Posted by
GTR Editor on Dec 30, 2020 in
Issue 2, December 2020,
Volume 19 |
Comments Off on Doing One’s Best: Becoming a Kinship Caregiver
Kara Vander Linden, Ed.D., Saybrook University, USA Catherine J. Tompkins, PhD, MSW, George Mason University, USA Abstract A kinship family is one where a family member, other than a biological parent, is primarily responsible for the child. In-depth, unstructured interviews with kinship caregivers and children from 15 kinship families were conducted to gain a thorough understanding of interactions and relationships among kinship family members. Other data sources included notes from monthly kinship care committee meetings, kinship care focus groups, and kinship family support groups. The resulting grounded theory, Doing One’s Best, explains a process of becoming a kinship caregiver and doing what one can regardless of multiple factors that make the situation difficult. Chaos increases as situational, relationship and emotional complexity are exacerbated by occurring together, leading to compounding complexity and the need to engage in behaviors to survive. Keywords: classic grounded theory; kinship families; complexity; caregiving, surviving Introduction In preparation for this classic grounded theory (CGT) study, the researchers identified an area of interest, the substantive area, which, for this study, was kinship care. Kinship care defined in its purest form is raising a child for a family or a friend (KFI, 2019). Kinship caregivers are any adult relative or adult fictive kin providing full-time nurturing and protection of children, with the most prevalent type of kinship care provider being a grandparent–predominantly a grandmother (Child Welfare League of America, 2011). In 2012, approximately 4.2 million households in the U.S. (3% of all households) included both grandchildren under 18 and their grandparents. A grandparent headed over 60% of these households, and 33% had no parent present (U.S. Census Bureau, 2014). Among grandparent caregivers, about 12% are younger than 45 years old and 54% range in age from 45 to 59 years. Twenty-five percent are between the ages of 60 to 69 and 9% are over 70 years old (Pew Research Center, 2013). Researchers and practitioners most often explore kinship care through a child welfare lens, generally concluding that child welfare outcomes, such as safety and permanency, are stronger in kinship care compared to foster care (Winokur, Crawford, Longbardi, & Valentine, 2008). Because kinship care is most often seen as a better alternative to foster care for the children, the assessment of challenges and needs within kinship families focusing on the kinship caregiver, children, and the biological parent is often not explored. This study focuses on the kinship caregiver and the children with future research needing to include the biological parent. Grandparents who are the primary caregivers for their grandchildren experience positive and negative aspects of the caregiving relationship (Kirby, 2015) but we need to understand more about these experiences. Often, custodial grandparents live in families where their children are unavailable to parent due to adolescent pregnancy, incarceration, death, child abuse, neglect, or addiction (Smith & Palmieri, 2007). Additionally, the complications of raising a child as a grandparent can have a negative impact financially, especially in terms of retirement; socially, as raising a child later in life can be isolating; and emotionally, as the grandparent may feel anger toward their child as well as guilt. These stressors can lead to challenges in caregiving from grandparents in kinship families (Smith & Palmieri, 2007). Methodology Classic grounded theory (CGT) is “a general research methodology linked with data collection that uses a systematically applied set of methods to generate an inductive theory about a substantive area” (Glaser, 1992, p. 16). The primary stages used in this CGT study were preparation, data collection and...