Raising Their Children’s Children and Wondering What Went Wrong the First Time

Gwen Bartholomew was just getting her new business--a supper club in New Orleans--off the ground when the phone call came that brought her back to Los Angeles: Her daughter’s boyfriend had been arrested for domestic abuse and social workers had taken their three kids. If Grandma couldn’t come for them, they’d wind up in foster homes.

She packed a bag--”enough clothes for four days”--and jumped on a plane. “I figured I’d get them and bring them back home [to New Orleans], keep them for a few months or whatever, long enough for my daughter to get her life together.”

Five years later, she’s stopped waiting for her daughter to recover and she’s still raising the kids--four of them now, ages 3 to 10.

But it is not just the rigors of motherhood that drain her. At 53, she is still full of vigor, with a raspy voice, a pixie haircut and a booming laugh that bounces off the walls of her North Hollywood home, over the din of boisterous kids at play.

It is also the struggle to make peace with this new life . . . to navigate its bureaucratic maze, to keep her footing on its rocky emotional terrain.

“That’s a difficult thing for all of us, to cut that umbilical cord and say to our daughters, ‘I’ve given you every chance in the world, the court system has given you every chance in the world. Now your needs no longer matter to me. I’ve got to do what’s right for your kids.’ ”

Every day, in Southern California and across the nation, weary grandmothers file into courtrooms and listen to a litany of failings--drug abuse, prostitution, violence, neglect--that have rendered their children unfit to parent.

Some are there because they have turned on their children by summoning police or social workers because they could no longer stomach the plight of their grandchildren. Others come reluctantly, backed into a corner by circumstance, torn by competing loyalties.

This second pass at parenthood comes with its own set of doubts: If I failed so miserably with my own child, will I do any better this time around?

“You wonder,” admits Bartholomew. “And the system treats you like you’re guilty because your daughter is a bad mother. The mind-set seems to be that this is your fault. What’s that adage: The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

She’s gone through years of soul-searching, watching her daughter tumble from problem to problem, flit in and out of the children’s lives. “I was not Suzy Homemaker . . . sitting there with baked cookies every day, but I certainly was not an abusive parent,” Bartholomew said. “If anything, I was guilty of spoiling her, with her being an only child. But I know that I did the best that I could.”

Now she’s come to the hard realization that taking in your grandchildren can mean locking out your child.

*

There are more than 4 million children in this country being raised by relatives--750,000 in California alone--because one or both of their parents are on drugs, in jail, lost to the streets or otherwise unavailable. And their ranks are growing rapidly. The number of children in grandparents’ care rose by 44% from 1980 to 1990, and another 25% in the past 10 years, according to census figures. This year’s census is expected to show an even bigger increase.

In big cities like Los Angeles, grandparents are the grease that makes the wheels of the foster care system turn. More than 60% of children taken from abusive and neglectful parents here are placed with relatives, most often grandmothers.

Yet grandparents say the system does little to recognize their special needs--the unique emotional, financial and physical burdens that make it hard for them to raise their children’s kids. “Foster parents get training, information, they go into this with their eyes wide open,” Bartholomew said. “A grandma just gets a call in the middle of the night . . . a social worker shows up and hands you a baby.”

Three-quarters of the children in grandparents’ care are the children of drug addicts, and many are handicapped by their mother’s drug use or traumatized by years of chaos and abuse.

“People don’t understand what these grandparents are dealing with. They say: ‘In my family, we always took care of our kids.’ But these are different kids, and these families are not prepared for that,” explained Lillian Johnson, who heads kinship support services at San Francisco’s Edgewood Center for Children and Families.

Earlier this month, Edgewood and Children’s Institute International of Los Angeles hosted a three-day conference on kinship care. It was a chance for the grandmothers to get a line on the services and advice they need. But more than that, it was an opportunity to share their stories with other women who understand the mixed bag of joy, sorrow and frustration that accompanies raising your children’s kids.

“We’d have nine different mothers talking about their daughters, and you’d think they were talking about the same person,” Bartholomew said. “These are women who never thought they’d be dealing with welfare, social workers, special ed . . . who’ve had to rearrange their whole lives.”

Kinship care providers want their concerns on the agenda of both the nation’s major political parties. They are lobbying for changes in child welfare systems that will create a special pipeline for grandparents, making it easier for them to get the help they need.

“We’ve got women in their 70s who are raising six and eight grandkids,” said Frances Crawford, who runs CII’s Grandma’s House in an aging Koreatown bungalow. There grandmothers can come for information, support, or just a break from the rigors of raising kids.

Many live on fixed incomes, in tiny apartments suddenly crowded with strollers and potty-chairs and Rollerblades. Some have to quit their jobs to care for the children; others must come out of retirement and go back to work to afford their new brood.

What they need, they say, is more funding for children’s health care and mental health services, better access to day care and educational services; financial assistance for housing; and a system of relief for elderly folks who are not up to the demands of raising young children.

What they want is a voice in the process that determines the fate of their children and grandchildren, and will shape their lives well into their golden years.

“You go into court, the parents have an attorney, the child has an attorney, the social worker has an attorney. . . .,” Bartholomew said. “Sometimes it seems like you’re fighting the system and your child as well.”

And just as the court fights seem to drag on for years, so do the battles between mother and daughter.

“I’ve talked to grandmas who’re exhausted from spending all day in court, running from doctor to therapist to social worker. Then you get home and the phone rings, and it’s a collect call from the jail and you’re getting cussed out by your child,” Bartholomew said.

“My own daughter used to call me up and scream at me, ‘You’re trying to take my kids from me!’ Like I woke up one day and had nothing better to do and said, ‘Let me go take my daughter’s three kids. Let me give up my morning coffee and newspaper and bubble baths and change poopy diapers and wipe runny noses all day.’ Like this is the kind of life I would choose.”

*

Like most grandparents, Bonnie De La Cruz figured it would only be temporary when she agreed to keep her 2-year-old grandson while his mother was treated for drug addiction.

“I’m thinking: We’re going into court, they’ll order her to rehab, she’ll be fixed, the baby will go back home, and my life will go back to normal.”

Nine years later, the Inglewood grandmother is still raising young Brandon, who has cystic fibrosis. She had to quit her job to care for him. She lost her friends, her social life, her independence.

But more than that, she’s lost the dream that comforted her through the most trying times of parenthood. “I couldn’t wait to be a grandma,” she said. “I was going to be such a fun grandma, take them places . . . spoil them, and then send them home.”

Instead, De La Cruz plays disciplinarian to her only daughter’s child: No, you can’t have more ice cream. Turn off the TV and do your homework. Did you take your medicine? No more video games tonight.

“And it’s not just my loss. Brandon’s lost the chance to have a mother and a grandma,” she said, her voice turning soft, then breaking into a sob. “He turned 11 on Monday, and he just learned how to ride a bike. He had to have his friends teach him, because I couldn’t because I’m too old to go sailing down the street behind him.

“Because as much as grandma loves him, how do you replace a mom?”

*

Sandy Banks’ column is published on Sundays and Tuesdays. Her e-mail address is sandy.banks@latimes.com.