 306.874/50973—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017056009

A British Cataloging-in-Publication record for this book is available from the British Library.

Copyright © 2018 by Rachel E. Dunifon

All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press, 106 Somerset Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901. The only exception to this prohibition is fair use as defined by U.S. copyright law.

www.rutgersuniversitypress.org

For John, Jimmy, and Will, who show me each day the meaning of love and family

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1. What Leads to the Formation of Grandfamilies?

Chapter 2. I Couldn’t Be Prouder to Be the Caregiver of You: How Do Grandparents Define Their Roles in Grandfamilies?

Chapter 3. I Get All the Love I Need: How Do Youths Define Their Roles in Grandfamilies?

Chapter 4. I Love My Daughter, but I Don’t Like Her Right about Now: The Role of Parents in Grandfamilies

Chapter 5. Policies and Programs to Address Grandfamilies’ Needs

Chapter 6. Postscript: Where Are They Now?

Conclusion

Appendix: Information on Data Coding

Acknowledgments

Notes

Index

About the Author

Read More in the Series

Introduction

Lindsey, age sixteen, came to live with her great-grandmother, Lucille, when she was three years old. Lindsey’s mother, Angie, gave birth to Lindsey as a teenager; Lindsey’s father was murdered shortly after she was born. After Lindsey was born, Angie increasingly asked Lucille to watch Lindsey while she went out with her friends. Finally, fed up with the repeated and unpredictable requests to watch the baby, Lucille gave Angie an ultimatum: hand over temporary custody of Lindsey or Lucille would no longer watch her. Angie agreed and has never asked to resume custody of Lindsey. She lives just over an hour away and sees Lindsey regularly. In fact, Lindsey sometimes spends school breaks with Angie. However, Lindsey is acutely aware that Angie’s role in her life is not that of a typical mother. As Lindsey goes through her teenage years, she expresses increasing awareness of, and sadness about, her living situation, noting that she used to call Lucille Mom but no longer does so. She says, When you think of family, you think of Mom, Dad, two kids, and a dog. . . . And then, when you’re raised by a grandparent, you’re thinking ‘this isn’t my mom. I ain’t got no dad.’ Everything is so off, and that’s always going to be inside of me. Reality. Face it. This isn’t my mom. Raised by grandparents herself, Lucille, now age seventy-four, sees the pain that Lindsey is going through and sympathizes, saying, I wanted my mom, and I know the feeling.

Lindsey and Lucille are not alone. Currently, 1.6 million children in the United States are being raised by their grandparents with no parents living in the household,¹ in what I refer to in this book as grandfamilies. A variety of reasons lead children to come live with their grandparents, and this living arrangement can be found among families from all walks of life. Even President Barack Obama spent some of his childhood raised by his maternal grandparents.² By providing care to children whose parents are not able to care for them and keeping children connected to their families, grandparents play an important role in today’s society. One study estimates that, by providing care to children whose parents are not able to raise them, grandparents save the government $6.5 billion per year.³

Despite this, and as this book shows, grandfamilies often exist under the radar, hidden from social service agencies, policymakers, and the general public. Researchers, too, have not given grandfamilies the attention they deserve. This certainly was the case for me. During graduate school and in the early stages of my career as a faculty member, my research agenda focused on children’s living arrangements, examining how living in single-parent and cohabiting-parent households influences the development of children. When I started my faculty position at Cornell University, I began connecting with policymakers and practitioners who work with families, keen to share with them the results of my research. I eagerly presented to them the latest information on children growing up with single mothers or those living with cohabiting parents, and the policymakers and practitioners politely listened. However, time after time, I was asked questions about one group of children that I could not answer: What about children who are being raised by their grandparents? What do we know about them, and how can we better address their needs? Policymakers observed that an increasing proportion of their welfare caseload was made up of such families. Practitioners working with families struggled to incorporate grandparents raising grandchildren into their traditional parent education classes. They looked to me to shed light on grandfamilies from a research perspective, and I was humbled to realize that, despite my training in family research, I had nothing to tell them.

