Grandparents Parenting

Increasingly grandparents are parenting their grandchildren as a result of problems in the parent generation, such as drug addiction, incarceration, and AIDS. Parenting of grandchildren (often referred [Page 564]to as custodial grandparenting) goes beyond simple babysitting; it involves taking primary responsibility for the care of one or more grandchildren for 6 months or more without the parents present. In most cases, such grandparents do not have legal authority over their grandchildren (through adoption, legal custody, or guardianship); consequently, they often encounter obstacles in registering their grandchildren for school and getting them health insurance.

In addition to skipped-generation households where parents are not present, grandparents are also increasingly coparenting grandchildren in three-generational households largely as a result of divorce, financial difficulties, or both, in the parent generation. ...