By Erin Delmore
Correspondent
“She thinks she knows more than I do because she says I’m old and she’s young,” said Alicia Kemp.
Kemp is raising her two grandkids in her 60s, on a fixed income. It’s a situation New Jersey grandparents are increasingly finding themselves in.
“Some cases, you have somebody who has to relocate because of a job but they don’t want to uproot their children because the job might not be permanent, there are people that are in the military service so it might be a short period of time and then there are the very sad cases where you have a death of a parent or you have someone who has a drug/alcohol problem or mental health issues or even child abuse or neglect,” said Advocates for Children of New Jersey Vice President Mary Coogan.
While the Social Security program was developed 81 years ago this month to alleviate poverty among older Americans, one study says it’s fighting child poverty, too — due to the growing number of children living with their grandparents.
In New Jersey, more than 127,000 kids live in “multigenerational” households, headed by a grandparent and with a parent present. Nearly 50,000 of them have a grandparent as their sole caretaker.
“Now raising my granddaughter, it’s very hard financially because I get Social Security and everything has to come out of there. I get nothing for her,” said Evelyn Zambrano.
While 5.2 million children nationwide benefited directly or indirectly from Social Security in 2001, it’s up to 6.4 million. That’s according to a report from the Center for Global Policy Solutions.
Zambrano is raising her 8-year-old granddaughter and three adopted kids whom she had fostered.
“I thought that once I come to the retirement age that I can just go, and you know how the grandkids, they come in the morning and they go home in the afternoon? But when they have to stay all the time, and they have mood swings, it’s difficult, because they’re going through different things that we really don’t understand so we basically have to figure it out,” she said.
The Center for Global Policy Solutions says that while more than a quarter of kids nationally who benefit directly or indirectly from Social Security live below the poverty line, that would skyrocket to 43 percent without Social Security.
Beyond the financial challenges, grandparents say they struggle with their health.
“When I went to the doctor, they were saying that my pressure was up, my cholesterol was high and my heart rate was kind of fast. So I tried to tell her that she has to change her ways, because if she doesn’t then that means I’m going to be sick and she’s not going to have anybody to take care of her,” Kemp said.
The grandmothers told me they lean on each other for support, encouragement and sometimes a shoulder to cry on. Zambrano told me she attends a support group, and while she might walk through the door feeling like she carries a heavy burden, she hears some of the other stories and she says she knows she’s lucky.