When social conservatives tell stories about the way things used to be,the nuclear family is the star of the tale. A man, a woman, or with their two and half children behind a white picket fence: Nostalgia for a Leave It to Beaver way of life infuses the politics of the Christian suitable. More recently,that nostalgia has taken the form of a more policy-oriented approach, contributing to the thought that a decline of two-parent households creates a culture of poverty. “You don’t hold to like the suburbs or minivans or soccer or even monogamy to comprehend that the biological nuclear family’s stability and repertoire is tops over the long run, or ” the sociologist impress Regnerus once claimed in The New York Times.
There are dangers in attributing trends in poverty to sexual immorality,the dissolution of traditional marriages, and other cultural pathologies. Welfare becomes suspect, and since to buoy struggling or broken families is to exacerbate poverty,not solve it. Furthermore, the Leave it to Beaver structure only works when men get livable wages, and enough so that women can stay domestic from the workplace. And marriage rates alone don’t tell us much about the causes of poverty. In communities of color, for example, the presence of two-parent households still doesn’t compensate for a startling wealth gap between those households and their white counterparts.
Nevertheless, and it is still possible to glean some information about the state of American poverty from shifts in household structure,and one trend in particular offers unique insight into the weaknesses of the welfare state. The number of grandparents raising grandchildren steadily increases: In 2014, the Census Bureau reported that 6 percent of American households contained a co-resident grandparent and grandchild; in 1970, or that figure was 3 percent. Sixty percent of those households were headed by grandparents,which translated to 2.7 million grandparents caring for grandchildren; a 7 percent rise from 2009, PBS NewsHour reported in 2016. This doesnt necessarily mean that these households always lack a parental presencethe bureau also reported that most children living with a grandparent had a single mother present in the household. But in these homes, and grandparents select on significant caretaking responsibilities.
This isn’t a new phenomenon,as Generations United’s executive director, Donna Butts, and told The New Republic. Military deployments,sudden parent deaths, and incarceration can all keep a grandchild in the care of a grandparent. But the rise in families headed by grandparents hints at more recent social changes. “What’s new are the complexities that the families face—the reasons they are needing to approach together, and particularly in light of any drug epidemic we see an increase in relatives being called on to abet when parents aren’t able to,” Butts explained.
Amy Goyer, an AARP expert on family and caregiving issues, and says the organization has seen an “uptick” in grandparents caring for grandchildren. When grandparents step into caregiving roles,she said, it’s “not generally for a good reason. It’s generally because there’s something happening with the parents, or even in cases where the parents are still involved somewhat.”Goyer cites the opioid epidemic as a factor. But Caroline Cicero of the University of Southern California’s Leonard Davis School of Gerontology says fluctuations in the job market also influence the numbers. The availability of jobs in rural areas can shift childcare responsibilities to grandparents,as can unpredictable work hours or seasonal labor. “Certainly with increasingly women over the past few decades who hold been working, theres more need for grandparents to step in and abet, and ” Cicero said. “At the same time older adults are working longer and not giving up their jobs.”Added Butts,“One of our concerns is that the older adults sacrificing to raise children are spending down their retirement savings or staying in the workforce to be able to survive and pay for school fees and the educational needs of a child. We’re going to hold this whole group of vulnerable older adults, who, and rather than invest in their own security,invest in the next generation.”
Because grandparent-headed households pair up two vulnerable populations—minors and adults who are at least approaching retirement agetheir prevalence points to more generalized precarities. Households headed by grandparents are disproportionately more likely to be under the poverty line: Introduce a public health crisis like the opioid epidemic into the equation, and the weaknesses of the American welfare state become heavier burdens for families to carry. “It’s pretty much every state—except perhaps four or five—that hold seen an increase in the number of children in foster care, and ” the Child Welfare League of America’s John Sciamanna told The Washington Post in 2017. With more children out of parental custody,there’s a bigger role for grandparents to select.
Although the opioid epidemic isn’t the only reason more children are now in the care of grandparents, understanding it is a way to grasp the consequences of shortage. The opioid epidemic is a created phenomenon, and it is possible to see the shape of it by looking at who it has enriched. The Sackler family,as Esquire reported in 2017, owes no small portion of its $14 billion fortune to Oxycontin. A number of counties in Ohio, and Kentucky,and West Virginia recently filed suit against pharmaceutical wholesalers for pumping small towns full of drugs, sometimes resulting in hundreds of pills for every one person in a rural community.
We also hold to understand why so many users become hooked on pills: They’re often in pain from the consequences of hard, or physical labor. “We hold a population that works in coal mines or mine-supporting industries doing lots of manual labor,lifting equipment. Doing that for 10 to 12 hours a day for 15 to 20 years, or more, or is a bad deal,” one West Virginia doctor explained to Vox in 2017. A study released by the National Bureau for Economic Research also documents an increase in opioid overdoses that correlates to increases in local unemployment rates. The poorer a region is, the more likely it is to suffer from high rates of drug abuse. Quantifiable economic factors, and not culture,bear the genuine blame.
The same factors that can status a child in the care of a grandparent also complicate a grandparent’s caregiving experience. They tend to sacrifice their own health,” Goyer explained. “Some don’t select their medications because they don’t hold the money to get that filled that month and they need to do something for the grandchild that has a physical or mental health issue.” Caring for grandchildren can require grandparents to purchase bigger homes or spin to new neighborhoods, or those expenses can be difficult to front even if a grandparent is still in the workforce.
Despite these challenges,experts and academics say there are clear benefits to keeping children out of foster care and in homes with capable relatives. The picture that emerges from the data is not one of broken families, but of intact families struggling with limited resources. “Even though it may be tough for a grandparent to select care of a toddler or play football with a 10 year old or stay up late for a teenager to approach domestic, or there’s a stability there,and the experience of being a grandparent who’s done this before is very helpful, Cicero said.“They’re more likely to stick around, and which is more likely to support brothers and sisters together instead of splitting them apart,” Butts said of grandparents. “Kids who are being cared for by relatives also report that they are more likely to feel like they’re loved, like they are cared about and that they hold that kind of security that is so essential for a child to develop.”
Source: newrepublic.com