TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/110590/1105140.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 6.8 KB | 143 lines

                                                                                LIVING, Page 86

To Grandma's House We Go


More and more senior citizens are missing out on retirement
while they serve as surrogate parents for their grandchildren

By JILL SMOLOWE/WEST WAYNESVILLE


    Ollie Duggan still has a vision of what grandparenting is
supposed to be. In that fantasy, her two grandchildren, Joey
and Lorrie, arrive to spend the night at her home in the
mountains of Clyde, N.C. She cooks their favorite foods and
spoils them with gifts. When they act up, she looks away,
knowing her job is to dote, not to discipline. When the
children leave, she returns to a life of leisure and travel,
earned after raising four children of her own. The dream, says
Duggan, 68, is of "a time in my life when I can come and go
without responsibility to anyone."

    It is only a dream. In 1983 Duggan's son Terry and his wife
split up. First they deposited their nine-month-old daughter
with his mother; within the year, they also dropped off their
three-year-old son. The moves were only temporary -- at first.
But the children's mother announced that she wanted to live her
own life. In 1986 Terry died of a heart attack. With that,
Duggan resolved to raise her grandchildren as if they were her
own offspring. Now her travel plans have been supplanted by
worries about how she will save enough money for her grandson's
medical-school education. "Of course, I love the children," she
says. "But I've been deprived of my golden years. Why wouldn't
I resent it?"

    Duggan's wistful question is echoed by thousands of American
grandparents who are finding the luster of their golden years
dulled by responsibilities they never anticipated. Yes, they
love their grandkids. And yes, they stand ready to serve as the
family National Guard when a crisis arises. But a host of
social ills -- from drug abuse and divorce to financial
hardship and teenage pregnancy -- have turned many graying
citizens into full- or part-time custodians of their
grandchildren precisely when they were preparing to ease into
retirement and a new independence. Unexpectedly robbed of the
"grand" part of grandparenting, many feel angry and resentful.
They are also bewildered by their children's choices, which
they find in profound violation of their own values.

    According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 3 million children live
with their grandparents, a 50% jump over the past decade. Of
those, 882,000 live in homes where a parent is not present.
While multigenerational households have long been common to
working-class neighborhoods and to African-American and
Hispanic communities of any income level, the phenomenon now
cuts across race and class lines. Such arrangements are most
prevalent in the nation's inner cities, where drug addiction
and teenage pregnancy run high. But among white middle-class
grandparents -- a group that traditionally has treasured its
independence -- an ever-increasing number are providing care
while their children muddle through divorces, financial crises
and the logistics of two-career marriages.

    Barbara Kirkland, 51, of Colleyville, Texas, voices a common
refrain. Six years ago, she and her husband took over the
upbringing of their four-year-old granddaughter Trisha after
they concluded that the child was being abused. "Becoming a
parent again is not a first choice," Kirkland says. "It's a
last alternative."

    The sad irony is that today's grandparents were supposed to
have more alternatives than their predecessors. Modern senior
citizens are healthier, livelier and often wealthier than in
the past, and while many still find grandparenting a joy,
others reap rich rewards in work, leisure and community
activity. "They have been helping other people all their
lives," says Dr. Arthur Kornhaber, president of the Foundation
for Grandparenting. "Now many of them say, `It's my turn.'"

    Instead, some are experiencing a stressful kind of deja vu.
They often feel overwhelmed by the emotional, financial and
legal hardships of their improvised status as child guardians.
In hardscrabble urban areas, where strung-out parents use their
welfare checks to buy drugs, grandparents must support young
wards on slender fixed incomes. The better-off find themselves
pressed too. "Without the kids to take care of, I wouldn't be
working as much," says Florence Gilmore, 57, of Long Beach,
Calif., who works as a private-duty nurse to support three
young grandsons. Nonetheless, Gilmore faced the prospect of
bankruptcy before a state agency provided $694 in monthly
assistance.

    Even grandparents who have saved for retirement are feeling
the pinch. Ollie Duggan adopted her grandchildren so she could
draw further on her dead husband's Social Security to defray
the costs of child care. "I'm the mother, the grandmother, the
granddaddy, the daddy. I'm it all," she says. Peggy Plante, 49,
understands that frustration well. Plante quit her job in a
Braintree, Mass., real estate office in 1988 to care for a
sickly infant granddaughter born to two teenage, drug-abusing
parents. "We give up everything," Plante says, "and nobody
looks out after us."

    As a result, grandparents are beginning to look out for one
another, chiefly by banding together in support groups like
those run by Sylvie de Toledo, a clinical social worker in Long
Beach. Her sessions offer members an opportunity to overcome
their isolation and vent anger toward their children for
failing to accept their parental responsibilities. They also
provide an outlet for frustration toward the grandchildren who
disrupted comfortable routines. These groups can help navigate
issues such as obtaining custody and securing medical care for
children.

    Nonetheless, the pressures are such that some frustrated
grandparents are closing the door on their hospitality. In
inner cities, where a succession of teenage pregnancies in a
family can result in grandparents who are as young as their
early 30s, many are flatly refusing to care for grandchildren.
Thus the burden is sometimes passed along to
great-grandparents.

    Most grandparents, however, dig in and make the best of a
difficult situation. Two years ago, after 2 1/2-year-old
Mitchell was left in their care, Shirley and Charles Gates of
West Waynesville, N.C., reluctantly set aside their plans to
buy a camper and spend their retirement hunting and fishing.
"When we first got the baby," says Shirley, "it was really hard
on me and Paw-paw." They remain angry at their daughter, who,
Shirley says, pays no support and rarely visits. But the
Gateses have found their grandson a constant joy and challenge.
"It's been worth it," says Shirley, "because Mitchell needed
us." The senior Gateses can no longer imagine life without him.