grandparents who are the parents

I have read a few articles from AARP's website on some issues that older adults were having in life. One that caught my attention were a couple of articles on parents (older adults) who's children were having children and they were trying to get time off through the FMLA (family and medical leave act) to help them out because of a circumstance that limited the children from taking care of their babies. One's child had postpartum depression and was unable to take care of the child and the other's husband was limited by a disability and the child needed help taking care of the newborn and toddler she had. Both ladies had approval from their companies but then got a denial from FMLA because they claimed that their children didn't have a disability and taking care of grandchildren didn't fall under the FMLA.

I think that this law should be taken into consideration again because of the new instances of when grandparents are taking care of their grandchildren. What happens to the grandparents who are now parents of their children's children? Are they exempts from this FMLA law that allows only parents to take time off of work for their children? Both ladies above from the examples were fired from their jobs for taking the time off to help care for their children and grandchildren. I think that the ideal law would support grandparents who are taking care of their grandchildren or whose parents are unable to take care of them and need help.

Here is what the FMLA law spells out (this is only portions of it specific to my article):
you can have 12 weeks out of a year of unpaid, job protected leave when:
the birth of a child
to care for the employee's spouse, child, or parent who has a serious health condition
(from US Department of Labor)

Ok, so if you can care for your child for 12 weeks, why not take into consideration grandparents who have new children, maybe not of their own, but theirs now. I think that this issue should be brought up and taken into consideration!

The article is in the title if you want to check it out- it's pretty interesting!