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

Case 2 Assessment

An African-American, working-class family demonstrates less advantage in keeping their family struggles private. For them, a strong value that has been passed down is to protect the family from dependence an the "public dole" and interference by "the Man" in general. Such an imperative became severely challenged when Betsy (28) had her second child, Keysha (2), and both of them had medical problems. Betsy (28) also had complications from labor and delivery with her first child, Tiffany (5). The usual bonding period with each child was disrupted by Betsy's life-threatening toxemia condition. At present all have recovered, and Betsy is reliant on public welfare. The children's fathers have had no contact since birth. Upon release from the hospital, Betsy went to live with her parents, Randy (55) and Melba (56). These grandparents are working full time and are also primary caretakers for Betsy's children. Tiffany is in a living-with arrangement, while they have been granted physical custody of Keysha. As a single parent, Betsy has been trying to better her situation by taking classes at a local community college. Sadly, on one occasion while visiting nurses monitored Keysha's feeding tube in the months following the baby's birth, they found the hook-up had become faulty while Betsy was away attending classes. While this event occurred on her parents' watch, a report to child protective services charged Betsy with neglect, resulting in a court order that she move out of the house. Keysha was placed in foster care temporarily before being returned to the grandparents' care. Only Betsy was held accountable. It was a family decision to keep the two girls together, though Betsy is only required to have supervised visits with Keysha. Since the State's intervention, Betsy's work history has been shaky. She has not been able to keep a retail job longer than 6 months due to conflicts with the customers and manager. Her parents further reinforce the notion that she cannot achieve and relate that she is an "unrealistic dreamer" who wants to be "in the spotlight" without working her way up the ladder.

Randy and Melba find emotional support at their Baptist church, where there are many shared stories of State intervention "taking a bad situation and making it worse:' In order to restore her parental rights, Betsy must show that she is participating in counseling, working at least part time, and spending time with her children. While she is living up to these expectations, she recounts that her visitation time is uncomfortable at her parents' domain since she feels watched and judged. Betsy is an involuntary client in therapy. Though not court-ordered, her parents participate since their impression is that this is what they are supposed to do, and all stress that treatment is really unnecessary.

These family members can only be drawn into treatment by seeing it as their pathway to better parenting conditions for the children and their only possible escape hatch from the arm of the State's control. Ironically, the more the grandparents reiterate the importance of such freedom, the more Betsy gets caught in a transgenerational web that gets her nowhere. Naturally, she looks for a job that will catapult her to financial success, but she cannot get past how all these voices of authority fail to comprehend how she has had to fight hard to bounce back from near death. The more she tries to prove her own independence and strength, the more she is stymied from succeeding. She continues to battle migraines, high blood pressure, and cysts.