According to a new Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data, one in ten children in the United States are living with a grandparent, and the numbers have been rising sharply since 2008, the first year of the current recession.
The study noted that 41% of those children who live with a grandparent (or grandparents) are also being raised primarily by that grandparent, and that this figure, which represents 2.9 million children, rose slowly throughout the first decade of the 21st century but spiked from 2007 to 2008. In that single year, there was a 6% increase.
The authors of the Pew study said that, “The phenomenon of grandparents serving as primary caregivers is more common among blacks and Hispanics than among whites, but the sharpest rise since the recession began has been among whites.”
The Generations United GrandFacts Report released by the Brookdale Foundation defines skipped generation grandfamilies as “families that are headed by grandparents in which no parents of the grandchildren are present. These families are formed because of parental death, substance abuse, mental health problems, military deployment, divorce, domestic violence, or other reasons.” The statistics from the US Census Bureau indicate that 2% of all children under the age of 18 (64,500 kids) were living in skipped generation grandfamilies in Florida as of 2007.
For local grandparents looking for resources, there is a Yahoo users group for Florida grandparents raising their grandchildren, a national organization called Grandparentsraisinggrandchildren.org, plus a Brevard County chapter of the same group.
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