Starting Over : Grandparents Who Step In and Raise Their Grandchildren

Their three children were grown and gone, and Art and Marilyn McIntosh were just settling into a new life as a twosome again. They were looking forward to quiet mornings, uninterrupted conversations, spontaneous outings and leisurely trips.

Then the second shift arrived--and this time it was triplets.

Elizabeth, Thomas and Joshua are bright, active 6-year-olds who look to Art and Marilyn for far more care and attention than most children expect from their grandparents. They don’t just visit grandma and grandpa’s house in Costa Mesa to bake cookies and play games. They live there--without their mom and dad.

Instead of lingering over the newspaper and a cup of coffee in the morning, Art, 58, starts each day at 5 a.m. making oatmeal while Marilyn, 52, packs lunches and searches for matching socks. They finish most days folding the latest load of laundry in front of the TV set, then they usually end up collapsing in bed not long after they’ve tucked in the children.

Just before the grandchildren moved in, the McIntoshes had bought a smaller home and paid off the last of their kids’ college bills.

Now they’re starting over, going to PTA meetings, chauffeuring kids to and from after-school activities, organizing birthday parties, helping with homework, reading bedtime stories, keeping track of when it’s time for haircuts, doctor visits and new shoes.

In place of the freedom to come and go that makes grandparenting a luxury for most people their age, they have all the responsibilities and worries of parenthood.

This isn’t where they expected to be after 34 years of marriage.

But the McIntoshes haven’t looked back since they were given legal guardianship of the triplets in August. They say it was clear that the grandchildren desperately needed a stable home after their parents were divorced. Art and Marilyn couldn’t let them down, no matter how much their own lives had to change to make room once again for little ones.

Soon after they took in the grandchildren, the McIntoshes discovered there were a surprising number of grandparents in the same situation--enough to create a demand for support groups across the country. Marilyn spends every Monday morning sharing the joys and frustrations of raising grandchildren with friends in the Long Beach chapter of Grandparents as Parents.

The support group was started nearly four years ago by Sylvie de Toledo, a licensed clinical social worker at the Psychiatric Clinic for Youth in Long Beach. She became interested in “skipped-generation families” after her sister died and her parents began raising her young nephew.

De Toledo, who is writing a book about grandparents raising grandchildren, says there are now more than 40 GAP support groups nationwide, including two in Orange County.

Grandparents raise grandchildren for a variety of reasons, mostly because of the inability of their grown children to fulfill their responsibilities as parents. It may happen as a result of death, divorce, economic instability or mental illness. Or the parents may have lost custody because of child abuse or neglect. But in most cases, according to de Toledo, the problem is substance abuse.

The responsibility of raising grandchildren can be an enormous strain, both financially and emotionally, observes Thomas Shaw, a psychologist who leads GAP support groups at the Assessment and Treatment Services Centers in Santa Ana and Tustin.

The financial burden may force drastic cutbacks in retirement plans. But the emotional adjustment can be even more difficult, Shaw says, because it often involves mourning the loss of the grandparent role while coming to terms with the failure of a grown child to become a responsible adult.

At the same time, he adds, many grandparents are also dealing with the special emotional needs of grandchildren who feel rejected by their parents and cling to the hope that someday mom and dad will be able to take care of them.

Even when it means giving up the dreams they had hoped to fulfill in their middle and later years, people like the McIntoshes come through for their grandchildren because they love them and find the alternative--foster care--unthinkable.

“They make a commitment to the kids and cross over from being grandparents to being parents,” Shaw says. “And the kids usually settle down when they find a place to belong with their grandparents.”

Art and Marilyn say the triplets are thriving now that they are getting the attention they need. But all three children have recently completed six months of therapy, Marilyn says.

At first, they were so insecure that they’d ask her questions like: “Do you love us as much as you loved your own kids? Are you and grandpa always going to live together? Are you going to live long enough for me to grow up and take care of myself?”

