Intimate profiles of American families.
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.
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.’
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.
“Buddy, don’t forget,” Laura Mellencamp told her grandson daily. “You’re the handsomest, luckiest, most talented boy in the world.”
Trump’s travel ban has torn apart thousands of families. Here is the story of one of them.
A grieving mother seeks justice.
“This is such a joyful place,” says a vice president of the St. Ann Center for Intergenerational Care. “The adults bring joy to the kids, the kids bring joy to the adults.”
When she was in her mid-80s, Kusum Lele lost interest in everything. A friendship with a 24-year-old brought her back to life.
The hopes of a great-great-great grandmother in Kenya.
Ask your grandparents questions about themselves before it’s too late, urges novelist Michael Chabon.
All the Girl Scouts troops in her California town were full, so Kathy Richardson started a new one for her granddaughter and her friends.
When she was six, Simone Biles was adopted by her grandparents. Now, she’s the best gymnast in the world.
I love the way Michelle Obama toasted her mom, who moved into the White House to help raise her granddaughters, at a Mother’s Day Tea in 2014.
Guy and Joanne Sinclair have been raising their granddaughter since their daughter got hooked on heroin.
After her husband died in 1945, Eleanor Roosevelt traveled the world as a diplomat, speaker, and activist. But she was never too busy for her granddaughter.
Grandparents matter in profound, enduring, and sometimes unexpected ways. That’s what I learned from these recordings, which were made by three American families for the oral history project StoryCorps.
The legendary anthropologist Margaret Mead was homeschooled for most of her childhood by her grandmother, an iconoclast who rejected rote instruction as “stultifying” and emphasized learning by doing instead.
Maybe I would have made it through my 20s without him. But, to be honest, I can’t imagine how.
A grandma in Massachusetts saves “every single thing” her granddaughters scribble, paint, sculpt, and glue.
Isabel Allende, a novelist with millions of readers around the world, says her grandparents shaped both her character and her career.
Lisa Drayer got 40 years with her grandmother. They were never closer than at the end.
“I think there should be legislation that keeps children and their offspring in the same town, but it didn’t work out that way.”
A grandmother in Oklahoma finds babysitting both magical and tiring.
If you have to bring your kids along on business trips, it helps to bring their grandma, too.
My sister’s family tried living at my parents’ house. Chaos ensued.
When he’s not writing some of the best humor and journalism of our time, Trillin spends a lot of time grandparenting.
