GRANDPARENT ROLE MOVES BEYOND SENTIMENTALITY
The Globe and Mail, Aug. 28, 2004 - Salem Alaton
Weekdays formerly jammed with the demands of a nursing career have for
Jill MacLean given way to routinely joyous times playing with her
four-year-old grandson.
When her son-in-law died of cancer two years ago, MacLean decided to
advance her retirement, leave her home in London, Ont. and purchase a house
in Toronto with daughter Jennifer.
"I think for me it was just a very natural thing," says MacLean, 61, who
intends to continue work as a consultant. "There wasn't a feeling I was
giving up anything."
Almost 475,000 grandparents in Canada live with grandchildren, according
to the 2001 census, alongside millions more who are deeply involved in their
grandchildren's lives. The numbers suggest that the grandparental role,
beyond the traditional sentimentality attached to it, is today a significant
anchor in the rapidly-changing world of family life.
"If this had happened in my twenties with my mom moving in with me, all
my friends would have said, ŒAre you crazy?'" allows Jennifer MacLean, 37,
with a good-natured laugh. "Now they say, ŒOh, my god, you're so lucky.'"
While a personal tragedy set up the situation, her three-generation home
is today the best possible circumstance for her son Liam and herself,
believes Jennifer, news manager at The Weather Channel.
"They have a real love affair going on," she says of her mother and
child. "Having access to her has been the best thing he could have had."
Timing favored the MacLeans' union, with Jill close to retiring and
wishing proximity to her grandchild. Mother and daughter had also long
enjoyed a close and mutually respectful relationship which guides their
arrangements today.
Whether grandparents are in the house, across town or across the
country, their role occasions much discussion today, evidenced by, among
other things, a burgeoning popular literature on the subject. That's not
much of a surprise when you consider the generation just reaching the
grandparental milestone.
"You have these boomers who are now all becoming grandparents," notes
Katrina Hayday Wester, founder of the online Grandparents Magazine out of
Wayne, Pa. "So even the population of grandparents is increasing."
Changing family configurations has also meant the emergent role of
stepgrandparents and situations where children can have three and four sets
of grandparents. Perhaps more significant still is that increased life
expectancy and greater vigor in the senior years have made the
grandparenting role more dynamic and varied.
"There are grandparents who are more active today," says Hayday Wester,
citing rollerblading grandmothers and grandparents who go on travelling
holidays with the grandchildren, no parents required.
Her own father is close to both her two young children. She considers him
the same kind of model in the role that she found in her European-born
grandfather, who introduced her as a child to stamps, chess and playing
classical music.
"There is something that is so special about a grandparent," reflects
Hayday Wester, whose publication has to date been primarily a labour of
love. "There are things you do with a grandparent that you just can't
replace. There are things a grandparent can do that a parent doesn't have
time to do."
The benefits cut both ways. While grandson Liam is delighted to have her
present, Jill MacLean in turn revels in being able to spend hours with a
child at the zoo or even at a table playing Boggle or cards.
"There'\'s a different pace to it," she reflects. "Things that you had to
do at a more hectic, harried sort of pace as a parent, you now can do in a
much more relaxed way."
Grandchildren and grandparents are well-known for getting along, well,
famously. The relationship that tends to require more effort, compromise and
diplomacy is the one between grandparents and their adult children.
"There's always this differing meta-text between the generations,"
observes Ann Douglas, Peterborough, Ont.-based author of numerous books on
parenting and family dynamics and mother of four children.
Key changes include shifting views on discipline, she observes.
Grandparents are often unaccustomed, for example, to the extent to which
children are consulted by parents on matters affecting them.
"Today we allow children to ask why we've made certain decisions, which
was certainly not the case in our parents' generation," Douglas remarks.
Safety is another altered landscape. The former practice of letting young
kids out the door and letting them roam around for hours until suppertime is
an emblem of a world that grandparents don't always realize has essentially
ceased to exist.
It adds up to a cardinal rule: When parents and grandparents see things
differently in terms of childrearing, parents hold the veto.
"We're still fine-tuning what we're doing," says Douglas of today's
parents. "I've had to rewrite the parenting playbook with every kid. So we
don't want to have a lot of criticism because we're still figuring it out."
While the parents are figuring out the parenting, of course, the
grandparent, as Douglas puts it, "gets to be the cool guy."
Case in point is her own father, who has helped inculcate in Douglas's
children his inquisitive outlook in matters of science, his enormous respect
for education and, above all, his love of "really bad jokes."
Douglas pretends to be dismayed about the latter but no one in the
family believes her.
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