Grandparents Can Help Children After a Divorce

"I don't know what people without extended families do!" exclaimed a woman who is struggling to get off public assistance after the financial and emotional blow of a second divorce.

"When you're divorced, you have to do everything. Get the car fixed, get to school, get to work. Something has to give, and what gives is there's no one watching the kids. So you just hope they're growing up O.K. And lots of times they're not.

"I'm lucky to have a family here who gives a lot of support to myself and the kids. We lived with my parents after the first divorce. And there's an aunt who takes a special interest in the girls. They go to different people for different things. But they save the real heavies for their grandmother."

Relationships between the siblings themselves are apt to change after a divorce, especially when the children have unmet needs.

One child, usually an older child, often tends to get pulled into a parent role when there is not a second adult in the family. Some older children feel their lives have been shaped by protecting their younger siblings from suffering by acting as a buffer. If a child is ready to grow up, this can spur him to use the situation positively and become a super responsible kid.

Grew Up Faster

Melissa, 17, from Massachusetts, thinks her parents' divorce led her to become more of a helping type of person. "I was the only one old enough to understand most of it. Because of that, I grew up faster than the kids my age. Being the oldest, I helped out more because my mother is a single parent. It's a little like being a parent."

Kids who take on some premature parental responsibilities can later become resentful, however. They may feel they were hurried out of their childhood.

What a lot of parents report after divorce is that the siblings are both closer when they're dealing with people outside the home and more rivalrous when the parent is around. That's because they have less parenting available. It's the scarce resource.

Generally called "stepfamilies," there are more of these hybrid families around because couples are divorcing younger and more frequently. Divorce is now most common between people 30 to 44, who are more likely to have younger children. And they're also more likely to start a second family.

There is a dazzling array of new and complicated family relationships awaiting children whose parents remarry. Just in the sibling category, children may find themselves with half brothers and half sisters and stepbrothers and stepsisters.

New Relationships

Lisa, 17, lives with her natural mother. Her father has remarried and lives with his second wife's daughters from her previous marriage. His second wife has given birth to his son who is Lisa's half brother. Lisa says, "He's 5-years-old and so cute. I love him. But even though he knew the girls who lived with him were his sisters, for a long while he didn't understand that I was his sister, too. And that hurt."

In another case, a daughter developed a crush on the stepbrother her father adopted when he remarried. This kind of thing makes everyone nervous. They're almost siblings, but they're not. You're left wondering what you're supposed to do.

The stepparent family is a very special animal, and people are just now becoming alert to that. A few family therapists are beginning to develop a competence in stepparent families based on experience, but the problems are just starting to surface.

But extended families, and particularly grandparents, can be a greater resource, offering stability and love to counteract the confusion and loss which often confronts children of divorce.

Grandparents are a great resource for the single parent. It's always worth considering moving closer to grandparents if they're willing to help out. And it's better for the kids, because your own family has an investment in you. A babysitter may be a delegate for the mother, but a grandmother has a real relationship with her grandchildren.

One grandmother who shares an apartment with her divorced daughter and three grandchildren said she has been criticized. "One woman told me: 'Why are you wasting your life like this? You raised six children of your own. You should be off taking trips, enjoying life,'" the grandmother remarked, her high voice lofting with animation.

"But I think I'm just as happy doing this. I've always had enough love to go around. I went to one of my granddaughters' high school graduation recently and I brought her an envelope full of Rocky Roads. I gave her some money, too, but it's nicer to make things, don't you think?

One of her granddaughters, 17-year-old Debbie, tried to explain the relationship. "It's like she's always around, so we never come home to an empty house. Mom goes out and works in an office. Nana takes our mother's place. We've always had enough love."

But on the other hand, the grandmother has found it hard not to poke into her daughter's dating life. Privacy has become a scarce commodity. "I think it would have been more comfortable if I had just continued to baby-sit during the days and let the girls have their mother all to themselves at night," she admitted.

The Better Solution

The best arrangement for single parents is to live near grandparents but not in the same house. In fact, here's a recipe for the ideal situation: Live a block away, with no heavily traveled streets in between so you don't have to worry about the kids' walking and around a corner so you can't see each other's comings and goings.

Most of the children of divorced parents who were interviewed reported that after the divorce they became closer to the relatives of the parent who has custody, usually the mother. These same children often had little contact with the father's family.

"Since the divorce, nobody on my father's side calls or sends cards," complained one teenager. "They were never a family which you could talk about things. Instead of bothering themselves to find but what was going on, they just let it go. It hurt, and it was sad. I just saw my father's mother in Florida for the first time in years, and it was sad, all the time that stood between us."

Extra Effort Required

It's easy for children who feel deserted by a father to also feel deserted by that parent's entire family. Often it takes extra effort from the father's family to maintain ties.

Occasionally paternal grandparents will side with their daughter-in-law. "My father's cousin left his wife to be with another woman and no one in the family has bothered with him since," said Suzanne, who practices law in Boston. "There was never a family powwow. It just evolved that way. The first wife has been included in all the family functions for the last 15 years. If the kids were to lose their father's family as well as their father, it would be a double loss."

Though few paternal grandparents turn away from their own children, maintaining a good relationship with a former daughter-in-law is a key to keeping contact with grandchildren.

Amicable relationships with all parties are the surest route to keeping extended families intact. It's ordinarily possible to keep relationships with both sides of the family but it may take tact and unspoken agreements not to discuss problems surrounding the divorce. In the end it's the kids who benefit from the efforts.