Forget the data and the family experts who say millions more American grandparents – along with lots of other older relatives – soon will be rearing young humans who aren’t their biological children.
About 1 in 9 children already live in households with grandparents or some other relative who aren’t their biological parents, according to the last census count. The roles of those older and younger relations range from full-time caretaker to casual observer, so it’s not clear exactly how many grandparents are actually raising grandkids. But whatever that number is, several factors – some good, some bad, some simply about demographic change – suggest it’s going to jump in a big way over the next two to three decades.
Still, when it comes to explaining what that actually means for the kids and the stand-in parents, cold numbers tell only part of the story. A more complete version might come from warm, funny – but, hey, no pushover – Bob Ruble.
He’s 64 now, still living in Buena Park and still running the electrical contracting business he’s had for decades. But in 2002 Ruble and his then wife were in their early 40s, living in Orange County as a childless, relatively carefree couple. They traveled a lot. They went out to dinner whenever they wanted. They partied with friends. And they gave zero thought to raising children.
“We never really talked about kids or got into it,” Ruble said. “And I had no parenting skills, other than the way I was raised, which wasn’t very good.”
Then came Kindra.
She was 8 at the time, the child of Ruble’s drug-addicted sister and a father who Ruble said was already out of the picture.
On the day of Kindra’s arrival, her biological mother was scheduled to start a jail sentence for drug possession and, among other things, child endangerment. Ruble said other relatives were either addicted or otherwise unable to care for Kindra, and Orange County child welfare officials told Ruble that he was…
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