Saturday, October 12, 2013

All in the family


"Pemberton Park is purpose-built for grandparents raising youngsters in so-called “skipped generation” families. Its publicly subsidised apartments are reserved for those over 55 or under 21. Like most retirement homes it is a matriarchy: of its 36 households, all but three are headed by women. The complex opened in 2011, joining about a dozen similar projects across America, from the Bronx to Arizona. More are expected."

"Pemberton Park, an apartment complex in Kansas City, Missouri, caters to such families. The hush of the retirement home hangs over its brightly lit corridors and snail-slow lifts. Yet there are signs of youth everywhere: Girl Scout notices in the activity room, pop-star posters on apartment walls. Local donors have dropped off food to feed growing bodies: sacks of apples, pallets of yogurts, gallons of fruit juice. There is a computer lab, a children’s library and, outside, a playground, regularly patrolled to keep drug dealers away. The complex has a part-time social worker, charged with everything from mediating school disputes to overseeing a sexual-abstinence programme for teenagers."

This is similar to the Green House Project:

"In a typical Green House Project home, each elder has his or her own private room and bathroom. Homes typically also include a living room, kitchen and open dining area.[12] The homes are built to blend in with surrounding houses and neighborhoods. The Green House Project model allows for urban, rural and suburban style homes.
Residents do not have strict schedules and are encouraged to interact with staff and other residents, plus visitors (pets and family members). Staff members and residents develop personal relationships with one another because of the small community and home atmosphere.[13]

Staff members in Green House Project homes are broken up into four different roles: the Shabaz, the Guide, the Sage and the Clinical Support Team.[14] The Shahbaz is the versatile worker who provides personal care, prepares meals and performs housekeeping for the elders. The Guide is the supervisor of the Shahbaz and is responsible for the operations of the home. The Sage is a local elder who volunteers to be a mentor and advisor to the work teams in The Green House Project home. The Clinical Support Team comprises nurses, therapists, services, activities and dietary professionals who work with the Shahbaz to provide individualized care for each elder."

24 comments:

Eric the Fruit Bat said...

Now would be a good time to remember that we're basically the same animal as apes, evolutionarily speaking.

Eric the Fruit Bat said...

All I ask for is a tire to swing from and an orange every now and then when I've been good.

It's nice when they clean up by hosing everything down.

That's what the ceramic tiles and the drain in the floor are for.

Evi L. Bloggerlady said...

While Grandmas are awesome, what those kids really need are father figures.

Shouting Thomas said...

For Christ's sake girls, pop some babies.

Do it when you're in your early 20s

ricpic said...

Shabaz? Her main function is to fit a burka on the girl chile so she be totally ready to take her place in the state of Mohammeda King Obama will declare right after he declares martial law to save his peeps from Tea Party terrorists.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

While mom's out scoring some meth, it's good to know there's a place for grandma and the kids.

bagoh20 said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
bagoh20 said...

NIMBY! All those diapers will clog the sewers.

Eric the Fruit Bat said...

MIDGE DANIELS: You gonna pitch to me or not?

DON DRAPER: Midge, I'm serious. I have nothing. I am over and they're finally gonna know it. Next time you see me, there'll be a bunch of young executives picking meat off my ribs.

MIDGE: That's a pretty picture.

DON: What's your secret?

MIDGE: Nine different ways to say "I love you, Grandma."

-- Mad Men, 1:1, "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes"

sakredkow said...

There aren't many good reasons why children would be raised by someone other than their biological parents.

sakredkow said...

You get nightmares just listening to the grandparents tell you about it.

Eric the Fruit Bat said...

Isn't this the part where whatshisname shows up and complains that his foster grandparents were slaves or something?

Phil 314 said...

Bureaucratizing the family.

edutcher said...

But I thought they could stay on their parents' policy until they were 26!

PS It sounds very low-income housing.

And will probably work no better.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

grandparents in his office are getting much younger, with a median age in the late 40s now. More are repeat clients, seeking to take care of multiple babies by different adult children, four or five years apart. Fewer of these adult children ever marry.

So the grandparents fucked up their own children. Raised drug addicts, abusive and irresponsible children. The grandparents had their own kids when THEY were children and probably lived their entire lives on the public dole. In other words we have supported Grandma, her kids....and NOW her grandkids and probably great grandchildren.

When is this God Damned gravy train ever going to end!!!

I feel for the young children. They know nothing else and we as a society can't just turn them out into the streets to become the same trash as the rest of their family. But, as a responsible hard working taxpayer...I'm sick to death of supporting this societal train wreck.

deborah said...

One thing I think Obamacare may take care of is better birth control and more timely abortions.

