Baby Boomers are raising their grand-kids, reported SecondAct.com earlier this year. While it may not come as a big surprise given the difficult economic times,one can’t help but wonder what else may be going on? For one, there are 76 million Baby Boomers in general. Second, Baby Boomers have been referred to as the “Sandwich Generation” because they care for their parents and their own kids…and now many are faced with the task of a third responsibility?
Other factors at play: According to a social worker cited by SecondAct, the factors include:
- a decline in the number of traditional foster parents;
- an increase in the number of reports of child abuse/neglect due to various factors like parental substance abuse, mental illness and incarceration; and
- death or deployment of a parent
“The number of children living in a grandparent’s home has increased significantly over the past decade, according to 2010 data from the U.S. Census Bureau. The report showed that 4.9 million children under the age of 18 (7 percent) live in grandparent-headed households — an increase from 4.5 million 10 years ago.”
When asked about the special challenges older Boomers might face, one social worker had this to say:
“More than 1 in 4 of these older parents have a disability and may be unable to attend to their own medical needs due to lack of child care, respite care or adequate health insurance. They are frequently stressed at a time in their lives when they did not expect to care for children.”
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Remember, if you have one or more children at home under the age of 18, you really need a Child Protection Plan. Without such a plan, if you are killed or incapacitated in an accident, the police will typically show up at the house to notify family. But if the police find your kids home alone, or with a babysitter, they will have no choice but to call in Child Protective Services and have your kids removed from your home until the system can figure out what to do, and that may take weeks or even months.
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