Many children being raised by their grandparents say they often face financial difficulties and experience feelings of abandonment, a survey released by the Child Welfare League Foundation said.
The foundation conducted the survey to gauge the living conditions of the increasing number of the nation's children who are being raised by their grandparents instead of their parents.
The government estimates that there are more than 90,000 households where the grandparents are the sole breadwinners.
The foundation began the poll late last year, targeting fourth to sixth-grade students under the care of their grandparents.
A total of 4,487 valid samples were collected.
The survey found that 14 percent of respondents said their families did not have a fixed or regular source of income, which was 2.2 times that of households headed by parents.
Most of the respondents' grandparents made a living scavenging because their age and stamina limited their job opportunities.
Against this backdrop, 56 percent of respondents said they often worried about their family's financial status.
About 30 percent said they did not like their living quarters because the houses were shabby, crowded, dirty, chaotic or had leaking roofs; and 32 percent said they could seldom pay school or tuition fees on time.
Up to 50 percent of the children surveyed felt they were lagging behind their peers or classmates in their academic studies and needed after-school tutoring, but 52 percent said there was nobody to help them with their homework.
Only 30 percent said they could afford to attend afterschool talent classes or cram schools.
Approximately 40 percent of the children also said they often felt abandoned and lonely.
The survey showed that 39 percent of the children had once slept or stayed up overnight alone; 1 percent said they always or often had to take care of themselves; and 70 percent said they had never or only occasionally discussed things with grown-ups in their family.
Foundation executives expressed concern over the life and relationships that these children had in school, as 50 percent of respondents said they had been bullied by their classmates over the past two months and 5 percent said they were harassed by classmates every school day.
With the approach of summer vacation, the foundation launched a campaign on Thursday to raise funds to help schoolchildren raised by their grandparents attend talent classes or afterschool classes during the summer break.
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