Grandparents Make a Tough Trade

By Mary Tudor

A large and growing number of older Americans find themselves sacrificing the personal enjoyments of retirement for the mixed blessing of raising grandchildren, the sons and daughters of their own grown children.

Many of these so-called "parenting grandparents" have also endured the heart-wrenching experience of losing their own children. In some cases, the children have died under violent or mysterious circumstances; in others, they've been banished because their behavior or lifestyle endangers the younger generation.

"You give up your son to get your grandson. You give up your children to get your grandchildren. That's the way it works," says Nina Villanueva, 70. Nina is the mother of two very different sons and the grandmother of a cheerful and bright-eyed two-year-old named Xavier. The boy lives with Nina and her husband Rudy, also 70, in a pretty little corner house surrounded by rose bushes in Oakland, California.

Nina and Rudy's oldest son, Frank, is a West Point graduate who's now a major working at the Pentagon. Their younger son, Rodolfo, Xavier's father, is a drug addict. Rodolfo and his girlfriend, also an addict, have a second child, one-month-old Alexandra, currently in foster care. Xavier lived in three foster homes before coming to his grandparents' home in January.

Nina and Rudy see Rodolfo and Xavier's mother once a week during a court-ordered, two-hour visitation that takes place under the controlled supervision of the local Child Protective Services (CPS)agency. Under a restraining order won by Xavier's attorney, any further contact would jeopardize the fragile legal thread that keeps Xavier in his grandparents' home. Their petition for legal guardianship comes up later this summer.

"On Christmas I felt so guilty. I had him for a whole week, and I felt so guilty as a grandma to have him for a whole week that when she [Xavier's mother] called -- they just wanted to give the baby a hug for Christmas -- I said 'Okay, come over.' But then she just picked him up and took him across the street, and the CPS worker found out," says Nina, explaining an unfortunate breach in their court-ordered supervision of Xavier. "That's why they [the court] won't give him to us yet."

Family matters

Xavier is one of roughly 1.5 million U.S. children who live with and are cared for by their grandparents. Behind this statistic is a laundry list of the ills besetting the American family: substance abuse (in 44 percent of cases); child abuse, neglect, or abandonment (28 percent); teenage pregnancy (11 percent); death of the parent (5 percent); unemployment (4 percent); divorce (4 percent); and others, including AIDS (4 percent).

Rene Woodworth, project director of the Grandparent Information Center of the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), which collected these statistics, says parenting grandparents are most often grandmothers, ranging in age from 30 to 80, with 75 percent of these women over age 50. About 40 percent of these grandparents are raising these grandchildren -- an average of 1.5 grandchildren per home -- on incomes of less than $20,000 per year. Only 11 percent of the children are as young as or younger than Xavier, but 75 percent are under 12.

Rudy and Nina are among the minority of parenting grandparents who have formal legal arrangements that keep a grandchild in their care. Many parenting grandparents sacrifice both child welfare benefits and protection from their wayward offspring to keep grandchildren privately. Frequently, the comings and goings of the adult parent make the responsibility for caregiving ambiguous. Grandparents may also fear reprisals from their children or children-in-law if they attempt to win formal parenting rights. 

Social-service workers emphasize that these parenting grandparents have little in common with their peers who act as part-time caregivers, the grandmothers who provide free child care to 12 million preschool toddlers while Mommy is at work. "In these situations, the relationship with the adult parent is intact," says psychotherapist Lenora Poe, who maintains a support group for "kinship caregivers." "The family is also maintaining the traditional grandparent-grandchild relationship."

Woodworth says that when she first began speaking on the issues facing parenting grandparents four years ago, few hands in the audience would respond to the question of whether they were or knew people raising grandchildren. "Now, everyone's hand goes up," she says. "More and more, they are coming forward."

Many grandparents raising their grandchildren still hide their circumstances out of embarrassment and shame. Very few such grandparents continue to enjoy the company of their peers, who expect grandchildren to be occasional visitors in their friends' lives, not a continuous and demanding presence. What's worse is that behind their natural joy and pride in grandparenthood lurks a nagging voice that suggests they themselves have failed as parents and might do so again -- with yet another generation.

Means of support

Nina and Rudy frankly admit that their two sons, born seven years apart, experienced vastly different childhoods. Frank was nine years old when the family left a comfortable life in the Philippines in 1971 to live in the U.S., where Nina worked outside the home. "Not enough love," she says of Rodolfo's childhood, when he was cared for by babysitters from the age of two-and-a-half. Fortunately, the pensions which the couple amassed -- including a U.S. military pension Rudy earned as a Filipino scout -- now provide a comfortable home for Xavier.

Candid and articulate, Nina and Rudy have achieved a peace of mind and peace at home that are the result of a strong marriage and their work in four different support groups. The first was a group for codependents of drug abusers; the second, a parenting group. The couple now regularly attends a class on parenting that's especially for grandparents, as well as a weekly self-help discussion that often focuses on the relationships of grandparents raising their children's
children.

"They are teaching us this so-called tough love," says Nina, who nevertheless remains emotionally dazed that she has to deny her son food and shelter in order to keep her grandson. "My son is very loving," she says, but adds, "but what's that kiss for when you turn around and take drugs? We stopped helping them because that's what CPS wants us to do."

Rudy wants to petition the court for custody of Alexandra, whom they see during a second formal visitation every Tuesday. "They should be together," he says of Xavier and his sister, their only grandchildren. Nina is not as enthusiastic: "I keep telling him it's going to be hard with two."

Nina and Rudy sometimes seem to forget that they are grandparents, not parents. For instance, they envision that Xavier will attend the same private Catholic secondary school as their sons. But when asked about watching a second generation of Villanuevas graduate from Oakland's Bishop O'Dowd High School, Rudy says, "We want these children of ours to get their act together so that we can get these babies taken care of. We are old and will die."

Xavier himself defies quotation. Alert and responsive to his grandma's words, he speaks the chirpy dialect of a happy two-year-old. Physically adorable, he's apparently free of effects from his mother's drug habit. If love and attention make children into successful adults, this one should shoot the moon. Clearly born to charm, Xavier is getting all the tender care his grandma can no longer give her son.