But such questions have become less routine now that they have their toys and clothes in one place and feel confident they’ll be sleeping every night in the bunk beds their grandfather built.

Meeting the children’s emotional needs and getting them through their hectic day-to-day routine has become a full-time job for Marilyn, who recently gave up her work as a legal secretary. And when Art comes home from his job as business administrator at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church of Newport Beach, he’s at Marilyn’s side, helping with whatever needs to be done.

“This is our life right now--all we do is raise these kids,” Marilyn says.

Art acknowledges that parenting is a lot different at this age: “You have more wisdom, but you’re shorter on endurance and patience.”

Art wishes his wife had less responsibility at this stage of her life. He says she went through some rough years when his work as a missionary pilot required them to live in remote areas without basic necessities. He wanted to make it up to her after their kids were grown.

“The only regret that I have is that I can’t give her the things she deserves in terms of travel and the nice things in life,” he says.

However, he stresses, “both of us consider it a real privilege to have the kids. It’s not a burden. They’re wonderful kids, and we feel blessed to have the opportunity to invest some of ourselves in their lives.”

Jean, a 67-year-old Irvine resident who didn’t want her real name used, feels that way about her granddaughter, too. Since May, she and her husband, Robert, 68, have had temporary guardianship of 9-year-old Susie. The child’s parents are divorced and both are substance abusers, Jean says.

“There are things we would have liked to have done that we can’t do now, but we feel that if Susie needs us, we’re certainly willing to give her a start in life,” Jean says.

They’re a bit crowded in their two-bedroom apartment, and sometimes it gets a little too noisy for their taste, but they don’t feel their lives have been restricted by Susie’s presence. Robert’s heart attack had already made it necessary for them to put off travel plans and stay close to home.

Jean, who attends the weekly GAP meetings in Santa Ana, has been taking parenting classes “because I’ve been told you can no longer be a grandmother in a situation like this. You have to be a parent.”

She has a more traditional, carefree relationship with her two other granddaughters, and that causes some friction between the cousins, she says.

“I don’t see the others as often, and when I do, the little girl I’m raising is the jealous one. This is her territory.”

Susie went through a period when she was depressed and withdrawn, Jean says, but she’s become more outgoing in recent months. Her grandmother takes her to Brownie meetings, dance lessons and church programs. Susie also goes on outings with her “Big Sister” and an aunt and uncle who bring the energy of adults her parents’ age into her life.

Deep down, Jean says, she never stops hoping that her daughter will become the kind of parent Susie needs.

But, she says firmly, “if Susie stays with us, we’ll do the best we can to raise her as long as we can.”

Alice and Frank, who also prefer to remain anonymous, are both just past 50 but have the energy and enthusiasm of first-time parents when they’re with 3-year-old Scott. The boy is Frank’s grandson and Alice’s step-grandson.

The Orange couple said they recently became Scott’s legal guardians because his parents, who never married, are both alcoholics.

This is the toddler who could hardly crawl when he was a year old. He came to his grandparents undernourished, both physically and emotionally, Alice says, but the scared, withdrawn little boy who used to curl up alone in a corner when he felt threatened has come out of his shell.

Both sets of grandparents are involved in Scott’s life.

Scott’s maternal grandparents, who live in El Toro, take care of him when Alice and Frank want some time alone. But they rarely go anywhere without Scott, who calls them “Mama” and “Papa.”

Alice, another member of the Santa Ana GAP group, quit her job so she could give Scott her full attention.

“This is like late motherhood,” says Alice, who has no children of her own. “It’s been great.”

Eventually, Alice and Frank may try to adopt Scott. Although they want his parents to get well--both are now in rehabilitation programs--they dread the possibility of having to give him up after raising him as their own.

They’re not alone in that fear.

Marilyn McIntosh admits she worries about that, too.

“We’re approaching this with the attitude that we’ll probably have them forever, but we live one day at a time,” she says. “We may be setting ourselves up for a lot of pain in the future. You put your life into these kids and the day probably will come when you have to give them up.”