When Grandma and Grandpa become Ma and Pa

Surveys show that more than 30% of children aged six and under are living with their grandparents. Typically they don't return to live with their parents until they are ready to enter elementary school. While letting the elderly care for their infant grandchildren has long been a common practice in traditional Chinese society, how about grandparents' taking on the duty of raising children clear through to adulthood? Are the old folks up to it?

Taking care of their own flesh and blood is a responsibility Grandmother and Grandfather Chen would never refuse. But with her in poor health and him out of a job, the task of "surrogate parenthood" weighs heavily.

The tribe is the family

These skip-a-generation households are especially visible in Taiwan's Aboriginal villages.

The Leyeh Elementary School in Chiayi County is located on the slopes of Mt. Ali at an elevation of 1200 meters. Including kindergarten, 95 children attend school here, and 85% of them are members of the Tsou tribe. Among the children who are Tsou, 29% are being raised by grandparents.

Cheng Pei-chien, head of curriculum at the school, is a Tsou who was born and bred in the area. In her view, there is no major problem posed by grandparents raising children. "In Aboriginal villages the family unit is everyone, and when children are born everyone is responsible for raising them." Even when parents are absent because they are working elsewhere, have divorced or have passed away, when everybody pitches in to help out, Cheng explains, the children can still have happy, healthy childhoods.

Yet there is still a problem with a lack of academic guidance outside the classroom. There are no supplementary schools in the mountains, but as soon as students encounter problems with their coursework, the grandparents typically bring the children to their school's faculty residences, asking for teachers' help. And with schools in the mountains and on the outer islands designated as "educational priority districts," apart from receiving more funding, efforts to help children of lower academic abilities have been strengthened, which has also helped.

Although the mountains are a paradise for children, Cheng admits that the children face a big test when they leave the local area to attend junior high school. Lacking the support of family members nearby, faced with cultural and lifestyle differences, and frequently unable to keep up with their schoolwork, Aboriginal children frequently end up dropping out of junior high.

He didn't mean it

In urban areas, economic problems are usually the root cause of skip-a-generation families.

Yu Ching-mei, director of Taipei County's Fund for Children and Families, observes out that currently the fund is providing assistance to 700 families, 72% of which are headed by single mothers and 15% by grandparents. In recent years, with rising rates of divorce and unemployment, the middle generation, which has traditionally been the family's greatest pillar of strength, has hit on hard times, and many parents have simply abandoned their family responsibilities, resulting in a growing number of households that skip a generation.

Yu points out that families of this type typically have low socio-economic backgrounds and low levels of education, so that in most cases the grandparents can provide little more than the essentials of food, clothing and shelter. And often the grandparents have to go out to work in order to support their grandchildren.

The Chens, a grandfather and grandmother who receive assistance from the fund, are typical.

Only 57 and 47 years old respectively, they are rather young to be grandparents. Two years ago, their son died in an auto accident, leaving behind a daughter in third grade and a son in first grade. By coincidence, their divorced daughter also brought her two children home before disappearing without a word. In this way the Chens, without planning for it or having an option of refusal, became the guardians of four of their grandchildren.

Originally employed as a machinist, Grandfather Chen lost his job a few years ago as a result of the general industrial upgrading, which led to the closure of his factory. In recent years he has taken a succession of odd jobs to make ends meet. Currently he is unemployed and stays at home taking care of the children. Grandmother Chen, meanwhile, has been operated on for breast cancer and is in poor health. Currently, the entire family relies on the Chen's second son, who works as a nightshift trucker. His monthly earnings, in the NT$20-30,000 range, must support a family of more than ten.

As luck would have it, the Chen home was built with inferior grade concrete made with beach sand, and after the 921 earthquake of 1999, the ceiling began to crumble. That scared them into moving out and renting a house. The rent constitutes another economic burden that is hard for them to bear.

Yet the Chens have no complaints about taking on responsibility for their grandchildren. "They are our flesh and blood, and no matter hard things get we must care for them," says Grandmother Chen. Their son didn't intentionally abandon his children, and at this point they feel they have no choice but to accept that it is their duty to care for his children. But they are still very bitter that the person who caused the accident got away with breaking the law scot-free.

Under the guardianship of their grandparents, the Chen grandchildren seem to be living a carefree childhood. And as yet they are experiencing few problems keeping up in school. It is only the uncertainty of their futures that causes concern.

Apart from the economic challenges, some skip-a-generation families experience a problem in terms of the approach taken to raising the children. Yu points out that when the elderly are forced by circumstances to become parents again, at times of sharp emotion they may make biting remarks about the parents' absence, even saying "your parents didn't want you" or "you're such a burden on me." These comments may leave the children with psychological scars, so that they give up on themselves.

One grandfather who lives in Sanchung, a suburb of Taipei, has found it a struggle to support his grandchildren and found it just as difficult to control them. Their deviant behavior is a source of great anxiety for him. After his two grandsons ran away from home one after the other, the grandfather was at a loss, and he went to the fund to apply for assistance, hoping that it would ease his burden.

Yu points out that "generation gap" is naturally wide in this sort of family, and it becomes pronounced during adolescence, when it becomes harder and harder for the grandparents to control their grandchildren. What's more, the elderly often lack the energy to deal with youngsters as they would wish. Hence they are even more in need of educational support services.

Warm relations

Skip-a-generation families of high socio-economic status, which don't face the same economic difficulties, are more able to compensate for the parents' being absent.

When her divorced son went abroad to work, a Grandma Hsueh felt she could not refuse to take care of his daughter.

Hsueh had studied children's education herself and had taught for more than 20 years, so she was undaunted by the task of raising and educating a child. "I first communicated with both my granddaughter's parents, so that I understood how they wanted the child raised before I could do it right," she says. Hsueh often reads newspapers and magazines to learn new knowledge and keep up with the times.

Under Hsueh's care, her granddaughter seems to be growing up quite happily. "Adults have to make the best arrangements for the children if they divorce," Hsueh says. The adults' problems, after all, have nothing to do with the children, and both parties should do their best to make sure the children don't get hurt.

Hsueh cites her own family. Although her son and his wife were divorced because of personality conflicts when the child was three, the two didn't let themselves become enemies, and instead worked together even more closely to make decisions about how to raise the child. That may explain why it was relatively easy for the girl's grandmother to take on the responsibility.

Although the girl's father only returns to Taiwan once every six months, she spends one night with her mother every week and is also close to her maternal grandparents. The girl's mother and maternal grandparents, as well as her paternal grandmother Hsueh, all show up for school athletic events.

These skip-a-generation households, a product of social change, are a mix of the bitter, the exasperating and the warm. Yi Chin-chun, a researcher at the Academia Sinica's Institute of Sociology, points out that Western nations are experiencing a similar trend, with growing numbers of middle generation members going off and leaving their children with their grandparents. She argues that as long as the family doesn't experience financial difficulties or deep festering resentments as a result, then, so long as the children are loved, the fact that the caregivers are grandparents shouldn't really pose a problem.

Observing the happy relations between Grandma Hsueh and her granddaughter, we can only wish that such positive outcomes could apply to all children raised by their grandparents.