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June 1, 2025
This week's article is about grandparents who obtained custody of their grandchildren due to their daughter's battle with drug addiction.“Grandfamilies” are a fast-growing but often invisible demographic. Last year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, 2.4 million children were being raised by grandparents or other relatives. The opioid epidemic has exacerbated these numbers, evidenced by the fact that many of the states with the most grandparents raising grandchildren are also those with the highest opioid prescribing rates. It’s impossible to know the exact number, because many grandparents never formally legalize their relationship. These grandparents decided to sue for custody to avoid the obstacles of parenting without legal rights — basic tasks like registering them for school, traveling or taking them to the doctor. They also felt that establishing their legal relationship with the children would enable a sense of emotional permanence for them and for the children. The grandchildren had not experienced normalcy or stability. They've been traumatized. They need to feel wanted. The grandparents haven’t been given the luxury of settling into old age, they’ve had to let go of aspirations that they had for the rest of their lives. The grandfather shared: “You grow up, go to college, get married, have a profession, raise a family, your kids graduate, you spend the next 20 years before retirement at the height of your career, maybe traveling and saving for retirement, and then you enjoy your grandkids and you grow old and die,” he said. “Well, that’s not happening for us. We will have been raising children from 1989 through 2034 — that’s 46 years of continuous parenting. Sometimes I do have panic attacks, I’ll say that. I wake up and think, I can’t sustain this.” Help can be found at GrandFacts Fact Sheets
Here's the link to the article: My Parents Expected to Be Retired. Instead, They Are Raising My Sister’s Kids. - The New York Times