Healing bittersweet legacies: Revisiting contextual family therapy for grandparents raising grandchildren in crisis

Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, Apr 2000 by Brown-Standridge, Marcia D, Floyd, Caroline Walters

Over the past decade, grandparents have become primary caregivers for their grandchildren at an unprecedented rate. Drug/alcohol abuse, poor mental health,,financial instability, chronic illness, and early death have left parents unavailable for childrearing, leming their elder generation responsible for tending vulnerable children. While grandparents' resources have been overtaxed with this arrangement, family therapists have been caught off guard irt adapting traditional family therapy methods to this population. This paper revisits Contextual Family Therapy far what it has to of`er grandparents in crisis. The purpose is to restore appropriate "give and take" while compensating for a "skipped" parenting generation.

The increased incidence of grandparents assuming parental duties in the past decade has been astounding. As of 1994, 3.7 million grandchildren and great-grandchildren have reportedly been living in households headed by a grandparent; both with and without a parent present (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1994). This figure rose 27% in the single year since 1993 and represents a gain of 40% over the past decade (American Association of Retired Persons [HARP Grandparent Information Center, 1996). Of these children, 1.4 million have lived with a grandparent as primary caregiver without a parent present, representing an increase of over 40% in one year alone (1993-1994). These family units are assumed to be the most vulnerable since the legacy of childrearing must reconcile a "skipped" generation (Burton & Bengtson, 1985).

While concerns about "breakdown" of the idealized "traditional family" are said to have surfaced with each generation over the past 150 years (Gordon, 1988; Walsh, 1993), multigenerational family solidarity has to a great extent been a myth (Hareven, 1982). There has never been an era when three generations have shared living space by preference, however interdependent (Cohler & Geyer, 1982). Thus, cross-generational dependency issues and conflict over childrearing have typically been controlled by parents and grandparents living quite separately (Hetherington, Law, & O'Connor, 1993).

Understanding that context, existing literature has presented an inconsistent view regarding grandparents taking over their children's parenting role-even when warranted. Such caretakers may be lauded as heroic "silent saviors" (Creighton, 1991) or cautioned against becoming "enablers;' lest they simply reap what they have already sown with their own children (deToledo & Brown, 1995). In any case, as parental separations grow more evident, shifts in roles, responsibilities, and resources strain and weaken the family's capacity for negotiating crises and transitions. It is at this point that grandparents may contact human-service professionals. Family therapists are poised to play a critical role in strengthening existing familial bonds, understanding transgenerational phenomena, and easing reactivity to life-cycle demands for monumental coping.

Biological grandmothers, grandfathers, great-grandparents. and even great-aunts have been drafted as substitute parents (Burton, 1992. Consistent with Minkler, Roe, and Price (1992), all of these potential guardians will be referred to as "grandparents" in this paper. They may function as coparents by assisting their adult children as primary caregivers who carry the burden of caregiving responsibility, or these arrangements may fluctuate. Beyond the scope of this paper is the grandparenting of children born to teenagers or even younger parents. The term "adult children" here refers to those who have reached a chronological age arbitrarily older than high school age, rather than those who have attained a "developmental age" (Furfey, 1926) suggestive of social maturity.

Family dynamics differ for systems with parents who became inaccessible upon an early death versus those who became unavailable due to drug abuse, financial difficulties, imprisonment, or allegations of child neglect/maltreatment (Jendrek, 1994; Kelley, 1993; Schwartz, 1994. In the former case, adjustments must be made around the finality of parent loss (deToledo & Brown, 1995). Bereaved grandparents must resolve their own grief enough to foster their grandchildren's resumption of a routine that feels normal (Schwartz, 1994). In the latter instance, the tenuous possibility of parental return with all its repercussions can interfere with any sense of familial solidarity or security. For grandparents, this often sudden arrangement produces feelings of guilt, resentment, and fear for what the future holds (Jendrek, 1994). Strongly rooted expectations around "who parents whom" become challenged. If left unexplored, legacies of outrage and rancor can embed layers of conflict and role confusion in the family system (Boszormenyi-Nagy, Grunebaum, & Ulrich, 1991; Seltzer, 1976).

What has been needed for grandparent-headed families seeking help is a strategy that could synthesize cross-generational issues as well as incorporate the parental "ghosts" and "shadows" that leave their indelible mark on present grandparent-child patterns of relating. Instead, contemporary therapeutic modalities have largely pathologized the individual needs of the stressed grandparent (Kivnick, 1985). Support groups have followed either a psychoanalytic or psychoeducational direction with topical discussions aimed at childrearing concerns, emotional needs, health worries, or financial dilemmas (Kennedy & Keeney, 1987; O'Reilly & Morrison, 1993; Vardi & Buchholz; 1994). The rare exception has been the orientation of O'Reilly and Morrison (1993), which has included all three generations in custody/visitation cases. Yet, an authentic transgenerational focus radiating from a cultural lens has been lacking.