Welcome to The Grandparent Effect
Grandparents are healthier, wealthier, and longer-lived than ever before. What does this mean for us all?
“Do your best every day!”
The grandmas and grandpas at Garden View Assisted Living in Carroll, Iowa have lots of back-to-school advice for kids. Recently, they posted it on Facebook.
Four generations, one race
An 88-year-old woman, her daughter, her granddaughter, and her great-granddaughter recently teamed up for a 5K in Albany.
Bonobo moms play matchmaker for their sons
An adult male bonobo who lives with his mother is three times more likely to become a father than one who’s gone his own way.
The difference being a mother of a single daughter is that you become part of her family—which I think is very different from grandmothers in general … We come, we stay for a few days, there’s no tension about the son-in-law who’s wondering when we’re gonna leave, when he’s gonna have his family back. We have much more access to the grandchildren.
Judi, grandmother of four, Massachusetts
Anna Quindlen has learned to butt out
“Hang back,” Quindlen, who has two grandkids, advises grandparents in her latest book.
A prom for sixth-graders and their grandparents
A middle school in Ohio has a novel take on the Senior Prom.
I’ve been very careful about not giving unsolicited advice to my kids about their children, because I think everybody has to make their own mistakes. My favorite thing to tell my children is, ‘Every day I did the best I could, and some days it was better than other days, but it was always the best I could do that day.’
Arlene, grandmother of four, New York
At this South Korean school, children and their grandmas learn together
Faced with declining enrollment, an elementary school in rural South Korea is welcoming grandmothers, many of whom were not permitted to attend school when they were girls.
“Go see your mom and your grandparents. They miss you!”
When three young men saw an older woman eating dinner alone at a restaurant in Oxford, Alabama, they asked her to join them. It turned out that she was a widow, and that the next day would have been her 60th wedding anniversary.
Are you a typical American grandparent?
There’s a new study out about grandparents. Some of its findings surprised me.
Why grandparents outnumber grandchildren
There used to be many more children than elders; now, for the first time in history, the old outnumber the young.
What do Okinawans know that we don’t?
The five places in the world where people live the longest are also places where elders spend a good deal of their time tending vegetable gardens.
I believe that children in this country need a more robust literary diet than they are getting. It does not hurt them to read about good and evil, love and hate, life and death. Nor do I think they should read only about things that they understand. ‘A man’s reach should exceed his grasp.’ So should a child’s … I will never talk down to—or draw down to—children.
Barbara Cooney (1917-2000)
Is mental illness the biggest problem facing teens?
Seventy percent of American teens see anxiety and depression as “major problems” among their peers, according to a new study.
Of baby birds and their grandparents
So far, grandparent care has been observed in only one bird species: the Seychelles Warbler, which inhabits five small islands in the Indian Ocean.
Inspired by her grandpa, she fights the fires of Cleveland
Lauren Phillips is the first woman to join the ranks of the city’s firefighters in 30 years.
The year in grandparents
In 2018, I wrote about a caravan of grandparents who stormed the Texas-Mexico border to protest Trump’s treatment of migrant children, Gabriel García Márquez’s memories of his grandmother, and many other topics.
More myths about grandparents that it’s time to trash
Many stereotypes about grandparents are wrong.
What do you know now that you wish you’d known then?
I asked grandparents around the country what they wish they’d known—but didn’t—when their first grandchild was born. Here are some of my favorite responses.
What to do if your grandson is a mermaid
Subtly and artfully, this picture book depicts the bond between a boy who’s questioning his gender identity and his steady, open-minded grandma.
“I was worried about my grandkids”
Marian Shields Robinson didn’t want to move to Washington, D.C. when her daughter, Michelle Obama, became First Lady in 2009. But her grandchildren, Sasha and Malia, were only seven and ten, and Marian was worried about them, she said in a recent interview with Gayle King of CBS This Morning.
The Scottish grandmother and the wonky donkey
The world has fallen in love with the way Janice Clark reads to her grandson.
A loving grandpa in a hateful world
Maurice Stallard was murdered in Kentucky last week while shopping with his grandson at Kroger’s. The alleged killer, who is white, likely targeted him because he was black.
We have this woman to thank for Grandparents Day
A housewife from West Virginia fought for years to get a national holiday for grandparents declared. In 1978, she won.
Why does Trump want to keep children and their grandparents apart?
Many immigrant parents seek to bring their own parents here to help with childcare while they toil in grueling jobs, two sociologists recently wrote in The New York Times. President Trump wants to stop them.
“It’s been like dying and going to heaven”
Earlier this year, I published a long story about a grandmother in Houston, Stephanie Johnson, who had lost access to her grandson after her daughter was murdered and who was fighting in court to be reunited with him. Here’s an update on Stephanie’s plight.
“We are grannies on a mission”
Grandparents from all over the country are road-tripping to a Texas border city this weekend to protest the Trump administration’s treatment of migrant children and their families.
The grandfather and the frog
A zoologist who just identified a new species of frog has named it after his three-year-old granddaughter, Sylvia.
John Mellencamp was a grandma’s boy
“Buddy, don’t forget,” Laura Mellencamp told her grandson daily. “You’re the handsomest, luckiest, most talented boy in the world.”
When your grandma is Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Clara Spera recently graduated from law school. Her inspiration was her grandmother, Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Because of his grandma, Gabriel García Márquez knew magic was real
Until he was eight, Gabriel García Márquez was raised by his maternal grandparents and a bevy of aunts and servants in Aracataca, Colombia, a small town near the Caribbean Sea that he fictionalized in his most famous novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude. “I cannot imagine a family environment more favorable to my vocation than that lunatic house,” he later wrote.
Trump thinks this grandma is a threat to our country
Trump’s travel ban has torn apart thousands of families. Here is the story of one of them.
The restaurant where grandmas dish up the world
At Enoteca Maria on Staten Island, the menu changes daily, and so do the chefs: they are grandmothers from all over the world.
Do maternal grandparents have it better?
Kids are often closer to their maternal grandparents than to their paternal ones, research suggests, perhaps because mothers tend to maintain closer ties with their own parents than fathers do.
“Do anything to stop this”
Thanks to everyone who read and commented on my in-depth story about a grandmother in Houston, Stephanie Johnson, who lost her daughter to domestic violence and is now fighting for the right to see her grandson. Here’s one comment I think everyone should see.
How common is domestic violence?
About 28 million women in the United States have experienced “severe” physical violence at the hands of a partner, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
She lost her daughter to murder. Will her grandson be taken from her, too?
A grieving mother seeks justice.
The best movies about kids and their grandparents
Most movies put grandparents on the sidelines, when they put them anywhere at all. Here are some great ones that give them their due.
“Why I train grandmothers to treat depression”
Depression is common in Zimbabwe. Psychiatrists are not. So grandmothers are being trained to step in.
How grandparents prevent kids from being ageist
Children who see their grandparents at least once a week and describe these visits as “happy” are much less likely than their peers to buy into negative stereotypes about elders, a new study suggests.
The best picture books about kids and their grandparents
These books aren’t just stunningly written and illustrated. They also perceptively observe the complexities of the new American family.