To Grandma's House We Go

By JILL SMOLOWE WEST WAYNESVILLE

< Ollie Duggan still has a vision of what grandparenting is supposed to be. In that fantasy, her two grandchildren, Joey and Lorrie, arrive to spend the night at her home in the mountains of Clyde, N.C. She cooks their favorite foods and spoils them with gifts. When they act up, she looks away, knowing her job is to dote, not to discipline. When the children leave, she returns to a life of leisure and travel, earned after raising four children of her own. The dream, says Duggan, 68, is of "a time in my life when I can come and go without responsibility to anyone."

It is only a dream. In 1983 Duggan's son Terry and his wife split up. First they deposited their nine-month-old daughter with his mother; within the year, they also dropped off their three-year-old son. The moves were only temporary -- at first. But the children's mother announced that she wanted to live her own life. In 1986 Terry died of a heart attack. With that, Duggan resolved to raise her grandchildren as if they were her own offspring. Now her travel plans have been supplanted by worries about how she will save enough money for her grandson's medical-school education. "Of course, I love the children," she says. "But I've been deprived of my golden years. Why wouldn't I resent it?"

Duggan's wistful question is echoed by thousands of American grandparents who are finding the luster of their golden years dulled by responsibilities they never anticipated. Yes, they love their grandkids. And yes, they stand ready to serve as the family National Guard when a crisis arises. But a host of social ills -- from drug abuse and divorce to financial hardship and teenage pregnancy -- have turned many graying citizens into full- or part-time custodians of their grandchildren precisely when they were preparing to ease into retirement and a new independence. Unexpectedly robbed of the "grand" part of grandparenting, many feel angry and resentful. They are also bewildered by their children's choices, which they find in profound violation of their own values.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 3 million children live with their grandparents, a 50% jump over the past decade. Of those, 882,000 live in homes where a parent is not present. While multigenerational households have long been common to working-class neighborhoods and to African-American and Hispanic communities of any income level, the phenomenon now cuts across race and class lines. Such arrangements are most prevalent in the nation's inner cities, where drug addiction and teenage pregnancy run high. But among white middle-class grandparents -- a group that traditionally has treasured its independence -- an ever-increasing number are providing care while their children muddle through divorces, financial crises and the logistics of two- career marriages.

Barbara Kirkland, 51, of Colleyville, Texas, voices a common refrain. Six years ago, she and her husband took over the upbringing of their four-year-old granddaughter Trisha after they concluded that the child was being abused. "Becoming a parent again is not a first choice," Kirkland says. "It's a last alternative."

The sad irony is that today's grandparents were supposed to have more alternatives than their predecessors. Modern senior citizens are healthier, livelier and often wealthier than in the past, and while many still find grandparenting a joy, others reap rich rewards in work, leisure and community activity. "They have been helping other people all their lives," says Dr. Arthur Kornhaber, president of the Foundation for Grandparenting. "Now many of them say, 'It's my turn.' "

Instead, some are experiencing a stressful kind of deja vu. They often feel overwhelmed by the emotional, financial and legal hardships of their improvised status as child guardians. In hardscrabble urban areas, where strung-out parents use their welfare checks to buy drugs, grandparents must support young wards on slender fixed incomes. The better-off find themselves pressed too. "Without the kids to take care of, I wouldn't be working as much," says Florence Gilmore, 57, of Long Beach, Calif., who works as a private-duty nurse to support three young grandsons. Nonetheless, Gilmore faced the prospect of bankruptcy before a state agency provided $694 in monthly assistance.

Even grandparents who have saved for retirement are feeling the pinch. Ollie Duggan adopted her grandchildren so she could draw further on her dead husband's Social Security to defray the costs of child care. "I'm the mother, the grandmother, the granddaddy, the daddy. I'm it all," she says. Peggy Plante, 49, understands that frustration well. Plante quit her job in a Braintree, Mass., real estate office in 1988 to care for a sickly infant granddaughter born to two teenage, drug-abusing parents. "We give up everything," Plante says, "and nobody looks out after us."

As a result, grandparents are beginning to look out for one another, chiefly ) by banding together in support groups like those run by Sylvie de Toledo, a clinical social worker in Long Beach. Her sessions offer members an opportunity to overcome their isolation and vent anger toward their children for failing to accept their parental responsibilities. They also provide an outlet for frustration toward the grandchildren who disrupted comfortable routines. These groups can help navigate issues such as obtaining custody and securing medical care for children.

Nonetheless, the pressures are such that some frustrated grandparents are closing the door on their hospitality. In inner cities, where a succession of teenage pregnancies in a family can result in grandparents who are as young as their early 30s, many are flatly refusing to care for grandchildren. Thus the burden is sometimes passed along to great-grandparents.

Most grandparents, however, dig in and make the best of a difficult situation. Two years ago, after 2 1/2-year-old Mitchell was left in their care, Shirley and Charles Gates of West Waynesville, N.C., reluctantly set aside their plans to buy a camper and spend their retirement hunting and fishing. "When we first got the baby," says Shirley, "it was really hard on me and Paw-paw." They remain angry at their daughter, who, Shirley says, pays no support and rarely visits. But the Gateses have found their grandson a constant joy and challenge. "It's been worth it," says Shirley, "because Mitchell needed us." The senior Gateses can no longer imagine life without him.