Grandparents pick up child-rearing burdens

This is the first article in a series focused on working people facing financial hardship in Athens County.

This is the story of residents who have had to take on low-wage jobs to make ends meet, and the difficulties they face. This article focuses on the financial woes of senior citizens, and grandparents who have had to return to work to be able to afford caring for their grandchildren.

Grandparents are the primary caregivers for more than 88,000 grandchildren in Ohio, with many of them returning to work post-retirement to be able to afford it. They have had to take on minimum-wage jobs, and often still can’t make ends meet.

Lyda Gunter, for instance, took a job as office manager for the Kimberly Meadows senior housing center last year. Gunter said she took the job because her grandson is disabled, his mother is sick, and in order to help them financially she works, even though she could live on her own pension if she were just supporting herself.

“In this building, there are three of us doing the same thing, taking on jobs because we can’t make it on what Social Security provides,” she said. Gunter said that her own mother has dementia and Parkinson’s disease, in addition to the troubles of her daughter and grandson.

Gunter makes minimum wage, she said, which is not uncommon for senior citizens who have had to return to work. She said that some residents at Kimberly Meadows live on $150 per month.

“They do get assistance with the food,” she said, noting that their rent is also taken care of. “But that is difficult to fathom, dividing that up for laundry detergent, shampoo, soap, mops. You do need toilet tissue and things.”

Gunter lives on-site, and is able to return to her own property in Morgan County five days every month, but she is also only allowed to work 20 hours per week.

“I tell myself every day that I’m lucky to have a minimum-wage job, and that I can help my family that way,” she said. “You’ve got to take lemons and make lemonade.”

Gunter said that an added benefit to her job is that she can go to bed at night knowing that she has helped others.

“I think that a lot of our social graces are misconstrued,” she said. “When we see poverty we think they should get off their butt and go work. And if they could, most of them would.

I feel like it’s fashionable to be a snob… I don’t believe in that not sharing.”

Prior to taking the job at Kimberly Meadows, Gunter worked as a volunteer for the Southeast Ohio Kinship Care Supports Campaign. Kinship Caregivers are relatives who take family members’ children and raise them. Most of them, she said, are low-income grandmothers over the age of 54.

One of the main difficulties that these grandparents face, she said, is that they don’t receive the financial assistance that foster parents receive from the government. Fosterparents get anywhere from $550 to $1,500 per month, depending on the child’s needs, she said. Grandparents don’t. She pointed out that children raised in foster homes carry a significantly higher risk of future problems than children raised by family members.

“So the families provide the greatest atmosphere, and yet they are getting nothing,” she said.

Many of these grandchildren have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or some other disability, she said. This causes additional stress for the grandparents. She said she had written Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland as well as First Lady Michelle Obama.

“You want these children to grow up to be productive citizens – our politicians, our teachers, our doctors,” she said.

Many of these children are malnourished, she said, and don’t get to participate in regular activities because with, say, three kids plus the grandparent, after school supplies, new clothes, haircuts and other expenses, $500 per month doesn’t cut it.

“The food really drives me crazy because it’s cheaper to buy pop than it is milk; it’s cheaper to buy cereal than it is veggies,” she said.

The grandparents especially need respites, she said. One grandparent she knows is raising three children, all of them with ADHD.

“We’re old,” she said. “Our nerves can’t take all that screaming and yelling and running.”

These elderly citizens have paid their taxes, served their county and been participants in their communities, she said, and they deserve a little help so they can occasionally have time to themselves.

“These grandparents who are rearing their grandchildren have no escape,” she said. “And there’s no money for car repairs, gasoline, oil changes, tires. Where does that money come from? Some of the women have to cut back on their utilities to get these children to the doctor.”

Raising grandchildren can also play a toll on relationships, she said.

“The reason why there’s so many grandmothers rearing these children is because their partners leave because it’s too hard,” she said. “So the grandma goes through the crushing thing of someone she loves leaving, plus rearing these children on her own.”

Gunter said that Athens County Job & Family Services Executive Director Jack Frech has repeatedly sought money for Kinship Care to no avail.

“It’s an area that hasn’t been given enough attention,” she said.

MARTY ZINN OF HAVAR, WHICH provides community-based support for people with disabilities, said Sunday that she has linked Kinship Care with some of her work.

She said that the Ohio Empowerment Coalition has been the primary driver on the Kinship Care issue. She said that legislation is being discussed with regard to better funding for Kinship Caregivers.

There is no Kinship Care navigator currently in Athens County, she said.

Zinn has seen a number of cases of grandparents returning to work, and struggling to take care of a number of grandchildren. She said that a grandfather had tried to retire, but got a job at Wal-Mart to help take care of three grandchildren, all with ADHD or other disabilities.

In another case, one grandmother was caring for four grandchildren and had a lot of difficulty providing them with dental care and taking care of other expenses.

“The bill that’s been introduced calls for a study of the disparity in those situations between kinship care and foster care, where families are encouraged to actually give up custody to the state, and get the children placed in foster care because they can’t get sufficient support to care for them well,” she said.

Editor’s note: Part 2 of this series will appear in The Athens NEWS on Monday, Aug. 16.