Quote:
Originally Posted by GotHereQuickAsICould
Without welfare to soften the blows of life, family stepped in to help out.
Now it is rare to see aunts and uncles raising kids, but getting more common to see grandparents in that role. Wonder why that is?
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I think there are simply fewer people in families now, and the aunts are working, too, and raising their own kids. If the average family is 2.1 kids, then how many siblings are there to help out?
In the olden days, I think a lot of children were in orphanages because one parent was out of action or missing or dead. The humorist Art Buchwald wrote about being in an orphanage and seeing his father or aunt on weekends (I think the mother died). A teacher of mine in high school spent his sixth birthday in an orphanage because his mother was in a mental hospital and his father put him in the orphanage. (It was that year that he could not learn to read due to dyslexia, and always associated "being stupid" with being put in the orphanage).