This gap in my knowledge led me to examine the research literature on grandfamilies. I found that, while some excellent research examines grandfamily lives, few studies shed light on what truly interests me and is essential for those working with grandfamilies: What is life really like under the roof of grandfamily households? What do we know about the complex relationships and circumstances of families like Lindsey and Lucille’s? How do such families come about and what role do the absent parents play in the lives of children living in grandfamilies? What challenges do grandparents raising their grandchildren face, especially during the teenage years, and what unique strengths and advantages exist in such families? Finally, what policies and programs might best address these families’ unique circumstances and needs? Only by addressing these questions can effective policies and programs emerge to address grandfamily needs.

I noticed that a key piece lacking in previous research on grandfamilies was the voices of the grandchildren themselves. Much research on grandfamily households consists of interviews of the grandparents only, who are asked to report on the well-being and characteristics of all members of the household, including their grandchildren. While important, this provides a limited perspective that is shaded by the grandparents’ experiences. In order to address the questions that interest me, what family dynamics are really like in grandfamilies, I knew I was going to need to talk to both grandchildren and grandparents. Finally, given my interest in getting under the roof of grandfamily households, I knew I needed to go beyond traditional paper and pencil survey–based methods of data collection. I wanted to understand how grandparents and grandchildren interact with each other when discussing issues central to family life, what their relationship is like, and how they understand their unique family situation. To do that, I needed a multimethod approach, including video data of grandparent–grandchild conversations that would allow me to observe and understand communication, relationship quality, and interpersonal interactions in grandfamily households.

To fill these gaps in the research and to increase our knowledge of grandfamily households, I embarked on an ambitious data-collection project, funded by the William T. Grant Foundation Scholars Program. I gathered a wide range of data from grandparents and teenaged grandchildren in grandfamilies across the state of New York, using a multimethod approach that included surveys, videotaped observations, and open-ended interviews. I went out of my way to obtain a sample as diverse as possible and worked with community agencies to recruit families as well as to develop the questions that these families would be asked.

This book is based on those data, using the stories of the families who graciously shared their experiences with me to shed light on life under the roof of grandfamily households. In doing so, I uncover several important aspects of family life in such households.

First, I learned that the circumstances by which children came to live with their grandparents are complex but typically involve parents voluntarily choosing to give up their children, rather than someone else forcing them to do so. Oftentimes, such decisions are wrapped up in parents’ mental health and substance abuse issues.

In addition, despite not living in the household, parents often still play a key role in the lives of those living in grandfamilies. This, particularly when combined with parents’ mental health and substance abuse issues, can present challenges to children and grandparents alike, as parents can come in and out of the lives of their children, may not reinforce good behavior (and could even encourage children to engage in inappropriate behaviors), and may create confusion regarding their roles in the lives of their children.

Most children in my study came to live with their grandparents very early in childhood, and all parties involved expected them to remain there until moving out on their own. Despite this longevity, though, I found that children’s understanding of how they came to live with their grandparents and what role their parent plays in their life is complex and changing and can affect the grandparent–grandchild relationship. As the grandchildren grow older, and especially during adolescence, they begin to question their living situation, asking who their real parents are and how they should relate to their parents and grandparents. This questioning and its impact on the grandparent–grandchild relationship can be particularly challenging during adolescence.

I also learned that grandfamily households face several challenges, a key one being the health concerns of both the grandparent and the grandchild. Grandparents struggled with keeping up with young grandchildren while facing the health-related challenges of older age. Grandchildren themselves had strikingly high levels of health issues, particularly attention-deficit disorder and other socioemotional problems. Other challenges include raising grandchildren on limited financial resources, particularly for grandparents not working and not married. Grandparents also face the challenges of parenting for a second time, older and wiser, but across a wide generation gap and in a very different societal context than they faced the first time around.

Finally, and most importantly, a key finding of my study was that grandparents and grandchildren exhibit a great deal of warmth and appreciation for the unique roles they are able to play in each other’s lives. My research team and I were taken aback by the repeated, genuine, and endearing expressions of love and warmth that the grandchildren we interviewed—teenagers all—communicated to and about their grandparents. Grandparents, too, repeatedly told us how grateful they were to have the chance to raise and develop a very special relationship with their grandchildren, detailing their appreciation for the numerous benefits they got out of raising them. Despite the financial, health, emotional, and other challenges faced by grandfamilies, love and warmth were very much a dominant theme in our conversations with grandparents and grandchildren.

