July 26, 2011, - 4:01 pm
Slacker Nation: 2 Milln US Kids Raised by Grandparents as Parents Abandon Kids; 3.1 Mill Not Raised by Parents
It’s bad enough that more than 40% of American kids are now born to single mothers and will be raised without any father figure in their lives. But it gets worse. In yet another sign of America’s decline, more and more U.S. kids are being raised by their grandparents as their only parents.
Is it racist for me to point out that as Black Americans are the trendsetters in many other areas of American life–with rap culture, music, and clothing dominating American society–they are also the trendsetters in the breakdown of the American family? Well, racist or not, the fact is that kids born out of wedlock was a dominant feature of Black America before it became so prevalent in White America. Black children being raised by their grandparents–primarily their grandmothers–or aunts was also prevalent in Black America. And, now, that trend, too, is spreading throughout the culture, with 3.1 million American kids living without a biological parent in their household.
Yes, the fact that more and more kids are being raised by grandparents isn’t just because of the influence of Black rap and hip-hop culture on White America. It’s also a product of feminist, selfish women and slacker guys who’ve been taught by feminist, selfish moms never to grow up and how not to be men. They were given birth to by “best friend” sperm and egg donors who refuse to act like parents. And they don’t know how to function as responsible adults caring for their progeny. And now we see the unhealthy results. There is also the embrace by the right, which used to condemn this sad American social phenomenon. Now, though, with Todd Palin admittedly having raising his illegitimate grandson, Tripp, for a couple of years, the “grandfamily” is now embraced by blind conservatives with no critical thinking skills or principles.
And it’s unhealthy. Aging grandparents usually don’t have the stamina or demeanor to be disciplinarians and active parents to their grandkids. And they simply don’t have the life expectancy or health, on average. Take Annabel Baird:
Four months of an empty nest were all that Annabel and John Baird had before their Highland Village, Texas, home wasn’t so empty anymore.
But unlike many families today, it wasn’t their adult children returning home or elderly parents moving in. It was their granddaughter Catie, just 10 months old when the Bairds’ son and his wife asked them to take her while they were in the midst of a divorce. She’s been there ever since. Catie, now 15, calls her grandmother “Mom.”
John died in 2007. Annabel Baird, 65, now lives with Catie in Richardson, a Dallas suburb. “Our son and his wife were unable to care for this baby. They came to us and asked us if we would take temporary custody. We said no but would take permanent custody and back out when they demonstrated their ability to care for this child,” she says. “That never happened.”
The Bairds’ experience is like so many grandparents today. Although it’s a family dynamic filled with complexities, more grandparents than ever are finding themselves in the throes of parenthood yet again. Census data released last month found that 3.1 million children in the USA were living without a parent present in the household in 2009. Of those, 59% lived with grandparents.
If you think this is good for America, think again.
“I wanted to be Grandma. You know, the kids come over and you treat them special and then you turn them home to their mother or father,” says Joyce Sylvia, 69, of Providence. “That’s what I had planned.”
Instead, she ended up adopting two granddaughters when they were in elementary school. Now they’re 12 and 15. . . .
“Some grandmothers are so downtrodden because this is devastating. Sixty is not when you want to be taking care of kids.”
Do you really think a nearly 70-year-old grandmother can stand up to two teenagers as the years continue and she gets older? Is this in the best interests of America’s future? No.
Experts say they have nagging fears and often are “hyper-vigilant,” Cox says. “They don’t want this child to go wrong. They worry so about what happened to their own child.”
They also worry about the passing years. “There’s no guarantee that they’re going to be there for that child,” says Gregory Smith, a gerontologist and developmental psychologist at Kent State University in Ohio. . . .
Carol Musil, a professor in the School of Nursing at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, has seen a heavy load of worries among the grandparents she has been studying since 1996.
“It’s this magnified multi-generational parenting. They’re worrying about two generations of kids.”
Much of the research conducted in the past 10 years has focused on the health and well-being of grandparents engaged in child-rearing.
“Grandparents, in general, have more physical disability and depression than their peers not raising grandkids,” says Esme Fuller-Thomson, a professor of social work at the University of Toronto.
Who would give up raising their own children? Very selfish, inhumane people and avowed slackers, that’s who. These aren’t men and women. They are children in adult bodies.
This is a disaster wrought by feminism, the Sixties hippies and their sexual revolution, and decades of feminizing men. Sorry, but people at high risk for dementia and brittle bones should not be raising kids.
Parents should be raising their kids.
Debbie,
When are you going to write about the so-called “Christian” terrorist in Jew-hating Norway?
Mike on July 26, 2011 at 4:03 pm