Raising Their Children’s Children

When she was growing up, Nadine Bean shared her bedroom with her grandmother, a widowed, Ukrainian immigrant. During the post World War II era, this was not considered unusual.

Bean, an associate professor in the Master of Social Work Program at West Chester University, said this was one of the personal events in her life that motivated her to look into today’s phenomenon of grandparents not just living with their grandchildren, but also being their primary caretakers.

Bean conducted a two-year research project interviewing grandparents across the country. The results were recently published in the academic journal, Reflections. “About six million children under the age of 18 are cared for by their grandparents,” claims Bean.

“These circumstances are growing the fastest in white, middle class families especially over the last 10 years.”

In her own clinical experience, she has found that most white, middle class grandparents have taken over for their adult children who have gotten involved in drugs, particularly heroin. “Heroin has moved from being an intravenous drug to something that can be snorted and it’s become a major problem in suburban high schools,” says Bean.

“And crystal methamphetamines are destroying a lot of families.”

For the forty percent of the grandparent-headed families who are living in poverty, the issues are magnified.

“They’re on fixed or low-incomes and then they start raising their children’s children,” explains Bean.

“To help meet their needs and keep the family together they forego their own health care and prescriptions to get their grandchildren immunizations and other medical help,” she says.

Their personal freedom is another issue. One grandmother told Bean: “I should be getting on the bus to go to Atlantic City with the other seniors. Instead I’m getting up and making lunches and making sure I’m home when they get home from school.”

Many grandparents don’t sign up for social services that they are eligible for.

“They’re fearful that foster care workers will come into their home and deem them not suitable, and the children will be ripped out of their care,” says Bean.

“So they live below the radar – even though they are entitled to the same kind of support that non-relative foster parents have.”

Everyone suffers, she says.

“The children have terrible fears of abandonment. They’ve lost their parents, and now they wonder what will happen to them if their grandmother dies.”

Social policies that support grandparent-headed families are the long-term solution, says Bean, as well as reaching out to those in the community in need and educating them on how they can get help.

There is one bright note, however. Many of the grandparents feel they are getting a second chance at parenting.

“Many have told me that they take pride on how well their grandchildren are doing,” says Bean.

A member of West Chester University’s social work faculty since 1998, Bean earned an undergraduate degree in biology and psychology, a master’s in social administration and her Ph.D. degree from Case Western Reserve. Her work has been widely published in scholarly journals on social issues.