Grandparents face a greater mental and physical wear, especially because they deal with difficult children from broken or troubled homes. Stress and fatigue related to work that originates responsibility are the main symptoms of the “slave grandmother” syndrome.

Clemente Ferrer Global News Centre

(MADRID)    A study entitled  The Generation of Transition; between Work and Retirement,  states that  thousands of  years ago, the family model “included not only a father and a mother who took care of good parenting; there was also a grandmother who helped them in this task.”

Grandparents  work  as  health,  guardians  and  teachers  of  their grandchildren. They allow many moms to be integrated into the labor market. Some families are going better, thanks to grandparents. And in  times  of  economic  instability,  these  gestures  are  more important.

One of the most worrying census data, in America, is the growing number  of  children  who  have  to  be  supported  by  their  grandparents  2.4  million  grandparents  are responsible for the training of  4.4 million grandchildren.  The Economist reported that a third of  these grandparents, householders, had not completed high school and 62% had not gone to university. 70%exceeded 50 years of age, while 70% of children had about 11 years.

The African American community is the hardest hit. For people under 18 in the United States, 70.9% of those who are children of the household head are white and 13.3% black. However, in the case of the grandchildren of the household head, only 48.6% are white and 32.3% are black.

The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry explains the causes of this overhead for grandparents:  increase  in  single-parent  families,  high  divorce  rate,  teenage  pregnancy,  parental incapacitation by imprisonment, alcoholism, drug use and domestic violence.

Grandparents face a greater mental and physical wear, especially because they deal with difficult children from broken or troubled homes. Stress and fatigue related to work that originates responsibility are the main symptoms of the “slave grandmother” syndrome.

There  are  programs  to  help  grandparents  who  have  to  educate  their  grandchildren.  The  most requested service is an allowance so they can hire a temporary assistant during the holidays. Apart from these grants, we should erect a monument to grandparents.

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Author and journalist Clemente Ferrer Roselló, a prestigious Spanish advertising character, presents a fascinating personal and professional career fully devoted to the world of communication in its varied dimensions. He earned a PhD in Information Sciences from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, BA in Advertising from the Universidad Autonoma de Barcelona Master in Marketing from the School of Marketing Studies in Madrid.

He has been Associate Professor of Business Management at the Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Navarra and a contributor to the Madrid daily ABC. He also spent several years teaching, both in the Official School of Advertising as the School of Information Sciences at the Complutense University of Madrid. In 1985 he was awarded the Gold Master, granted by the Senior Management Forum and AMPE Prize 1996 to the “long and brilliant career advertising.”

You can write to Clemente at this address: [email protected]