Living with Grandma and Grandpa

We all know that in some instances grandparents are raising grandchildren, and may even cover grandparent visitation or custody in our classes. It’s always useful for our students to have some data to supplement the topic and have a better sense of the scope of this occurring.

There is a new report from Pew Research that does just that. The report states that 10% of grandchildren live with grandparents. Pew Research on Social & Demographic Trends issued a report by Gretchen Livingston on September 4, 2013, titled At Grandmother’s House We Stay. This  10% translates to 7.7 million kids in 2011, with 3 million of them raised primarily by a grandparent.  The report breaks out the data in several ways, including race, ethnicity, challenges faced by parents, grandparent and grandchild profiles, and the time span of caregiving (over half of the grandparents have been caregiving for the grandchild for 3 or more years). A pdf of the report is available here.

Becky Morgan