As America's population ages, any number of important issues are emerging that require the development of new insights, assistance strategies, and effective interventions. For example, Markides and Mindel (1987) have noted that older Americans, regardless of ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic status, encounter physical, emotional, social, financial, and familial problems that are often difficult to resolve or address. Angel and Angel (1997) also comment that one of the most difficult issues faced by older Americans is related to the question of who will provide them with care or support; simultaneously, many grandparents find themselves faced with the necessity of providing care or assuming custodial responsibility for grandchildren.
Recently, a growing number of grandparents have assumed parental roles when their own children are deemed an unfit parent or when other family circumstances require the transfer of
child care from a parent to a grandparent (Landry-Meyer, p. 381). This trend has been associated with a number of conditions including nonmarital child bearing, increases in substance abuse, mental illness and social problems, incarceration, and divorce (Landry-Meyer, 1999). As of 1997, in the United States, 5.5 percent of all children under the age of 18, or a total of 3.9 million children lived in a household maintained by their grandparents (Futurist, 1999). The problems associated with this trend are of some significance.
Roe and Minkler (1998/1999) have noted that grandparents raising grandchildren is not new and that grandparents have often been required to step in and care for grandchildren in times of family crisis. What is new is the rapid growth of this phenomenon, with a close to 44 percent increase in the number of children living with grandparents and other relatives between 1980 and 1990. Roe and Minkler (2000) have pointed out that the number of these "skipped generation" families are growing a...