"In the United States, 2.7 million grandparents were raising their grandchildren in 2012, and 39 percent of these grandparents have had custody for five years or more."

After the tests of divorce, custody battles can prove to be a challenging foe, that can test the endurance of the individuals involved, and that is assuming the individuals involved have their personal lives, finances, and jobs in order. If hindrances like addiction, wasteful spending, and other setbacks create a dilemma within the court, the judge can rule in favor of foster care.

That’s often times, where grandparents step up to the plate.

Custodial grandparents can create an option within the court system that prevents the separation of children from their extended family, while potentially still keeping parents at arms-length. Seven million, or 10 percent of the 65 million grandparents in the United States in 2012, lived with at least one grandchild, according to the United States Census Bureau.

Crunching numbers

Of the approximately 4.2 million households, or 3 percent of all households that contained both grandchildren under the age of 18 and their grandparents, more than 60 percent were maintained by a grandparent, while one in three had no parent present.

In the United States, 2.7 million grandparents were raising their grandchildren in 2012, and 39 percent of these grandparents have had custody for five years or more. Furthermore, only one-third of children who lived with a grandparent also had two parents present.

The increases in the number of grandparents raising grandchildren, can be attributed to situations, such as an increase in extreme poverty, the impact of crack cocaine and other harmful drugs, mental health problems, an increase in the incarceration of women, military service, domestic violence, child abuse, and neglect.

Of the grandparent-lead households, 47 percent of them are white, 28 percent are African American, and 18 percent are Latino. Additionally, 71 percent are younger than the age of 60, and 19 percent live in poverty.

Offering support

With the rapid increase in need, support for grandparent-led households has been steadily rising as well, through the reauthorization of the Older Americans Act of 1965, which supports home and community-based services through the National Family Caregiver Support Program (NFCSP).

This program allows grandparent-lead households ages 55 and older (as of the 2006 reauthorization, which was last updated in 2016) to be eligible for services provided by the state, such as information to caregivers about available services, assistance to caregivers in gaining access to the services, individual counseling, organization of support groups, caregiver training, and supplemental services on a limited basis, and respite care.

This legislation and program has allowed for affordable care for both the grandparents and grandchildren. The American Dream Down Payment Act, signed into law in 2003, gave the authority to study the housing needs of kinship care families and develop public housing for grandchildren and their caretakers.

Government assistance can provide the resources necessary for many grandparent-led households to keep their heads above financial water, given that many are near or over retirement ages. The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and foster care subsidies’ statistics regarding how many are using these programs have proven their need. Under half a million children being raised by grandparents have received TANF grants, as of 2007, while an additional 200,000 are supported through the foster care system.

Respecting your elders

Maintaining a household can be its own challenges for grandparents raising grandchildren. Emotional and behavioral problems are quicker to develop than children in the overall U.S. population, according to a study from Kent State University in conjunction with the National Institute of Mental Health. Additionally, boys are more prone to have externalized behavior problems in the form of misconduct or acting out, than girls. Girls are more likely to keep it internal through anxiety, fearfulness, or depression.

With the growth of children, comes the self-discovery of their identity, and in children raised by their grandparents, that can lead to many questions. For some kids, if not most, their parents were never directly present in their lives, leading to quandaries regarding their self-worth and value, which can spiral into a variety of mental health problems.

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Custody conflict

Depending on the state, grandparental rights to their grandchildren can be limited. The decisions regarding the welfare of children remain the fundamental right of the parent, after a U.S. Supreme Court case in 2000.

Given that the conflict rests in the biological parent or parents’ ability to maintain a stable home and life, grandparents often have to prove in court that their child or the co-parent of their grandchild are unable to create that level of stability. This creates questions regarding the future, when revisiting and adjusting aspects to custody agreements.

In the state of Florida, for example, assuming that the grandparent was granted “permanent custody” of the grandchild, the question arises as to the burden of proof at the modification stage and who bears that burden, when the parent comes back later in the grandchild’s life, looking to regain custody of the grandchild.

Sometimes, custody disputes between parents and grandparents over the grandchildren are not due to neglect, endangerment, or any sort of negative consequence. A recent case in Pennsylvania ruled against paternal grandparents that sued for custody, entirely based on a false presumption of the state law.

Their reasoning was that the parents were not fit for custody, because they separated after six years of marriage but never initiated formal divorce or custody proceedings. Instead, they reached an informal accord regarding custody, which left the presumption of vulnerability.

While this case creates personal fallout among the families involved, it also creates potential legal fallout on state and national levels, involving custodial grandparents to be reexamined. Balancing state rights and the rights of an individual over their children can often create legal and ethical problems, involving family structures and current familial arrangements.

For children with absent parents, the safety and comfort that a grandparent’s home can provide is invaluable. These familial safe havens can help keep a child’s feet on the ground, in a time when the uncertainty of life can be overwhelming.