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At the time of the 2000 U.S. Census, approximately 2,350,000 grandparents were raising their grandchildren (Fuller-Thomson & Minkler, 2003 ). Grandparent-headed households are one of the fastest-growing U.S. family groups (Letiecq, Bailey, & Kurtz, 2008 ). Grandparent-headed or skipped-generation households are those in which grandparents are raising grandchildren without a biological parent present in the home. In the year 2010, 5.8 million children younger than 18 were living with grandparents (U.S. Census Bureau, 2012 ), which is an increase from 4.5 million children in 2000 (Conway, Jones, & Speakes-Lewis, 2011 ). This phenomenon is not only taking place in the United States, but in other countries as well. For example, Canada experienced a 20% increase in children living with their grandparents between 1991 and 2001 (Fuller-Thomson, 2005 ).
Certain groups of people are disproportionately more likely to be raising grandchildren in the United States. For example, African American and Latino grandparents comprise approximately 12.9% and 12.5% of the population, respectively (Conway et al., 2011 ), yet 9% of African American children, 6% of Latino children, and 4% of non-Hispanic White children younger than 18 live with grandparents (Minkler & Fuller-Thomson, 2005 ). In the 2000 U.S. Census, 1.6 million individuals 45 and older claimed at least partial American Indian or Alaska Native heritage, and of those, 53,000 were caring for grandchildren (Fuller-Thomson & Minkler, 2005 ).
The reasons older adults take a grandchild into the home without his or her parents varies among countries, groups, and individuals. For example, the growing number of skipped-generation homes in Kenya relates to the increasing number of orphans due to the HIV/AIDS epidemic (Ice, Zidron, & Juma, 2008 ). In the United States, data show that the reasons for grandparents raising grandchildren include, but are not limited to, the biological parents' incarceration, unemployment, death, mental illness, divorce, abuse, neglect or abandonment, substance abuse, teenage pregnancy (Goodman & Rao, 2007 ), and military involvement (Letiecq et al., 2008 ). The biological parents' inability to afford a child or desire to avoid raising a child in an unsafe neighborhood or school (Bachman & Chase-Lansdale, 2005 ) are also identified as reasons why grandparents in the United States raise...