Coming full circle

WOMEN OF MERIT

More and more grandparents are raising their children's children

BY MELANIE CSEPIGA
Times Correspondent

Sunday, May 8, 2005 12:17 AM CDT

Life for Deni Weber and her husband, Steve, dramatically changed when her daughter was killed.

"I never thought I'd be potty training again," the 53-year-old Deni Weber confessed.

The Webers, of Valparaiso, join a growing number of grandparents across the country whose roles have switched from doting to diapering.

"With our youngest off to college, we were looking forward to doing what we wanted to do. Now, all our priorities have shifted," Weber said.

The children, 7-year-old Sebastian and 3-year-old Siobhan Rose, have taken center stage since their mother, Jamie Gray, was stabbed to death in Valparaiso. Weber said she adjusted her work and school schedules to accommodate the children's needs.

That has meant negotiating reduced hours as a counselor at the Kankakee Valley Intermediate School as well as her internship in Chicago. An undergraduate of Valparaiso University, Weber has masters degrees in counseling and substance abuse and is working on her doctorate.

Weber said as a counselor she is seeing more families headed by grandmothers or both grandparents.

In the 1990s, the number of grandparent-maintained households rose 19 percent from 2 million in 1990 to 2.44 million in 1997, according to "Co-Resident Grandparents and Their Grandchildren: Grandparent Maintained Families," a U.S. Census Bureau report.

Of the 3.7 million grandparents maintaining households for their grandchildren in 1997, 2.3 million of them were grandmothers.

"Life hands you something and you go with it," Weber said, adding there are lots of "feel-goods" in raising her grandchildren even though she is often exhausted.

Barbara Gaebel-Morgan, a staff therapist at the Valparaiso University Counseling Center, said she can only see the numbers rising.

"First of all, even though lots of people are affluent, there is still a large population of poor. Single mothers don't have the resources, so grandparents help. Drug addiction is very much a part of it. Children can't live in that environment, so, often, the state gives them to the grandparents," Gaebel-Morgan said.

As in the case of Deni Weber, Gaebel-Morgan said the death of young parents from violence is more common. High suicide rates and acute illness contribute, too.

Baby boomer grandmothers who value their autonomy and looked forward to the future as a respite from children are finding themselves back in mother mode doing dirty faces, day care and den mother duty, reluctantly or not, Gaebel-Morgan said.

Many grandmothers who are raising their grandchildren still are in the workplace and could benefit from on-site child care, flex scheduling and other accommodations to suit their situations, but an increase in such benefits are unlikely, Gaebel-Morgan said.

"If what we're about in this country is strengthening families, there needs to be some kind of financial support for grandmothers. Tax credits, child-care vouchers, transportation, something," she said.