FAIRBORN — "This is just not the way it's supposed to be," said Ralph Black of Fairborn.

Black, 77, loves his great-grandson dearly, but he knows he shouldn't be taking care of him every day as he has since the boy's birth seven years ago. Black said Jordan was born to his granddaughter, who lived with him at the time, and he has had legal custody for five years.

"A grandfather takes his grandchildren to the ice cream shop, buys them a treat, gives them a hug and sends them home," Black said. "I don't get to do that. I have to be the father; I have to be the day-to-day disciplinarian and all that. Everything is upside down."

It's a little unusual for great-grandparents to have custody of their great-grandchildren, but it's becoming more and more common for other relatives, particularly grandparents, to take over primary care duties for parents who can't or won't live up to their responsibilities.

"The 2000 Census said we had 940 grandparents taking care of their grandchildren in Greene County, but that barely shows the tip of the iceberg," said K.B. VonDerau, kinship navigator for the Greene County Council on Aging.

"It only covers the people who told the Census takers that they were taking care of grandchildren. A lot of people who are doing it don't tell anybody about it," VonDerau said. "Plus there are all those aunts and uncles and other relatives."

Black said it's a social change that has taken place mostly under the radar. Grandparents who finished raising their own children years or even decades ago, he said, are being forced into parenthood again to keep their grandchildren from being neglected, abused or lost to foster care and adoption.

Black said he and his wife Lois, who is disabled with severe arthritis, have struggled to keep up with an extremely active little boy for seven years while hoping their granddaughter would eventually take him back.

Black's eyes fill with tears as he talks about deciding to relinquish custody of Jordan so he can be adopted by a younger family better able to match the child's energy and to care for him over the long term.

"My health is OK, but even healthy older people are always close to something happening that could make it impossible for me to keep doing this," Black said. "We can't wait until he's 10 or 15. He'd be even harder to place then.

"It hurts me, but it's time."

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2395 or

jcummings@DaytonDailyNews.com.