This Sunday marks Grandparents Day, a time to celebrate our grandparents and recall the steady influence they have on our formative and adult years. They’re often the ones who taught us patience, kept family stories alive, made us feel safe, and loved us unconditionally.
For a growing number of children, though, that relationship looks different. Grandparents who also serve as kinship foster parents are not just visiting on weekends or spoiling grandkids on holidays; they’re raising them full-time. When a parent is unable to care for a child because of illness, addiction, financial collapse, or other crises, it’s often grandparents who step in without hesitation.
That means some grandparents have a different relationship with their grandchildren than others. Although they love their grandchildren unconditionally, they cannot afford to spoil them. Since it’s their job to raise them well, grandparents who provide kinship care must serve as disciplinarians, homework helpers, and caregivers. Where many grandparents delight in saying yes to their grandchildren, others must say no.
This is the heart of kinship foster care. Rather than placing a child with strangers, kinship care keeps them with people who already know their personality, people who share their last name and their history. That continuity matters. Studies consistently point to better emotional outcomes and a stronger sense of stability for kids who stay within their extended family during a crisis, compared to placement with non-relatives.
What’s easy to overlook is the cost this asks of the grandparents themselves. Retirement plans get shelved. Empty nests fill back up. People in their 60s and 70s find themselves back at school pickup lines and doctor’s appointments because their grandchild has no one else who would or could.
So, this Grandparents Day, alongside the cards and flowers, it is worth recognizing this group in particular: the grandparents who didn’t just raise a family but rebuilt one when it mattered most.
To learn more about kinship and foster care, visit saintfrancisministries.org/foster-care.
