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| Carol J. Williams, Editor |
In this issue, we explore an important growing trend: grandparents as caregivers for their grandchildren. You will find the
trend explored in terms of the experiences of grandparents, the special needs they have, and discussions of how this trend
will influence the evolution of the role of the social worker.
This editorial, however, will take a different focus. Are grandparents raising a grandchildren a new phenomenon, or are we
witnessing a return to the extended family as the primary unit of socialization?
Extended families, throughout much of recorded history, have been the primary unit through which children have been socialized,
and through which caregiving has occurred. Until the time of the Industrial Revolution, one's family was such a major force
in a person's life that one's lifelong role and status were determined at the moment of birth. The family, and to a lesser
extent the community, took responsibility for its members. The Elizabethan Poor Law, which we all teach in introduction to
social work, fixed responsibility for the poor at the local community level, and made relatives legally responsible for each
other.
After the Industrial Revolution, the extended family began to break up, as workers moved away from their home of origin
in search of employment. Corporations, wishing to have greater control over their employees, encouraged this trend. More and
more of the extended family's functions were devolved to social institutions. This trend culminated in the birth of the nuclear
family consisting of one or two parents and their children. The nuclear family looked to the school system and other external
systems as its major sources of support. In the nuclear family (at least theoretically) parents cared for their children until
they became independent at the age of eighteen or twenty-one. Older members of the family became invisible. If one thinks
of the television comedies of the later half of the twentieth century, one would think that the world was composed of parents
under fifty and their children. There were no older members of the family in evidence.
In recent years, we have seen a number of trends away from the nuclear family, if indeed it ever really existed. With
the prolonged number of years that children now spend in the educational system, they are not leaving the home at eighteen
or even at twenty-one. Parents, caring for both children and older family members, have entered the "sandwich generation."
Grandparents and great-grandparents are beginning to be acknowledged as caregivers for grandchildren. As the baby boomers
begin to enter the ranks of older adults, we can no longer ignore the aging members of our society; there are just too many
of them. Furthermore, the baby boomers have a much greater wish to retain independence and self-determination; they will not
quietly accept placement in nursing homes. The cost of nursing-home care is also forcing society to look at community-based
alternatives for the elderly. How will all of this influence the evolution of the family unit?
Perhaps it is the idea of the nuclear family that is the aberration. If that is the case, then we must be sure in our
human behavior, practice, and policy classes to address the issue of diverse family structures, including discussion of the
extended family and its role in intergenerational caregiving. An emphasis on grandparents raising grandchildren should be
an important part of that focus.
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