Is this a social change caused by the recession or a return to previous patterns of family parenting? A new study by the Pew Research Centre's social and demographic trends project finds that one child in 10 in the US lives with a grandparent, "a share that increased slowly and steadily over the past decade before rising sharply from 2007 to 2008".
About 40% of all children who live with a grandparent (or grandparents) are also being raised primarily by that grandparent , according to the census data. This figure – 2.9 million children – rose slowly throughout the decade and it, too, spiked from 2007 to 2008. In that single year, there was a 6% increase.
Just as the number of grandchildren being cared for by their grandparents has increased from 2000-2008, the corresponding number of grandparents serving as primary caregivers to their grandchildren increased a total of 8% over that same time period, to 2.6 million, with more than half of that increase occurring between 2007 and 2008.
Overall, 4% of children in the US are raised by one or more grandparent. While nearly half (49%) of those children being raised by grandparents live with a single parent, of the remainder 43% have no parent in the household while just 8% live with both parents.
Pew also says: "While rates of grandparent caregiving are higher among blacks and Hispanics, the most rapid increases in the number of grandparent caregivers has been among whites. From 2000-2008, this number rose 19%, and almost half of that increase (9%) occurred from 2007 to 2008."
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