While it would be nice to think the granddaughter did have her tubes tied it probably did not happen. It also raises the question about the parents. Unlikely the greats are doing anything more than raising the child. I have seen this happen several times with unhappy endings. Mother is also probably receiving financial assistance that she is not passing on to help raise her child.

Anglo, this is a sad situation for sure. The GGPARENTS will love this child for sure, the child will bond and love the GG parents....than BOOM...at some point the risk of the GG parents becoming unable to care for the child will become a real possibility. The child is than...where....placed with strangers??...losing her home, the only family she knows, loves, trusts...leaving her scared and possibly scarred emotionally.

I completely understand the GG parents stepping up to the plate and embracing the child...it's called love...thoughts are understandably with the here and now...but at some point the future smacks you in the face and fear for the childs future without her loved ones sets in....I know.....I'm in this situation. And I'm scared.

I will Pray that the GG parents continue to be able to care for this little girl.

Maybe the courts should consider the age of the caregivers and the children....the courts would better be able to see what could happen in the future where the Grandparents are colored by love.

God Bless these Great Grand Parents and the 3 year old they obviously love.

The tragedy here is the young children having irresponsible parents and/or parents who don't stand up to the responsibility of raising kids they have brought into the world.

Parents and grandparents should NEVER be put into the position of having to raise the children of their own progeny. Again, it's the young ones who suffer from being in such dysfunctional family situations.

Of course it doesn't require a wedding to have children but too many "children" get into serious relationships when they're still immature, get married too young, have children too young, and by doing so put themselves and their own children in situations where family failure and breakup is a very likely outcome. The obvious question to ask about these too young or irresponsible parents is where were THEIR parents, who should have provided better guidance and advice to help them get a better start in their own adult lives?

This irritates me.

Not everyone should be allowed to breed. This is ridiculous.

SO was raised by his grandparents. His mother had 5 children, by 4 different fathers, and raised 1 of them herself. The rest were pressed on the grandparents, the aunts, anyone who would take them. To this day he calls his grandma "mama" and his mother by her given name.

People like that do not care about the long term mental effects that being rejected by ones mother causes.

The worst part is when all the hard work is done, and that child is an adult,the mother will try to impose herself on her. And she will use the old excuse "I'm your mother. You wouldn't be here if it wasn't for me." And she will expect respect and favors from her. I hope the child is strong enough to resist that.

I say this because SOs mother calls when she needs money. Or she wants him to pay for someone to fix her car or house. (The house that one of her other children bought for her, since she has never worked and had always lived off of the taxpayers)And she uses that to try to get it out of him. He never spent one night under her roof and she still thinks he owes her something. Nope.

I am grateful that his grandparents raised him. He is a hardworking, good man with a disdain for laziness and freeloaders. But it hurts me to see him hurt. And it hurts him that the only time he hears from his "mother" is when she wants something.

I hope that child does well in life. And being away from her mother will likely raise those odds.

The obvious question to ask about these too young or irresponsible parents is where were THEIR parents, who should have provided better guidance and advice to help them get a better start in their own adult lives?

Right, Elmer, it was their job to check in at the motel and prevent the act. Sheesh. No, parents are not always responsible for many of the bad choices their kids make. Plenty of kids from families with difficulties go on to have responsible and rewarding lives.

lucille, parents have 16 or more years to set a good example, instill good thinking and good values, and to inspire each kid they raise. When they have enough independence as older teens and beyond to actually make their own choices about what they do and don't do that have consequences, the time to cover the essentials of the parenting job has passed.

I never worried about the decisions and choices my kids would make. I didn't always agree with them (meaning, I might have made different choices for myself) and as 30-somethings I still sometimes don't agree but their choices are almost always thoughtful and sound and right for them. That's what they were taught to do, make their own decisions and responsibly deal with the consequences of same.

Being an effective parent doesn't depend on having money or economic means. It does take time and effort. I hope you were an effective parent and that others reading here were too.

You can't watch your kids 24/7 . All you can do is set a good example for them ,communicate and hope you did your job well . I feel so bad that these older people are having to spend their golden years this way. I see so many older ladies at the grocery stores dragging infants and toddlers around with them. If it's a choice - fine .... but if you're the solution to someone else's problem , that's just sad.

Honestly, the grandma didn't do a decent job raising the granddaughter, probably best that she is "too busy" to raise her grandchild.

Same thing happened to a friend of my mom's. She's raising her great grand daughter. She's in her 80's. So sad.

There recently was a news story here in Canada about a woman living in an area with a severe lack of adequate housing. She has lived in someone's laundry room for seven years, but this has not prevented her from giving birth to four children during that time. She has a five-year-old daughter, a 16 month old son and five month old twins. The family can use the one bedroom apartment attached to the laundry room during the day, but must stay out when the owner is back home.

