Families Maintained by African American Grandmothers: Household Composition and Childcare Experiences‪.‬

Introduction The early 1990s brought about increased research, policy, and program attention to the number of grandchildren living in homes maintained by grandparents. According to the United States Census reports (1992), slightly more than 3 percent of all children under 18 were living in a home maintained by a grandparent in 1970. This number had almost doubled by 1992. In 1997, 3.9 million children lived in a home maintained by a grandparent, constituting 5.5 percent of all children less than 18 years old (Bryson and Casper, 1999).