A Single-parent, Multigenerational Family Testimony: Living under Covid-19 & other orders in Silicon Valley
Every time I drive away from home with my two toddlers in tow, ages three and four, I wonder, how many of the few cars sharing the road with me are single parents driving their children to meet with their children’s other parent? How many, like me, have children who spend time in two multigenerational households?
I recall a diagram I saw in mid-March, which appeared in my transnational twitter feed, showing a nuclear family with a line drawn around them. It was a PSA urging folks to “stay in your bubble.” Surely, that bubble does not know multigenerational families — never mind families whose lives are shaped by court orders.
Alternative (non-nuclear) traditional families
California has the second-to-highest percentage of multigenerational households in the U.S. at 5.77%, or 754,667 total households.
Of all Hispanic/Latino children in Santa Clara County, where I live, 19.9% reside in multigenerational households. Similar numbers appear for African American/Black and Asian American children. By contrast, only 6.5% of all White children’s living arrangements are multigenerational.
A recent NPR story brought to light the adjustments multigenerational families have made post-#StayHome to keep everyone, particularly grandparents, safe. Some describe carving out a grandparent’s private space within the household.
As for my toddlers and me, we live with their high-risk grandparents. My children continue on the same visit schedule with their father as before the pandemic, potentially exposing two sets of grandparents. It’s a great burden to bear.
And we have found social distancing within the home a challenge. I remind my toddlers to keep a distance from their grandparents and we have changed how we do things in the home accordingly. But my parents oscillate between maintaining distance and choosing not to stay away from them. Admittedly, so do my children.
My toddlers understand why Mommy works at home. They understand why we can’t go to their favorite playgrounds or to school. The county sent each of my children booklets about a coronavirus donning black-framed glasses and a few lashes. (My daughter has since been referring to the virus as “she.”)
Meanwhile, my children are aware that people we know and love continue to leave their homes nearly every day to go to work.
Data, gathering
As I began research on how families like mine are coping with COVID-19 shelter-in-place orders, I discovered the data on single parents by race and gender in Santa Clara County was not very accessible. This discovery furthered my sense that families like mine are living in the shadows.
U.S. Census data shows that 35% of all children in the country live in single-parent households. Of those, 53% are American Indian; 15% are Asian & Pacific Islander; 65% are Black or African American; 41% are Hispanic or Latino; 24% are non-Hispanic White; 40% are two or more races.
The breakdown by race in the state begins to tell a distinct story. The available 2018 data for California drawn from the Current Population Survey (CPS) show that of all Hispanic/Latino children 30.6% do not live with two parents present and, of those, 22% live with their mother present only. Comparatively, 21.4% of all White children live with only one or no parents present and for Asian Pacific Islander children the figure is 14.8%.
Across the board in the state and across the country, the large majority of children who do not live with both parents live with their mothers present only.
This is where my research hit a dead end — I could not find the figures by race and gender for children’s living arrangements in Santa Clara County. I reached out to Lori Turk-Bicakci, Ph.D., Director of the Kidsdata Program of the Lucile Packard Foundation for Children’s Health. She explained the suppression rates are often too high, meaning there are not enough respondents, to represent the data I sought in a meaningful way at the county level.
Given the large population in Santa Clara County (1.9 mil), Turk-Bicakci thought we might have some luck. After revisiting the data, aggregating the numbers from 2014 through 2018, what the non-profit found is striking:
Almost 37% of all Santa Clara County Hispanic/Latino children live with one parent present only; 28% of those live with their mother present only. Comparatively, 10.5% of all Asian American children, and 16.3% of all White children live with a single-parent. The total for all children who live with a single parent in the county is 22.8%.
For some perspective, Hispanic/Latinos make up 25% of the County population; non-Hispanic Whites make up 31%; and Asians make up 38%.
Children represent 449,000 of the county. Nearly 144,260 of those are between the ages of zero and five.