As mentioned earlier, this book focuses on teenagers living in grandfamilies, and there are several reasons that I decided to focus on this particular age group. Adolescence is an exciting time of identity formation and development, a time when children face the key tasks of discovering who they are, particularly in relation to family and others.⁴ This can present challenges for any teenager, but especially for those raised by their grandparents, who reside in a unique and oftentimes fluid living arrangement with what is often a lack of clarity about the roles that their parents and grandparents play in their lives. Such youths may feel different and isolated from their peers, becoming increasingly aware of how their living arrangement differs from that of their friends. As indicated by Lindsey’s interview at the start of this chapter, teenagers in grandfamilies may begin to question who their real parents are, leading to complicated dynamics between them, their grandparents, and their parents. In this way, increased awareness of and ambiguity about family roles can cause youths living in grandfamilies to reevaluate their family lives and positions in them.

Adolescence is not only difficult for youths in grandfamilies. Grandparents can find the teenage years challenging as well. Anyone raising a teenager understands the joy of watching a child begin to discover his own sense of self as well as the difficulties posed by the combination of an increased desire for autonomy along with changing hormones and complicated peer interactions. For grandparents raising their grandchildren, these difficulties are often heightened by unique factors, including a larger gap between generations, changes in child-rearing norms compared to when they were raising their children, the difficulties of raising a teenager on a fixed retirement income, and the limited energy they may have due to health or other concerns.

A final reason that I chose to interview teenagers in grandfamilies is because I wanted to hear their stories in their own words. Adolescence may be a challenging time, but as will become clear in this book, teenagers are remarkably honest and insightful when telling their stories. I was impressed and honored by the way that the teenagers I interviewed opened up in discussing even very sensitive and challenging issues. Each time I read through or listen to what they said, I laugh at their sense of humor, cringe at their brutal honesty, and lament the very difficult situations many of them have been through. I will always remember the girl who, when asked to name a topic that she and her grandmother disagree about, immediately answered, Dragons! Nor will I forget the boy who, while still on camera, whispered to his appalled grandmother that they should just take the money that they were to be paid at the end of the interview now and run—nor the boy who asked if he could get his payment in one-dollar bills, so he could fan it out.

I remain grateful for the chance to get to know these unique teens and their grandparents. I hope that this book makes their voices and stories come alive and can ultimately increase our appreciation for them and inform the development of programs designed to heighten their numerous strengths and address the unique challenges grandfamilies face.

Grandfamilies in the United States

Before describing the grandfamilies featured in this book, it is useful to see a statistical portrait of such households in the United States as a whole. Such information is available from the U.S. Census Bureau and is presented in table I.1, where the characteristics of U.S. children in grandfamilies are compared to the average U.S. child. As the census data show, children in grandfamilies are more likely to be African American than are children in the general U.S. population; 29 percent of children in grandfamilies are African American, compared to 14 percent in the United States as a whole. The prevalence of Hispanic children is similar across children in grandfamilies and other U.S. children, while the percentage of Asian children is lower in grandfamilies (2 percent versus 5 percent in the United States as a whole). Children in grandfamilies are also more likely to be poor or near-poor than the average U.S. child; two-thirds live at or near the federal poverty line, meaning that a family of four lives on a total household income of $46,000 per year or less. Not surprising given this higher economic need, rates of public assistance such as food assistance, public health insurance, cash assistance, and free or reduced-price lunch are higher among grandfamily grandchildren than other children in the United States.

Table I.1. Characteristics of children in grandfamilies

Looking at living arrangements, the census data presented in table I.1 tells us that the vast majority of children in grandfamily households live with a grandmother, and very few involve situations in which a single grandfather is raising his grandchildren. For example, in the United States, 48 percent of grandchildren in grandfamilies live with two grandparents, while 45 percent live with just their grandmothers. Table I.1 also indicates that children in grandfamilies are much less likely to live with a sibling than children in the United States as a whole, with only 37 percent having a sibling living in the household, compared to 78 percent of children in the United States on average. This suggests that it is common for children in grandfamilies to have a sibling living outside of their household. Finally, the data presented in table I.1 show that grandfamily households are much more complex than the average U.S. household: almost one-third contain the child’s aunt or uncle, and almost half contain other relatives, such as cousins. Because of this, grandfamily households are larger than the average U.S. household, containing fewer children but more adults than the average.

Table I.2 presents information on the characteristics of grandparents in grandfamilies, comparing them to the average U.S. parent. Grandparents heading grandfamilies are less likely to be married (51 percent)