Daily Times

Sir: A study titled ‘The Generation of Transition; between Work and Retirement’ states that thousands of years ago, the family model “included not only a father and a mother who took care of good parenting; there was also a grandmother who helped them in this task.”

Grandparents work as guardians and teachers of their grandchildren. They allow many mothers to be integrated into the labour market. Some families are doing better, thanks to grandparents. In times of economic instability, these gestures are more important.

In the US, 2.4 million grandparents are responsible for the training of 4.4 million grandchildren. The Economist reported that a third of these grandparents, householders, had not completed high school and 62 percent had not gone to university while 70 percent exceeded 50 years of age. The African American community is the hardest hit. In the US, 70.9 percent of those who are children of the household head are white and 13.3 percent black. However, in case of the grandchildren of the household head, only 48.6 percent are white and 32.3 percent are black.

The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry explains the causes of this overhead for grandparents that include increase in single-parent families, high divorce rate, teenage pregnancy, parental incapacitation by imprisonment, alcoholism, drug addiction and domestic violence. Grandparents face a greater mental and physical wear, especially because they deal with difficult children from broken or troubled homes. Stress and fatigue related to work that originates responsibility are the main symptoms of the “slave grandmother” syndrome.

There are programmes to help grandparents who have to educate their grandchildren. The most requested service is an allowance so that they can hire a temporary assistant during the holidays. Apart from these grants, we should erect a monument to grandparents.

CLEMENTE FERRER

Madrid, Spain