9/11 Took Young Boy's Grandfather...and Friend (NPR)

Grandpas hold our tiny hands for just a little while

but our hearts forever

"I love you," Frankie said,

"and there's no other grandfather

I'd rather see than you."

NPR
Original Broadcast on 9/5/2008
Re-broadcast 9/11/11
Listen and Then Bear Hug Your Grandchildren

For Frankie DeVito, his grandfather was a favorite playmate and companion. But Bill Steckman, who worked in the World Trade Center, didn't come home after Sept. 11, 2001. Frankie, now 10, talks with his mother about that day — and how his grandfather remains with him.

"He always used to be in the garage fixing up things with cousin Mikey," Frankie told his mother, Diana.

"And he always promised to take me to work once — but that's not going to happen."

Asked about that day, Frankie said that he recalls seeing his mother upset. Something had happened to his grandfather, he was told. And the family was going to their grandparents' house.

"I remember that Mikey told me that planes crashed, and he wasn't coming back," Frankie said.

In the weeks that followed, being with the rest of his family made him feel better, Frankie said — and so did pretending his grandfather was with him in his room.

He can still feel that presence, he said.

"Being in certain places, when I'm at a happy time, just somewhere in my mind, he won't get out of there. He's just stuck in my mind. And that makes me a little sadder, where I am."

He still dreams of his grandfather, Frankie said — dreams in which the whole family is together again. And he knows what he would say to his grandfather if he could speak to him.

"I love you," Frankie said, "and there's no other grandfather I'd rather see than you."

Produced for Morning Edition by Vanara Taing with Lizzie Jacobs. The senior producer for StoryCorps is Michael Garofalo.

6.5 percent of children in the United States lived with their grandparents (a 20 year high)

By Sabrina Tavernise
The New York Tiimes
11/10/10
WASHINGTON — The recession continued to batter families this year, with the number of stay-at-home mothers declining and a sharp rise in the number of children living with their grandparents, according to a new Census Bureau report.

The number of children living in their grandparents’ home increased by 8 percent compared with 2009, the second such rise in two years, and an indication that the recession is rearranging how people live.

Over all, 6.5 percent of children in the United States lived with their grandparents, a 20-year high and double the rate in 1970, said Andrew Cherlin, a professor of sociology and public policy at Johns Hopkins University, who analyzed the data.

“That’s a story that says grandparents are helping out as their adult children are losing their jobs,” Mr. Cherlin said.

Of the 7.5 million children who lived with a grandparent in 2010, more than a fifth did not have a parent present in the household, the report said.

The recession may also have been a factor in reducing the number of stay-at-home mothers, which dropped slightly to 23 percent in 2010, down one percentage point from 2007, when the economic downturn began.

The report also highlighted increases in the marriage age for men and women, a long-term trend that began in the 1950s. This year, the median age for men to marry for the first time was 28, up from 26 in 2000. The age for women was 26, up from 25 a decade ago.

Americans were marrying at their youngest in the 1950s, when half of all women were married by their early 20s, Mr. Cherlin said. But the age has been rising since then, and it is now the highest since the government began to track the data in the 1890s, he said.

In all, 54 percent of adults were married in 2010, down from 57 percent in 2000, the report said. At the same time, the number of one-person households rose to 27 percent over the past decade, up from 25 percent in 2000. That is more than double the number of one-person households in 1960, the report said.

The report also noted an increase in the average size of households headed by Americans without a high school degree. There are a number of possible reasons, Mr. Cherlin said, including an increase in the overall number of immigrants, who tend to be less educated and have larger families, or doubling up within households.

One child in 10 in the United States lives with a grandparent (Pew Research Center)

By Gretchen Livingston and Kim Parker
Pew Research Center
September 9, 2010

One child in 10 in the United States lives with a grandparent, a share that increased slowly and steadily over the past decade before rising sharply from 2007 to 2008, the first year of the Great Recession, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data.

About four-in-ten (41%) of those children who live with a grandparent (or grandparents) are also being raised primarily by that grandparent,1 according to the census data.

This figure -- 2.9 million children -- rose slowly throughout the decade and it, too, spiked from 2007 to 2008. In that single year, there was a 6% increase.

The phenomenon of grandparents serving as primary caregivers is more common among blacks3 and Hispanics than among whites,4 but the sharpest rise since the recession began has been among whites.

The number of white grandparents primarily responsible for their grandchildren rose by 9% from 2007 to 2008, compared with an increase of just 2% among black grandparents and no change among Hispanic grandparents.

Almost half (49%) of children being raised by grandparents also live with a single parent. For about four-in-ten (43%) of these children, there is no parent in the household. About 8% have both parents in the household, in addition to the caregiver grandparent.

Whether or not they live with and raise their grandchildren, being a grandparent is central to the lives of most older Americans. According to a 2009 Pew Research Center survey, 80% of those ages 65 and older have grandchildren, as do 51% of those ages 50-64.5 The survey finds that grandparents place a premium on time spent with their grandchildren.

Just as the number of children being cared for by their grandparents has increased from 2000 to 2008, the corresponding number of grandparents serving as primary caregivers to their grandchildren increased 8%, from 2.4 million in 2000 to 2.6 million in 2008.

Three percent of that increase occurred from 2000 to 2007, and 5% occurred from 2007 to 2008.

Among grandparents who serve as primary caregivers for grandchildren, there are notable differences by race, ethnicity and income. More than half of grandparent primary caregivers (53%) are white, while 24% are African American, 18% are Hispanic and 3% are Asians. In comparison, in the population ages 50 and older, 78% are white, 10% are black, 8% are Hispanic and 4% are Asian.

While grandparents who serve as primary caregivers for their grandchildren are disproportionately black and Hispanic, the increase in grandparent primary caregiving across the decade has been much more pronounced among whites. From 2000 to 2008, there was a 19% increase in the number of white grandparents caring for their grandkids.

 Link to complete study