US grandparents key childcare resource

Grandparents Day in the United States Sunday salutes a demographic increasingly responsible for the rearing of their children's children, research indicates. The University of Chicago has concluded that 2.7 million U.S. grandparents are primary care providers for their grandchildren compared to 2.4 million in 2006. Chicago researchers also concluded through census data that grandparents are the go-to child-care providers for 30-percent of working moms in the United States. The data also found that families in lower-income brackets were more likely to draft grandparents into a child-care role, the university said in a written statement. "Our findings show that different groups of grandparents are likely to provide different types of care. Importantly grandparents with less income and less education, or who are from minority groups, are more likely to take on care for their grandchildren," said sociology professor Linda Waite. The Census Bureau said Sunday there were 5.4 million children under the age of 18 living with their grandparents as of the 2010 census, which is about 10 percent of the total child population in the United States.