Grand Parental Rights

Here is a new spin on our traditional thoughts of "Grand Parental Rights!" In the United States, and particularly in Oklahoma, Grand Parental rights has been the focus of much legislation. Essentially, attempts to legislate into a gap where in the more commonly non-traidtional home grand parents are not alienated from their biological grand children by a former daughter-in-law or son-in-law with custody who is resistent to allow, as primary custodial parent, their children to visit with the "other side" of the family.

However, today I am in a country where the law permits grand parents to sue for support from their family. Yes, that's right ... grand parents have the right to LEGALLY COMPEL their grand children to permit the grand parent to live with the grand child and to LEGALLY COMPEL the grand children to take care of a sick or elderly grand parent. This is a culture in which the nuclear family is so important, yet being westernized by the day, so that the legal powers to be have cemented their heritage by law.

Quite an interesting twist on the United States thought of "grand parental" rights. Think about it, in the United States we usually just put our elderly in an "Old person warehouse" ... a nursing home ... where they can live out their lives with little quality, but with equally little inconvenience on our own lives.

Who is missing the issue? If we "had" to take care of our own biological foreparents we might actually save enough federal funding so that our own grandchildren would be able to pay off Bush's war ... as opposed to our great, great grandchildren! Interesting cultural twist on the same term "grand parental rights!"