Second Parenthood : Grandparents Called Upon to Raise Children’s Children

At an age when she was supposed to be through with rearing children, Michele MacKenzie is cooking, cleaning and caring for her two grandsons, ages 9 and 2 1/2.

The 52-year-old Van Nuys grandmother did this kind of work while raising her own daughter, but she never dreamed of having to do it again.

MacKenzie became a mother to young Shawn and Scotty when drugs and alcohol consumed her daughter’s life, forcing the retired Pacific Bell employee into an exhausting second parenthood that can be both joyous and depressing.

“The thing I dwell on the most is that I’m just at a time in life where I could do as I please,” she said. “But you don’t have that time because you have kids now.”

So many grandparents are taking the place of their adult children as parents that a support group has recently formed in Glendale, and others are expected to soon form in North Hollywood and Woodland Hills.

The adult children are out of the picture for a number of reasons: drug and alcohol abuse, incarceration, mental illness and death by murder, suicide or accident.

Grandparents, and even some great-grandparents, are left with a swirl of emotions and responsibilities at a time when they should be enjoying the golden years, or at least planning for them.

“The ‘grand’ part is taken out of the grandparent and grandchildren,” said Sylvie de Toledo, founder of the support group Grandparents as Parents, which has several chapters in Southern California, including Glendale’s.

“This is not what grandparents want to be doing at this stage of their lives,” she added. “They want nothing more than to have their adult children get it together and be good, appropriate parents.

“(They) were looking forward to being the doting grandparent, not the parent all over again,” she said. “The grandparent part of you wants to do all the neat things that grandparents do, and the parent part of you has to be the disciplinarian. You can’t be both.”

Yet many grandparents are trying.

Based on the 1990 census, an estimated 3.2 million children under the age of 18 live with relatives besides their parents, with the vast majority being grandparents, Toledo said.

In Los Angeles County, an average of 20,694 children a month move in with relatives--a rate that outpaces that of foster home placements.

As a spokesman with the county Department of Children’s Services put it: “The trend is clearly in the direction of relatives taking care of children.”

It is happening in families of all racial, social and economic backgrounds, from the sprawling San Fernando Valley to the rural farmlands of Wisconsin, according to the National Assn. of Grandparents.

MacKenzie, who grew up in a middle-class neighborhood in Culver City, dreams of spending more time with her 77-year-old mother and traveling to Montana, Utah and the Midwest like her grandparents did.

But those plans are on hold for at least 16 years until 2 1/2-year-old Scotty is old enough to begin living on his own.

Meanwhile, the lives of MacKenzie and her companion of 26 years, Jim Johnson, revolve around those of her grandchildren. MacKenzie said she has not spoken to her 32-year-old daughter for nearly 16 months, partly to protect her grandsons from the pain of losing their mother again.

Twice a month, fewer than a dozen grandparents meet in a lounge at the Glendale Adult Recreation Center to share advice and comfort.

The emotional get-togethers are a time for many of the grandmothers to trade tips, such as where to find good day care and how to stand up to their occasionally combative adult children.

“Once in a great while, you go to a meeting where everyone’s laughing and joking,” said grandmother Samantha Scott, who also belongs to a support group in Culver City. “But that’s few and far between. I don’t think I’ve gone to one meeting where I haven’t busted out crying.”

Seated in a small one-bedroom apartment in North Hollywood that she shares with her 2-year-old grandson, Anthony, Scott wiped tears from her eyes as she described the agonizing years with her daughter.

Often, the 50-year-old grandmother said, her daughter was uncontrollable and sought refuge in gangs and drugs.

Scott has legal custody of her grandson. But she is fighting for the right to visit her 15-month-old granddaughter, Ashley, who is still living with her daughter.

“I’m deathly afraid of my daughter,” said Scott, who stays in regular contact with her daughter but does not tell her where she lives.

“Part of me feels guilty, but I knew I did everything I could to be a good mother. The only thing I could not provide was a father.

“I love my daughter, and I always will,” she added. “But I hate her for everything she’s done to my two grandchildren.”