Raising a kid takes a village...of grandmas
NEW YORK - On Sunday night's "60 Minutes," Leslie Stahl reported on a remarkable teen gospel choir in Harlem. Although the report focused mainly on the music, the kids who belt it out, and the woman who builds them up, Stahl also made brief mention of an apartment building in the Bronx where a couple of the kids live.
(Watch Part 1 of Stahl's story at left)
CBS News correspondent Steve Hartman reports it's mostly grandmothers who live there.
"We all have to stick together," one grandmother said. "We take care of each other."
Built in 2005, the inner-city public housing project was the first of its kind in America, and it's now home to 50 low-income grandparents. Each one is the sole guardian of at least one of their grandchildren - if not six. Each is trying to make the most of whatever tragedy it was that put them in this position in the first place.
Learn more about the GrandParent Family Apartments
For many, the devil was in the drugs. And if it wasn't drugs it was almost certainly, something worse.
Annie Barnes got custody of her infant granddaughter Shakela when her son was murdered by his wife. That was 16 years ago. Today, Shakela is doing great and dreams of becoming a lawyer - thanks, in part, she says, to an overabundance of grandmothering. She said other grandparents in the building treat her like their grandchild as well. "I like a lot of grandparents in here," she said.
(Watch Part 2 of Stahl's story at left)
One of the grandmothers said "it would be a disaster," if those programs disappeared from the building.
The last thing those ladies want is to have their grandkids out on the streets after school. It's a legitimate concern. On the day CBS News was in the building, someone was shot half a block away at 4 o'clock in the afternoon.
"The children would have been right out there and one of them could have gotten hit," Barnes said.
While the real world beats at the door, the residents inside circle their wagons like never before. Last week, word came down that state funding for those after-school programs is drying up. The grandmothers were determined to fight back. "We're going to do whatever we can to help with these children - so we've been doing pretty good with the cake bake," one grandmother said.
In a fundraising effort only a grandmother could conceive, residents here are baking cakes to sell at local senior centers. At $1 a slice, it'll take about 40,000 cakes to make-up for what they're slated to lose. But they've got the ovens, and the fire.
The grandparents also plan to lobby lawmakers. They're going to be a pretty hard bunch to say no to.
