In 1992, Cassandra Gentry is working full time and trying to finish her master’s degree, so she can move on with her career and lay the foundation for a comfortable retirement.
Life had other plans. Her daughter, Michelle, was killed in a domestic violence attack, leaving six-month-old Justine and two-year-old Julianne behind. The father went to prison, and no one could take care of them.
“I just ended up with two kids,” Gentry, now 70, told DailyMail.com.
I was working and going to school, trying to complete my education. I had to drop out of school, it was just too much. This is the hand that was given to me. So I just played it.
Further tragedies befell the family, and the gentry took responsibility for more children. She moved from Detroit to Washington, D.C., and Lowe is taking care of her 12-year-old granddaughters, Jada, and 17-year-old Tai Shun.
This is the hand that was given to me. says Cassandra Gentry, 70, pictured here with Tai Shun, in the latest incarnation of her longtime family
More than 2.4 million grandparents are raising at least one grandchild under the age of 18, according to the US Census Bureau.
She added, “By the time I thought I had caught up, I had to turn around again.”
She is not alone. According to the US Census Bureau, more than 2.4 million grandparents raise at least one grandchild under the age of 18.
Grandparents are pushed into this role for many reasons. In some cases, the parents have died, been rendered incapacitated by illness or injury, overdosed on opioids, or been imprisoned for a crime.
In other cases, parents have lost custody of their children due to abuse or neglect. Sometimes parents simply cannot raise their children on their own and turn to relatives to pick up the slack.
“It often happens when something hits the country, like the opioid epidemic or the Covid pandemic, and people have to turn to relatives,” said Donna Potts, executive director of Generations United, an advocacy and support group.
It’s almost always surprising, it can be in the middle of the night. They are often in shock or shock, and don’t know what services or support they can access to help their child.
Butts added that many grandparents shy away from the idea of turning over grandchildren to the state, where the long-term results are poor and brothers and sisters are often separated from one another.
Grandparents taking care of their grandchildren is a mixed bag. About half are 60 or older, more than two-thirds are married, and just over half are still working.
Some have a hard time: about a fifth live below the poverty line, a quarter have a disability, and 14 percent cannot speak English well.
They are disproportionately black or brown and live in the South.
Some take responsibility for a child as a temporary solution, but it can become much more than a Band-Aid—45 percent of grandparents have taken care of a grandchild for more than five years.
It is often a challenge. Many of them are pushed into full-time childcare when they were just getting ready to unwind from years of hobbies and vacations.
“They’ve lost that dream of retirement, what they thought their life would be like,” Potts said.
Grandparents who have responsibility for grandchildren are advised to allow them to open up and keep themselves informed about the issues facing their lives.
Donna Potts (left), executive director of Generations United, an advocacy and support group, and Bob Casey, a Democratic senator from Pennsylvania and chair of the Committee on Aging, say grandparents need a helping hand.
Grandparents are pushed into this role for many reasons. In some cases, parents die, become incapacitated by illness or injury, overdose on opioids, or are imprisoned for a crime
Parenting Again in Loveland, Colorado
Jill Engel has been willing to help by raising her grandson, Bryson, but says grandparents like hers in Colorado need some extra help themselves.
The mother-of-two and her husband, Joe, took responsibility for Bryson because her daughter, who had struggled with mental health issues and an eating disorder for years, couldn’t handle motherhood.
Jill Engel and her family.
“When I confronted Bryson, I had such a struggle finding resources, finding support, finding someone who understood what we were going through,” Engel said in a recent video testimony.
‘And there was nothing. There was absolutely nothing.
She describes Bryson as a “clever young man” who can “go above and beyond”, but admits that it was difficult raising a child born with fetal alcohol syndrome and suffering from Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism.
She says the Covid pandemic, and the subsequent closure of workplaces, schools and other services, has made life more difficult for grandparents. She heads a support group called the Grand Family Alliance to help them.
“I think this system was not built to help us raise children and grandparents and raise their grandchildren,” she added.
They often have to juggle work, childcare, and other responsibilities. Some have to deal with the emotional trauma of the absence of their grandchildren’s parents.
This was the case for the gentry class. Three of her charges have been purged for murder.
“Most of our children have had a traumatic experience,” she said.
“When my kids got into second or third grade, they started realizing ‘Oh, where’s my mom and where’s my dad and why don’t they like me?'” “
The COVID-19 outbreak has orphaned more than 140,000 American children, leaving grandparents or other family members to care for them, according to Senate Senate Committee data.
The pandemic has been particularly harsh — many grandparents have lost their jobs or had their hours cut at the same time schools and day care centers closed, and children had to study from home.
The opioid epidemic in America has deepened the crisis. Drugs kill more than 100,000 people each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, many of whom are parents who leave behind children they need to care for.
The federal government is a big fan of grandparents—and says they save taxpayers about $4 billion each year in money that would be needed for the childcare system.
Their generosity is not always repaid. Washington is currently cutting back the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, food stamps, and other schemes that many rely on.
Potts says some grandparent caregivers could lose SNAP money because they saved for retirement — and that egg would likely exclude them from the program, under the plans under consideration.
In the group’s most recent annual report, they warn that a quarter of households headed by grandparents weren’t always able to put enough food on the table — that’s more than double the national average.
“Grandparent families are at greater risk of hunger,” said Luis Guardia, president of the Center for Food and Action Research, a national anti-poverty charity, which contributed data for this report.
Guardia added that grandparents should not be “forced to choose between paying rent, providing needed medication, or feeding themselves and the children in their care.”
Last month, Bob Casey, a Pennsylvania Democratic senator and chairman of the Committee on Aging, introduced two bills to streamline the benefits system so that grandparents and millions of older Americans can get support.
“We must ensure that older Americans get the support and protection they need to be economically secure,” Casey said in a statement.
