What’s behind the trend of grandparents raising grandchildren?
A journalist asks: “A local program called “Kinship Navigator” is for adults raising children who are not their own. It’s mostly made of grandparents raising their grandchildren. A U.S. Census stat said: In Butler County, Ohio, 50 percent of all grandparents are raising their grandchildren. What’s behind this phenomenon? Local residents attribute drug abuse. Is that the case nationally? How does this affect the children being raised? What toll will this have on society overall?”
Alcohol and other-drug addiction in the parents is usually the reason grandparents raise grandchildren. This is the case in about a dozen situations of which I am personally aware–no exceptions in my admittedly limited database.
The good news is, the grandparents are clean and sober. The bad news is, the parents are not. But always, in every case, children are better off being raised in by people who are sober rather than by practicing addicts. There are no exceptions, because alcoholism (or other-drug addiction) in a custodial “parent” is prima facie evidence of child abuse–at the very least psychological abandonment of the child in favor of the drug. After all, the drug–and the addict–are the center of his or her universe, and of yours.