African American Grandmothers Raising their Grandchildren

Stepping Up to the Plate While Facing the Challenges

Description

I

n the United States, there is a growing number of grandmothers who are assuming the role of primary caregivers to their grandchildren. Grandmothers as caregivers are often referred to as providing kinship care. It is a unique form of intergenerational parenting and differs from parenting by birthparents (McGoldrick, 1999).

All experts agree that kinship care continues to grow exponentially. The result of the last US Census found 4.5 million children in kinship caregiving arrangements; of these, more than a half million were African American children (U.S. Census, 2000; Minkler & Fuller-Thomson, 2005). It is evident that the African American community is disproportionately represented.

The percentage of children in kinship care is higher than in the child population (Hill, 2006). Kinship caregivers have been described as older African American women who are single and have limited incomes and a low educational level (Cuddenback, 2004). Despite their income, they have decided to assume the role of primary caregiver. Kinship care is beneficial for children. It allows them to maintain ties with their cultural community (Scannapieco, Hegar, & McAlpine, 1997), is less traumatic than being in foster care with strangers (Scannapieco & Hegar, 1999), and supports their well-being (Solomon & Marx, 1995).

Today, I’m going to talk about the growing phenomenon of African American grandmothers as primary caregivers to their grandchildren. This type of caregiving has occurred for centuries and continues to increase but is facing some difficult contemporary challenges.

The focus of my presentation is African American Grandmothers in kinship care. I will discuss the following aspects of on kinship care:

• Definitions
• History
• Rationale for assuming the role of caregiver
• Benefits to grandparents and children in care
• Challenges to grandparents and children in care

Definitions

Kinship care is defined as the caregiving of a dependent child by a relative or close family friend when biological parents are unavailable, unwilling, unable, or cannot care for the child (Child Welfare League of American (CWLA), 1994). It is described as “the full-time nurturance and protection of a child” (Simpson & Lawrence-Webb, 2009). There are basically two types of kinship arrangements. One type is called formal, kinship foster, or public kinship care, which is facilitated by the public child welfare system or courts.

The other, informal or private kinship care, results from agreements among family members with or without the involvement of the courts. This type exists without the supervision from the public child welfare system. In addition, outside the foster care system, there are large numbers of children in private or informal kinship care. The majority of children in kinship care are in informal arrangements (Simpson & Lawrence-Webb, 2009). More research exists on formal than informal kinship care (Simpson & Lawrence-Webb).

The type of arrangement is seen as influential to the level of services received. Most researchers concur that caregivers in private kinship care receive less services than those in public kinship care (Letiecq, Bailey, & Porterfield, 2008).

History

Kinship care is a traditional practice in the African American community. Historically, children were taken into the homes of other adults when parents were sold into slavery (Wilson, 1989). Later, during the Great Black Migration in which adults moved from the South to the North to obtain better jobs and for upward mobility led to a large number of grandparents caring for grandchildren (Wilson, 1989). Contemporarily, more children of color than their White peers are entering the public child welfare system. African American grandmothers seem to cope better with their caregiving responsibilities than their counterparts in other racial groups (Caputo, 2001; Goodman & Silverstein, 2001).

Rationale for assuming the role

Grandmothers who assume the role of caregivers are overwhelmingly seen as making a huge sacrifice. Gleeson and his colleagues (2009) found that relatives’ assumption of the role could be explained by three overlapping factors (a) the reasons that the children’s parents were unable to care for them, (b) the caregiver’s motivation for assuming responsibility for the child; and (c) the pathways or routes that children took to the caregivers’ home. In a sample of African American grandmothers, Gibson (2002) listed six interrelated reasons for making the role shift from grandmother to caregiver: (a) tradition of kinkeeping; (b) relationship with grandchildren; (c) distrust of the foster care system; (d) grandmother as the only resource; (e) strong relationship with the Lord; and (f) refusal of the grandchild’s other grandmother to assist with caregiving.

Benefits to grandmothers

Many authors have found that kinship care is beneficial to grandmother caregivers. African American grandmothers are more satisfied with life and less negative than grandmothers in other racial groups (Goodman & Silverstein, 2001). Knowing that their grandchildren are safe results in peace of mind. Jendrek (1993) found that caregiving provided a purpose for living.

Cost to grandmothers

Despite the benefits, grandmothers must change their lifestyles to assume the care of young children when they are older and not in the child bearing stage of life. For some, caregiving has a negative influence on health, well-being, and finances (Burnette, 1997; Fuller-Thompson & Minkler, 2000; Kelley, Whitley, Sipe, & Yorker, 2000). Challenges: There are four major challenges faced by grandmothers in their role as caregivers. They are discussed in no particular order.

1. Governmental financial assistance. Kinship care arrangements occurs at all socioeconomic levels. Some caregivers do not need financial assistance from the government but many do. The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) child-only grant is the only cash assistance available to all caregivers based solely on a non-biological child being in the household. It does not consider the assets of the caregiver. Yet, the limited numbers of caregivers receiving it leads to the assumption that they are unaware of such provisions (Nelson, Gibson, & Bauer, 2010).
2. Contact and interaction with the birthparents. Grandparent caregivers continue to want to support the parents of their grandchildren but must also manage the accompanying intra-family conflict (Gibson, 2002). Gleeson and Seryak (2010) found that birthparents care for and are concerned about their children in kinship care. However, issues of authority in the face of who is in charge may surface with the return to the birthparent if only for a brief visit. In rare situations, the relationship between the grandmothers and birthparents do not change, allowing active support of non-residential parenting (Gibson, 2002).
3. Custody issues in private or informal arrangements. Grandmothers in informal arrangements accept the responsibility of their grandchildren without legal rights (Kroll, 2007). The lack of legal rights allows birthparents to retrieve their children at any point regardless of the amount of time invested and financial resources used for caregiving. Depending on the state of residency, the lack of legal custody acts as a barrier to school enrollment and obtaining medical services for children in care (Albert, 2000; Bruce, 2004). In many states, the Defacto Custodian legislation allows grandparents to have equal standing with birthparents before a court. However, the definition of this legislation and its’ provisions continue to be challenged and varied among states.
4. Informal or private kinship care arrangements. While the literature on caregivers in this type of arrangement continues to grow, it remains sparse. One reason points to it being out of the public child welfare system (Simpson & Lawrence-Webb, 2009). Another reason may be the tendency of caregivers in informal arrangement to stay from under the radar of professionals for fear of being questioned about circumstances surrounding the arrangement. Regardless of the rationale, the prevalence of informal arrangements demands more attention.

Conclusion

It is clear that African American grandmothers in the kinship caregiving role act as a resource to the birthparents (their adult children) and to the society at large as well. These older women give of themselves for the betterment of their grandchildren without much in return. They have “stepped-up to the plate” and changed their life style to help another generation succeed. Should we as a society also do our part to help them?

references

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1. Are you willing to change your lifestyle to help a loved one? Suppose that loved one was a young dependent child?
2. Actually, what if that loved one was your grandchild whose parents could not or would not care for him or her? - Dr. Priscilla Gibson