 
(Part 2 of 2. Read Part
1)
Charlene Muhammad
New America Media
At age 16, Marquise Cormier knows well how fortunate he was to have his
teenage father’s parents take him in as an infant and nurture him in a loving
home. Things became hard on the family two years ago, when Marquise’s
grandmother became ill and disabled and his grandfather died of a heart attack.
 Marquise Cormier was a child prodigy. (NAM)
Marquise was unique as a precocious child - an author and small business owner
at the age of 7 - but he shares his experience of poverty with one in five
California children ages 17 or younger who live in families with incomes below
the federal poverty level, which is about $22,000 a year for a family of four.
Kidsdata.org indicates
that African American children were 28.2 percent of the state’s children in
poverty between 2006 and 2008. The website, a program of the Lucile Packard
Foundation for Children’s Health, provides more than 300 indicators on the
health and wellbeing of children in California.
Kidsdata.org also shows that one-fourth of the state’s poor children are
Latino, another one-fourth are Native American, one-sixth Asian/Pacific
Islanders and one-eighth white.
Nationally, 2.5 million grandparents have primary responsibility for their
grandchildren, according to Generations
United. Besides grandparents, more than a million aunts, uncles, adult
siblings and family friends are also caring for children. In all, these kin care
for 6.7 million children and youth.
This informal child welfare system cares for 10 to 12 times more children than
the foster care system in the United States, which includes about 500,000
children, says Gerard Wallace, executive director of the National
Committee of Grandparents for Children’s Rights.
Unexpected Parenting
Marquise’s ordeal mirrors that of many children reared by their grandparents
or other kin, says Lenora Poe, founder of the California Coalition of
Grandparents and Relative Caregivers.
Many such grandkin, especially in African American families, take in their
grandchildren and raise them even during their expected retirement in their
Golden Years. Often when troubles occur, such as illness or death, there’s no
safety net they can rely on, Poe says.
Poe criticizes the official standard of poverty for being so low that people
have to have “absolutely nothing” to be considered poor. Instead, she says,
poverty should mean “there are insufficient resources for survival, and
especially in these reconstituted families.”
Like Marquise’s grandparents, many seniors rearing their grandchildren do so
on very limited incomes, mainly Social Security. They’re retired and have
medical conditions or disabilities. These grandparents do it all with little
public assistance because the birth parents - who might be incarcerated,
incapacitated by drugs or, like Marquise’s teenage parents, simply too young
to provide for a baby - are still considered the legal “custodial parents.”
It’s a term for family members who are expected to care for their own without
even the aid given to unrelated foster-care providers. The designation often
makes them ineligible for assistance.
For example, even though Marquise’s grandmother, Kenny Jones, qualified last
summer for MediCal (California’s low-income Medicaid program), she couldn’t
also apply for Marquise. Fortunately, his mother was available to help with the
application, and he recently went on MediCal. At almost every turn, however,
Jones found barriers to getting basic help in providing a home for her grandson.
Poe notes that some grandparents find they must return to work just to make ends
meet.
Often, grandparents’ sense of pride and integrity won’t let them expose
their difficulties to anyone. Poe calls it silent suffering. One way out of the
isolation, she says, is for support groups like hers to approach community
agencies that can help with such things as providing school supplies,
transportation and positive social gatherings (such as holiday celebrations).
Sufficient clothing is especially important for children, so they aren’t
stigmatized as markedly different from their classmates.
“Children,” she stresses, “need positive support without being criticized
and judged.”
Struggling in Poverty
A disproportionate number of kin who are taking care of children are struggling
in poverty, says Wallace. There are higher rates of poverty in kinship families
than in parental families because so many are past age 60, living on modest
fixed incomes and never anticipated their new parental responsibilities,
including the need for additional income. Grandparents routinely skimp on their
medical prescriptions in order to take care of the children.
Still, Wallace says, national studies prove that children do better when being
raised by grandparents and kin than by strangers and foster care.
Some help is available through a federal Child-Only grant, offered under the
Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program. But only one-fourth of eligible
kinship families are getting the grant because many aren’t aware of it,
Wallace says. A grandmother in the Bronx, he recalls, cared for her murdered
brother’s children for nine years before learning about this Child-Only
assistance last year.
“The idea that there is even one child going to sleep hungry is a conversation
we shouldn’t be having in a country with so many riches and blessings,”
states Eileen Mayers Pasztor of California State University, Long Beach.
Pasztor, who developed national training programs to teach child welfare workers
how to work with relatives, says poverty is just one of many other challenges -
like custody battles, medical and mental health issues - that stand in the way
of raising children to be productive members of their communities.
Ageism and Other Issues
Discrimination, ageism, and the system’s inability to incorporate
families’ feedback on how make policies work effectively compound the problem,
Pasztor says.
“I hardly ever hear somebody say to them, ‘We really appreciate that
you’ve stepped up to take care of these children. Are you getting everything
you need to raise these kids, to see that they get an education, to make sure
that they’re off the streets, that they’re not in gangs, that they’re
going to be a productive member of society? What can we do to help?’”
Advocates say social institutions often overlook people at the margins of
poverty, such as Marquise and his grandmother, because they aren’t yet reduced
to living on the streets.
Despite it all, Marquise says he’s determined not to let the poverty define
who he is or will become. Aside from being an accomplished athlete, he’s a
member of the Law Magnet Program at Dorsey High School and the Loyola College
Law School Youth Program.
“Poverty is just a name they put on people that don’t have income. It’s
been a journey for me,” Marquise adds. “I use it as motivation. I know that
success is in my destiny, and I’m waiting for it to manifest."
_______
Charlene Muhammad wrote this series through a New
America Media Fellowship on the Hidden Face of Poverty. It is published
on RedwoodAge.com with permission.
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