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.
“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.
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.
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.
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.
How Baby Boomers and Millennials can help one another
A new app will connect young people who need housing with empty-nesters who need income.
“What the elders see while sitting, the young ones standing on their toes won’t see”
Proverbs about grandparenting from around the world.
For grandparents raising grandchildren, is help finally on the way?
The Senate is considering a bill to assist the more than 2.5 million American grandparents who are raising at least one of their grandchildren.
He was hurt and angry, so his grandma made him work
After his parents divorced, Laird Hunt was sent to live with his grandmother, a “tough-as-nails taskmaster” with an 80-acre farm.
“Grandmammy was all the world to me”
Though Frederick Douglass was born into slavery, he was “a spirited, joyous, uproarious, and happy boy,” thanks to his grandma, who raised and protected him.
The grandparents who raised an Olympic champion
When she was six, Simone Biles was adopted by her grandparents. Now, she’s the best gymnast in the world.
A writer, her granddaughters, and the magic of Sicily
Francine Prose returns to an island she fell in love with years ago.
It’s never too late to join the Peace Corps
Alice Carter, 87, a grandmother from Boston, is halfway through a two-year stint with the Peace Corps in Rabat, Morocco, where she’s volunteering at a youth center.
“This is not the way we thought our lives would be”
Guy and Joanne Sinclair have been raising their granddaughter since their daughter got hooked on heroin.
How to interview your grandparents
“Imagine it: During the holidays, instead of using gadgets to ignore each other, we might use them as an excuse to look each other in the eye and listen.”
Why isn’t there more help for grandparents raising grandkids?
Nearly three million American grandparents are raising at least one of their grandkids, but there’s hardly anywhere they can turn for support. Here are the best national resources I’ve come across.
How to help a teenager thrive
A new study finds that teens who maintain close, loving relationships with their grandparents suffer fewer emotional and behavioral problems than their peers.
Help a child to wonder
It’s not important that children know about nature, Rachel Carson believed; what matters is that they delight in it. But they won’t unless they’re shown the way, she warned.
Meet the grandmas of the Mississippi Delta
A new book profiles more than 50 black women who suffered brutal discrimination as children but survived to make a better life—and a better world—for their heirs.
Meet the First Grandmother
“It’s important to remember the White House is such a bizarre place,” says the author of a recent book on the Obamas. “I think Mrs. Robinson acts as a calming presence.”
Are Chinese-American grandparents under too much stress?
Chinese Americans often devote long hours to their grandchildren, but many of them experience this as a burden, a new study reveals.
A grandmother and her granddaughter graduate side by side
Cathy Williams, 62, and her granddaughter, Chelsea Washington, both earned bachelor’s degrees this spring from the Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University in Tallahassee.
Do grandparents know the secret to happiness?
Mo Rocca hopes the grandparents on his TV show can teach him how to live.