It seems extremely irresponsible to have children under such circumstances. If you cannot properly provide for your children, then don't bring them into this world. I speak from personal experience since as a child I lived with my family of 10 people in a two room house. It was a life-lesson in what not to do!

My former boss had 2 children. They were raised in the same home, by her. Her daughter is a cop. Her son is in prison for the 3rd time. Your children are not robots. They don't always follow the example you have set.

Joyful, while i agree it takes two to tango, I have to disagree on the basis that it is the womans choice alone to have the child. What I mean by that is: A woman can use birth control to prevent pregnancy. A man cannot force her to do so. ( YES, a man can protect himself as well, but condoms are not fail proof and if being left high and dry with a child is a concern for a woman, it is her responsibility to protect herself, period) A woman can choose to terminate her pregnancy if she wants. A man can neither force her or prevent her from doing so. A woman can give her child up for adoption, leave it at a hospital or fire station, etc and not have any consequences, either criminal or financial, to fear. This is not so for men. If they cannot pay their child support, they go to jail.

ETA: I suppose the same applies to women on child support, but the number of women on it PALES in comparison to the men.

The point is, no matter your gender, if you choose to have sex, there may be unintended consequences.

On our news lately they have been addressing the topic of grandparents raising grandchildren due to drugs. One of the biggest issues is money. The grandparents are now on a fixed income and can't get any kind of aid because the junkie parent will not give up there rights. They don't have the money for a lawyer and have the fear if they go to CYS they could take the child and put it in foster care.

I went to school with a girl who lived with her mother and sister. Her senior year she needed her birth certificate for something and her mother kept delaying giving it to her. She went to the court house to get a copy only to find out her mother was really her grandmother and her sister was really her mother.

I'm raising a great grandchild with a family situation as above. He's no blood relation to me, but I've got court ordered permanent custody. It isn't what I planned for my retirement and old age, but that's okay. His welfare and long term growth and well-being are what's important.

My ex-husband came from a very poor family and I saw first hand the cycle of poverty and how hard it is for some to get out of it. One of his brothers had 3 kids by a girl, and she was a girl, who asked her doctor to tie her tubes after her 3rd child was born. He refused because she wasn't 21 yet. So of course, baby #4 came along by a different man and since she was then 21 she did get her tubes tied.

The kids of all his siblings are just repeating the cycle of their parents.

While there is no guarantee that anyone adopting will turn out to be a good parent, or live to a ripe old age, or even stay married in the case of a couple -- adoption might provide more stability for the child Anglophilia met. There would have been more homes anxious to take an infant, but even at 3, there would probably be age-appropriate people happy to adopt this child through legal channels. (The window narrows as a child grows older.) An open adoption could be arranged; the girl need not lose her ties to her natural family.

I admire people who adopt children. Adopting parents make a conscious decision to raise a child and go through a lot of trouble (and expense) to do so. The comparison with people who irresponsibly bring children into the world when their own lives are unstable or in turmoil couldn't be more dramatic. I also suspect the quality of parenting and likely outcomes for the children concerned in the two extreme cases are also dramatically different, though that needn't be the case.

It's also true that many adopted children may have medical or psychological challenges as a result of their starts in life. Such kids are all the more deserving of proper love and care - they didn't choose nor deserve the problems they were brought into.

I have one grandchild who is adopted. He's a dear, dear boy and I love him very much. My son and his then-wife, were very lucky to have been accepted by one of the best adoption agencies in the country. When they adopted nearly 14 years ago, this agency typically had about 365 infants available each year. I just looked at their web site - it's down to 128 in 2017 (latest figures given).

So few women are giving up babies for adoption these days. And most people adopting, still prefer an infant and a healthy one. Most prefer their own race. Between abortion and mothers keeping their children (or farming them off on their parents or grandparents!), infertile couples have very few options these days.

I have to say that when my son told me that his wife was filing for divorce, the first person I thought of was that birth mother. She wanted a two-parent family for her infant son and thought she had found a stable one. I felt like it was such a betrayal of her trust. I think if she knew, she would be heart-broken. My DIL kept in touch regularly until he was about 4 - then annually for a couple of years, and then she did not want to have any further contact (they have met but do not know one another's full names or location of residency). My DS pretty much went along with whatever she wanted. Lot of good that did him! I don't ever talk with him about this as he has always considered it a very personal matter. But his son has asked ME questions over the years. Out of respect for my son, I've always gently told him that these are questions he should be asking his father.

Anglo, I have a gym buddy who has two adopted sons. She just mentioned that very thing.

Having a child as a single mom is so common now. Some do it intentionally, but I never considered how it effected the total for available children. Makes sense.

We have several acquaintances who are raising their grandchildren because of irresponsibility on the part of the kid's parents. None of them are happy about it, they only took on the responsibility because they were pressured to not let the kids end up in the foster system.

It's not a great situation for the grandparents nor the kids and I firmly believe it should only be an option if the grandparents (or great-grandparents or any other relative) really, really want to do it.