Virus took caregivers from youth
Children of color account for many of those orphaned
QUINCY, Fla. – On the front porch of her childhood home, Imani Alexander sifted through her mother’s keepsake box – colorful cloth earrings, copper necklaces, photographs and portraits of the family’s matriarchs.
As her mom crafted handmade jewelry, Imani painted alongside her.
But the 15-year-old will no longer make art with her mom. Shannon Robinson died of COVID-19 in January. She was 38.
Her mom used to tell her, “You have to feel what you’re painting.” Nine months after her death, Imani isn’t doing a lot of painting. She feels too much. She’s getting help from a monthly support group called Love Heals for young Black girls who’ve lost their mothers.
“I’m trying to be strong for my family,” she said. But, “I have my moments. There will be a lot of them, I know that.”
Imani is one of at least 140,000 children across the U.S. who have lost a primary or secondary caregiver to COVID-19, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Pediatrics.
The study highlights the pandemicdriven childhood crisis and its disproportionate impact. Researchers found children of color account for 65% of children orphaned from COVID-19 through June. That’s more than 91,000 children of color, compared with 51,000 white children.
The study’s lead author, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention epidemiologist Susan Hillis, called the disparities “disturbing.”
Using the United Nations Children’s Fund definition of orphanhood – the loss of at least one parent or caregiver – the study found 1 in every 310 Black children lost a primary or secondary caregiver, compared to 1 in every 753 white children. A large portion of Black children losing caregivers lived in Southeastern states such as Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana.
Hispanic children were twice as likely than white children to lose a caregiver and 1 in every 412 Hispanic children lost at least one, the study found. Indigenous children, who had the highest risk, were almost five times more likely; about 1 in every 168 Native American children lost a caregiver.
Alaska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota and Washington, D.C., had the widest disparities between white children and children of color.
The data captures just the first 15 months of the pandemic and could be an underestimate.
“This problem is serious. It’s big. And it will continue,” Hillis said. “In my head, I keep seeing five little first graders, standing together, all of different race/ ethnicity, and it is unconscionable the difference in the risk they have.”
Just like adults of color, children of color also have been more likely to get sicker, be hospitalized and die of the virus, experts say.
The loss of a parent only adds to the storm of disparate circumstances, such as lack of access to health care or food insecurity, that place children of color at higher risk of various inequities that threaten their health and well-being.
“It’s an incredibly important event that we have not been following carefully, because the loss of a parent is probably one of the most destabilizing events that can happen in a child’s life,” said Dr. Nora Volkow, a psychiatrist and director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
Keeping children with their families, providing economic support to families who may have lost a head of the household, and programs that support positive family relationships can all cultivate resilience in children, study authors suggested.
“Maintaining children in their families is a priority,” Hillis and her colleagues wrote. “This means families bereaved by the pandemic must be supported, and those needing kinship or foster care must rapidly receive services.”
Adam Carter, a mental health counselor and clinical director of the National Alliance for Grieving Children, said a child’s support system is important in the wake of trauma.
“Effects, both short term and long term, are largely impacted by the support system and environment the child was in prior to the loss,” he said. “That’s going to be a pretty big indicator. If that support system is there, then the child tends to do well over time.”
But wide gaps exist in support systems within communities of color. Terrinieka Powell, a Johns Hopkins University psychologist, said programs and policies to address the social crisis of orphanhood need to be informed by cultural competency.
“For Black kids, they’re also dealing with racial discrimination, and sometimes criminal victimization and sometimes inadequate health care,” she said.
Indigenous children also suffer unique challenges compounding the deaths, said Hopi tribe member Felina Cordova-marks, a University of Arizona professor and health disparities expert.
“The loss of a caregiver will definitely impact mental health and all aspects of health among American Indian children, as it may compound historical trauma,” she said.
Cordova-marks, who founded the Southern Arizona Urban Native Indigenous COVID Relief program, said research has found integrating Native culture can help alleviate the effects of trauma. Though the losses are traumatic, “resilience is woven into us as a people as well,” she said, “culture is connected to resilience.”
The greatest number of American Indian children who lost a caregiver lived in the Great Plains, like 6-year-old Brady Two Bulls. The boy, from the Pine Ridge Reservation in hard-hit South Dakota, lost his grandfather Cecil Little Hawk Sept. 9. He was 54.
Brady, an Oglala Lakota tribe member, had a bond with his grandpa, who along with his grandmother, Mary Little Hawk, raised him. She hopes to instill Lakota teachings in Brady. As he processes the loss, Little Hawk tries to answer all of the boy’s questions.
“What did you do with Grandpa’s stuff? Does he need shoes in heaven? And his jacket too?” he asks. “I bet he took his cap with him too, then.”
Little Hawk said Brady was still trying to understand his grandpa’s death. Sometimes, he runs outside and gazes down the road, “Like he’s waiting for someone to pull up,” she said. “He doesn’t say his grandpa’s name. All he says is, ‘I miss someone.’ And that really hurts at times, because I know he’s feeling sad.”