To conclude, the available data clearly shows Hispanic/Latino children living with one parent, predominantly their mothers, represent a significant percentage in Santa Clara County and disproportionately so compared to a) other racial groups and b) the total number of single parent households.
We can gather that a significant percentage of the families represented by the above data have legal or informal visitation agreements.
In a very important way numbers matter, data matter, because they make one visible. Once one is counted, maybe one’s life will count, and governmental and non-governmental agencies will be in a better position to speak to the health and wellness of the high number of Hispanic/Latino children living with a single parent and in multigenerational homes, especially in this prolonged moment of crisis.
Families under orders
Families with custody and visitation orders face unique challenges in the path of COVID-19. As Turk-Bicakci asserts, “Clarity about custodial arrangements in the midst of stay-at-home orders could ease the strain on families and protect children’s emotional health.”
How do we factor in the emotional and overall health of all those living under more than one roof during this pandemic, particularly those with custody and visitation orders? Several stories have emerged of families negotiating children’s timeshare, some with more success than others.
In one reported California case, a single-mother’s ex-husband would not release their two children at the scheduled pick-up time. The father of the children stated to police that he was worried the mother, an emergency room doctor, was exposing their children to the coronavirus.
Unless amicable agreements are made, the primary legal recourse parents have in California to change a current visitation schedule is by way of a temporary emergency order, which might be granted if one’s child is immune-compromised or otherwise high risk. One lawyer states a parent must show “persuasive evidence that parenting time would create risk of transmission.”
Of course, we now know how asymptomatic people shed the virus. In any case, most courts throughout the country do not appear to be prioritizing non-emergency visitation changes at this time.
As an aside, in the immediate aftermath of shelter-in-place orders, domestic violence cases have skyrocketed, both globally and in the U.S. Only toward the end of March did Santa Clara County Superior Court issue a clear public statement that courts remain open for emergency orders including those related to domestic violence, child custody and visitation, gun violence, among others.
One California-based attorney confirms that as COVID-19 shelter-in-place orders were implemented, there has been a great lack of clarity offered for co-parents across the country. According to Michael C. Peterson, CFLS, Texas is the only state that made a clear declaration in late March that child custody/visitation orders are to remain in place regardless of stay-at-home decrees.
Peterson elaborates,
Anecdotally, any elementary school teacher knows that little kids are basically germ and virus incubators, and many children do not adhere to the prevention methods for spreading viruses…Having children in the home in proximity to grandparents is much like being quarantined on the “Disaster Princess” off Japan last month.
Similar to other attorneys, Peterson recommends children (whom, by the way, are small humans, not “virus incubators”) remain in one home for the time being, engaging in virtual communication with the non-custodial parent, and making-up for the non-custodial parent’s lost time after the shelter-in-place orders are lifted.
This advice assumes that co-parents communicate effectively and are able to come to agreements. The nature of some court-ordered visitation schedules might indicate otherwise. Moreover, is this advice truly the best for the children and the grandparents? What other guidance might help co-parents determine this?
Keeping it together
There are little things my LOs and I do as best we can to try and control everything that we can’t. These include washing our hands before greeting the grandparents, before and after any transition, and not touching our faces, or, at least, not touching each other’s faces (they are three and four — it’s very difficult). We pick up meals for the household from the school down the street to minimize shopping trips and try to maintain everyone’s health.
I can imagine what other Latinx multigenerational families in Santa Clara County with court-ordered visitation schedules are going through — and now we all know they/we exist. Recall, the numbers for the county were not so apparent just a few weeks ago, when I started working on this story.
As a result, I must state the not-so-obvious — single parents with court ordered visitation schedules living in multigenerational households are families, too.
Co-parents shouldn’t have to feel they are alone, haunted by the possibility of putting their loved ones in danger through the movement of their own children.
With more accessible county level data, maybe local COVID-19 policy and PSAs will be inspired to shift some of the focus to consider children’s health and wellness, children whose lives reflect something other than a nuclear family bubble.
In the meantime, may we all keep it together, together
