Family way(s)

None of this is new, of course. Grandparents or other relatives have been subbing in for missing parents since families have been families.

In some cultures, older adults are expected to play a strong role in child-rearing. In America, families in which teens become parents, or when parents work away from home, or die, or go to prison, often have been led by grandparents and others who provide financial and emotional support and serve as the adults — literally — in the room.

Still, while federal data doesn’t track family relationships as closely as experts would like, people who work with older, standin parents say that particular type of family structure might be hitting a modern high-water mark.

Census results show that roughly 7.6 million children currently live in a household headed by a relative other than their parent. And 2.4 million of those kids are being raised entirely by a grandparent or older relative, with no biological parent in the home. In Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties, about 405,000 children were sharing a home with at least one grandparent in 2020.

Since then, several factors suggest the numbers have spiked.

The opioid crisis is killing tens of thousands of parents a year and leaving many others unable to care for their children. In 2022, more than 90,000 people died of drug overdoses in the United States, with 71% of those deaths hitting people ages 25 to 54, prime parenting years. Meanwhile, COVID-19 has killed about 1.2 million Americans since 2020, leaving an estimated 140,000 children with no parents.

That’s the current picture. Going forward, experts