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Millions of aging seniors must now bring up their children's children
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Grandpa Chuck
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Dec 26, 2001 11:08 PST
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LIVING with grandparents is kind of weird because they are so old,
explains 14-year-old Joel Dombroski (not his real name) of Medicine Hat,
Alta. "When I was living with my [adoptive] mom I never used to tell
anyone I was adopted, but it's okay to say I'm living with my
grandparents, because so many kids do." In fact, Joel has only one key
concern: "I worry a lot about them dying. Then what would happen to me?"
Young Joel is correct in perceiving his situation as far from unusual.
For as many as eight million North American seniors, retirement is
turning out very differently than planned, as they struggle to provide
homes for grandchildren whose parents are, to put it mildly, less than
adequate to the job. Some take on the raising of their children's
children when the parents are stricken by incapacitating illness or
injury, but most often the problem is radical dysfunction. So the
taxpayers must often pick up the tab for welfare, counselling, legal aid
and healthcare for these people, while anxious relatives battle for
custody or at least visitation rights for the children enmeshed in their
disordered lives.
"It's one of the most remarkable demographic phenomena in American
society over the last few decades," declares Meredith Minkler,
University of California professor of Community Health Education.
Indeed, without the work of the older generation, the foster care system
might collapse under the load. In the United States some 150,000
children have been orphaned by AIDS alone. But this is minuscule by
comparison with the number being grandparented because of divorce,
neglect, teen pregnancy, domestic violence, poverty, unemployment,
mental illness, substance abuse, incarceration and death.
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Source: Report Magazine
Complete Article: http://207.216.246.197/missed/p50i011217f.html
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