I looked at images of third trimester abortions, and it was distressing.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

Birth control is cheap and even free. Not fucking around with multiple sex partners is even cheaper. Self discipline, self respect is also something that is free. None of these factors require Obamacare socialized medicine or the rest of us to subsidize it.

There is no excuse for these people.

deborah said...

It would be nice if we could snap our fingers and an unfortunate demographic would shape up, but what I was suggesting is Obamacare, and progressivism in general will act eugenically in the long run. On both black and white.

Chip Ahoy said...

This is what happened to Obama. I have known people raised by their grandparents for whatever reason and I never thought too much about it except for the increased nonsense we could get away with because their grandparents were not so aware of the things we were up to. Whereas the rest of us had parents closer to our own ages and more acute. Actually, there were several people in that situation.

Somehow, maybe it's the two books talking about it, and I resist psychoanalyzing anybody, but after all this being imposed upon so many, it is impossible not to see Obama as psychologically damaged in this way.

On the other hand, contrary to that, having the ol' man around 100% can be psychologically damaging too. Sometimes.

A few days ago bbc ran Gordon Ramsey entering the most impossible situation I've ever seen. The father is completely fucked. The mother an air-headed loon, and the son and his wife being ripped to pieces by the elder's psychology.

The father, owner, trouble maker handed Gordon a book he wrote.

All viewers across the globe simultaneously went, "Oh shit." Like he's really going to read that in the middle of the restaurant makeover.

But Gordon did read it. And you can tell he's marking the very first pages, so he didn't get far into it before the father (the author) describes his own father in the book to a t exactly the way his own behavior is observed. It took Gordon Ramsey to read the first 10 pages of the man's own book to see immediately he was doing to his son exactly what he complained bitterly about his father doing to him. The book was titled something with "demon" in it. Right there at the surface.

He knew all along.

It is amazing to me that Ramsey had only to point out the man's own published words to get the father to see how precisely he is ruining his son's life. And it changed immediately. Amazing also the son hadn't read that book and pointed it out already, gone straight to it. That is how weird that thing was. The son's father wrote a book about his father and the guy didn't even read it apparently. Eh, even if he did, it took an outsider to make the guy see it in his own writing. Now that's thick. (The father spent a large sum of the son's money dragging him into the business he never did want. Then was expected to run it. He did get it running and sorted with Ramsey's help. The guy is actually an applied family psychologist as much as restauranteur. )

Dust Bunny Queen said...

progressivism in general will act eugenically in the long run. On both black and white.

That's what Margaret Sanger was hoping for. But since we are subsidizing this type of lifestyle and making it easy, I rather doubt it.

Being raised with your Grandparent(s) being involved in your life is a very good thing. It used to be the norm, to have multi generational homes. It was the norm for economic reasons, division of labor (it was hard to live and work in those days) and also for convenience. It wasn't subsidized or paid for by everyone else....it just was how society functioned. A multi generational household had a lot of advantages.


Today, we see a resurgence of some of this type of living. Much of the resurgence is due to the recession/depression that we are in. But MORE of it is because we are paying people and enabling them to have skipped generation multi generational households.

Being raised solely BY your Grandparent because your parents are suck fuck ups or just find it inconvenient to be a parent is NOT a very good thing. It is a crippling situation. It is an enabling situation. We need to STOP supporting it and enabling it to the massive extent that we are now.

So...I don't take this article as an uplifting positive story, but rather a confirmation of just how badly we have screwed up generations of people and how hopeless it likely is for them to get out of the progressive prison.

deborah said...

No, it's not an uplifting story, per se, but as this is a nursing home situation, it beats sending the grandkids into foster care.

I do think the progressive dream is to shape everyone up, which is why Gov. Moonbeam just allowed midwives to perform vacuum abortions during the first trimester.

We'll be getting somewhere when parents who have the means are made financially responsible for their underage children's babies...till those grandkids are 18.

Thanks for the article. I think multi-generational families are great, and will over time be seen as a good thing.

Revenant said...

55 seems like too-high a cutoff. Grandparents most often end up with the kids when the mother is underage.

sakredkow said...

55 seems like too-high a cutoff. Grandparents most often end up with the kids when the mother is underage.

Not quite true. Grandma most often ends up with the kids when drugs, mental illness or domestic violence is involved. Even if the mother is underage she still usually stays with the children unless above.

deborah said...

Sorry, not nursing home, but retirement home. It's pretty depressing that 55 is considered senior now.

36 units times 12 nationwide, experimentally. With the scads of empty housing available in some cities, this seems like an incredible misallocation of resources to benefit some progressives.